Episode AH9324: Well, hello and welcome to ‘At Home’ today. We’re so glad that you decided to drop by, and spend some time with us here in the kitchen. You know I always say at the end of the program it just wouldn’t be the same without you. Well, then I really mean that because when you’re not watching, I kind of have a hunch, I kind of have that sense, somebody is not watching, that always does. And you always tell me in your letters, you know I didn’t get to see it, I missed this, what happened? So I know when you’re not watching. Well anyway, we’re always glad to have you here in the kitchen and today because you have asked so often, we’re going to do the whole program, on this little critter right here, the zucchini. Member of the squash family, this is a versatile puppy. I want to tell you, you can do so many things with this. It’s incredible. You can make cakes, you can make muffins, you can make cookies, you can do pancakes. You can do just about this little fella here can get himself into a whole lot of dishes because he’s so versatile. And the whole program today is gonna be using zucchini in casseroles and things. But before we get started, I wanna share a couple letters because I always enjoy hearing from you. This one is Mary from White Oak here in Pennsylvania. And she says, dear Arlene, I loved your program especially the one you just did where you got yourself all splashed, when you were mixing up that one recipe. I’ve done the same thing myself quite a few times. Well, thank you very much, I really did make a mess, and now I can see that the viewers like that when I make a mess because it’s happened to you. What does, it’s ‘At Home’ right? The other one says, or another one says, dear Arlene your ‘At Home’ shows seems to be more delightful every time I watch it. And everything you prepare, looks so delicious and mouthwatering may God continue to bless you, and this dynamic program. This is from a dear lady here in Pittsburgh. This one says, dear Arlene Williams, I just viewed your cooking show. I just like to tell you, I really enjoyed it. I watched most of the cooking shows and I do enjoy them also yet there something more down to earth and truly charming about your program. I hope to see more of your programs in the future. Keep up the good work and Arlene you’ll always be welcome in my kitchen. That’s nice, thanks Julia. I appreciate when we get those letters because it helps me to know how you feel about what we’ve been doing. And I hope that today’s program will give you that spark to get out there, you know, the zucchinis are coming in now. Almost everybody you see says, I planted a few zucchini plants, and now I’ve got them everywhere. These are some good ideas of what you can do with zucchini. You can also make some of these and give them to a neighbor, along with some fresh ones. Maybe that will stir up her creativity. The important thing is, in whatever we say or do whether it be with zucchinis or whatever, think about your neighbor, think about a friend. Think about sharing because that’s gives you a real good feeling on the inside. Well, we’re off to zucchini land. As soon as we come back from this next message, we’ll be right back. Here’s today’s ‘At Home Hint.’ When you will be doing extra cooking, keep shredded cheese, bread, crumbs, and chopped onion on hand for use in salads, casseroles, and vegetables. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to ‘At Home Hints,’ CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, one five one four eight dash one four nine nine. Well the first one that we’re going to be doing, is called a stuffed zucchini and basically what we’ve taken and what we’ve done is you take two wholes zucchinis. These were together and you slice them down, cut the end off and you put the pulp side down in a dish, like this one, put them in your microwave, for about three minutes until the pulp is soft, and you can scoop it out with this little melon baller. This is the handiest easiest way to do that. All right, and about three minutes should do it. If you don’t have a microwave, you can put them in a skillet with the pulp side down for about three minutes, with a little bit of water to let it boil and then scoop this out, because we’re gonna make a filling for inside. This little gadget is very handy for that. All right, here we have in a sauce pan, we have a little bit of oil. And what we’re gonna do is add about a third of a cup of chopped, really finely chopped, especially finely chopped onion, because you don’t want big chunks of onion in this. And we’re gonna need to get this going here. Now this time of the year, it’s so much fun to be making things that you can come out of the garden with. You got the zucchini, you might have some onions. You might have some fresh chives or some parsley. Bring it on in and start to add it to some of the vegetables that you normally would not think to use it with, because you’ll be surprised, a little bit of fresh deal can change the flavor of any vegetable and adds a sweetness to it. Now you think, oh but that’s a spice Arlene, how could that add a sweet, it does believe me it does. Well we’re gonna let these brown up a little bit or let them cook, but not brown, that’s the important thing. There’s about a tablespoon of olive oil there. And as they start to cook, then this is the pulp that came out of the centers of the zucchini. And we’ve just chopped it up fine. We’re gonna add that to the onions, once the onions get going. This is not too much oil here, so not a lot of grease. And I think this is a change because this could be a great side dish instead of just a plain vegetable, say you’re having some folks over, you’re doing some chicken or whatever. You’d wanna do something special for a side dish. This is something special, not just open a can of green beans or slice up the zucchini and put them in let them steam. This is something a little bit more. And I think it makes a nice presentation at the table too. So, all right, we got the onion going. Now we’re gonna add, this is the chopped pulp from those two zucchinis. We’re gonna let those brown up. Cook together, onion always smells wonderful, right? Okay we’ll cook it about one minute, cause you don’t want the zucchini to get mushy. And if it cooks very long, it’s one of the nice things about zucchini. It doesn’t take long to cook. Just like onions, that together smells wonderful. All right now, after we’ve cooked that for, we’ll say that’s about a minute there, probably should just a little bit longer. Now we’re gonna add some flour and this is just one teaspoon of flour. Okay. One flour, we’re gonna add some dried basil. Certainly you can adjust the spices to your own liking. We will add some pepper. Stir this around, now your flour is going to absorb, the oil that’s in the bottom of that pan. And what else? Let’s see the pepper. Then we’re gonna add the milk, all at once. This is gonna make a kind of a sauce. Remember you thickened it, add that milk. We’re going to just cook one more, just a little bit longer for that to thicken up. Okay. This two really get hot and bubbly, when it starts to bubble you’ll know, you’re just about there, then you let it cook. See you have to cook once you add that flour, you let it cook so it doesn’t taste flowery or pasty like we’ve done before. You might need to turn that down just a little bit. Okay. Now we have a slightly beaten egg here. And the key is we want to add a little bit of that mixture to the eggs so we don’t want it to curdle. And then we’re gonna stir in some cheese. Now what I’m gonna do is just add a little bit of this to the eggs so that you can temper the egg to what you’re adding it to. Because if you don’t, you’ll have a fried egg here you see. So once you do that, then you can stir the egg into, does that looked good? Yes it does. Now the final preparation here is we’re going to stir in some Parmesan cheese. Okay. Looks good, doesn’t it? Now this is making your filling for your zucchinis. I think we’ve got it there. Now you take your baking dish. Clean up a little bit here, and spray it with pam so they don’t stick. And we’re gonna lay our zucchinis, into this baking dish. Okay. And we’re gonna begin to spoon, now I’ll suggest, you do this very carefully. Just begin to spoon the filling into the zucchinis. Okay, I would say that this would be something, I mean there’s no unusual taste in this, that your kids won’t like it. I think if they like zucchini or if they don’t like zucchini, it might be something you’d wanna try on them. I know that for a long time, people didn’t eat much zucchini but when it became so plentiful, then I love it, when we start figuring, hey this is a nice inexpensive dish, the ingredients aren’t expensive. Let’s try some creative ways of preparing this, that we would all enjoy. So here we are. That look good? Now we’re gonna bake these in the oven for just a short time. They only bake for about 25 minutes in a 350 degree oven. I’m gonna go ahead and put that in. That’s all there is to it, you got your cheese in there. We’ll let those go, okay. Now while that’s getting done, we wanna start over here with another recipe that a friend of mine from a station that airs ‘At Home’ as a daily program in the Manassas Virginia area, said to me, Arlene I’ve got this wonderful zucchini recipe. Would you like to do it on the program? I said, Bill send it to me. Bill Kilchenstein from down in W-T-K-K in Manassas, Virginia really a nice guy and he sent this recipe to me. First of all, we took two medium onions and we boiled them in a little water just for about five minutes until they got nice and soft. Okay, then it’s also has squash zucchini. It’s got some cheese in it. It’s got some tomatoes and it’s got some stuffing mix. And the principle in this particular dish is that you’re gonna layer everything in a casserole and it’s gonna cook up and marinade a lot of different flavors. So we start in layering we’re gonna put thin layer of onions in the bottom of our casserole dish that we have sprayed with pam. Let’s say put about half of these. Okay. And they don’t need to be, these are boiled now and they don’t need to be mushy. They need to have, see a little firm here, that’s what you wanna do, okay. The next layer then will be the squash. We’ll put some yellow squash. And again it’s just layering over the anions that are there. Okay. And then the next one will be the zucchini, a layer. And we’re talking thin layers here because that’s what Bill told me, he calls for, just thin layers of zucchini, onion, squash, zucchini. The next layer then will be the stove top stuffing. Now you don’t make it according to the package directions, you take the dry ingredients which I have here and the little herbs packet. And these you mix together. Excuse me, one minute lemme get a spoon. These you’re gonna mix together, don’t put any moisture to it. Don’t do it like it says on the package. But you’re gonna put about half of those, over top of the zucchini and the onions and the yellow squash. And then this is one can of stewed tomatoes. Again you’re gonna just spoon them out and put them over top. About half of the can. Okay. Now he said, just spread them out a little bit, which we have, put a little bit of juice. Cause that will go on last anyway. And then again, you start with the onions. You’re gonna layer this. This is gonna go in the oven and bake for awhile, for about 40 minutes or so, because he said, now he assured me and Bill, I’ve taken your word for it so I’m trusting you. He assured me that this is a very tasty. He said, oh Arlene, your viewers are gonna love this. They’re gonna really, really like this. You might have to push down a little bit to fit everything in, but you’re gonna do the layering twice, okay. Once and then twice, because the layering then we’ll all cook together and you’ll have a delicious taste. Next we put the zucchini, probably just need a couple zucchini. You could make this, if you want to make it for a crowd, it would not be hard to incorporate this recipe for a crowd because you can you know, you can see that it would just be more more ingredients and just keep layering layering. Then after that, we’re going to add again, our stuffing mix. And that goes on the top. I put it all on, why not, right? All right. Make it taste good. You might have to push down. Then we’re gonna do the tomatoes again across the top. You spoon these out. Might wanna crush the tomatoes down a little bit. I didn’t realize these were in such big pieces, but this is just plain stewed tomatoes not regular tomatoes. Now stewed tomatoes have different flavors in and a lot of spices and pepper and onion and stuff. So that would add to the flavor of this casserole too. After we have that done, and I think we do. Let’s see, make sure we have everything. Now we’re gonna, after we end with the tomato, however you, how big your casserole is or how many layers you want to do it, always end with the tomato. And then you’re gonna do the Parmesan cheese over the top. And Bill says, do this generously, so we’re gonna try it. You say it looks a little dry Arlene. That’s what I’m thinking too. But you know I think the zucchini and squash are gonna cook up and there’s a lot of moisture in those too. So I think this is gonna be fine. Now this goes into a 325 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Okay we’ll put that in our oven. See how our other zucchinis are doing. Oh, they’re looking great. Put that in right here beside it, all right. And we need that for about 30 minutes. Next we’re gonna make something, I told you this zucchini is so versatile. Dale, how many minutes do we have here so I can make sure I have enough time? Okay I think we do if not I will talk you through the rest of it. This is a dessert that you can do with zucchini. And first of all, you take about three fourths cup of butter and get my little spatula here. Three fourths cup of butter, and it needs to be at room temperature. We’re gonna make some zucchini bars. Everybody’s eating brownies and stuff. These are zucchini bars. Sure There’s sugar in them. there’s flour in them, but there’s zucchini instead of chocolate or chocolate chips. And this butter needs to be at room temperature so that it will blend well. Need to mix this, I’m gonna use my little trusty mixture here. This needs to be fluffy before you add your sugars to it. If this isn’t fluffy, they don’t incorporate as well. And doesn’t get as a fluffy or a high a bar. Okay when I would actually do a little bit more to make it more fluffy, but we’re in a time pinch, so we’re gonna add a half a cup of sugar. Sometimes I have to check and make sure that that’s what I think it is. And a half a cup of brown sugar. The girls had helped me with this, they do all the preparation. Sometimes I forget what that is. I think what does that look like there? But they’re great to work with, I appreciate every one of them. All right, so we have the brown sugar and the white sugar. This we need to blend really, really well. I feel like the butter may be could have been just a little, little bit more soft because when it’s softer, it blends faster. This will work, but it will take time. Once I have these blended very, very well. And for the sake of time again, I’m not gonna take the time to do it, but you know that they have to be very creamy when they’re well blended. I’m gonna go on with this because I wanna make sure that you get it all. Now, we’re going to add, this is some vanilla, we’re going to add a teaspoon of vanilla. And we’re going to beat that in. Now, we’re gonna get two eggs ready. And the eggs need to be beat in one at a time. Okay. So we’re gonna crack one. You know, sometimes they tell you just dump the two eggs and you can’t do that with this recipe. They want you to beat it, one at a time because it does beat air into it, which is good. All right, you can do this with a big mixing bowl, if you have that and you have to keep scraping the sides down, it’s important to do that. Okay and let’s do the second one. I think we just lost a little chunk of Brown sugar there, went flying out of the bowl. But, this is second one, it’s coming together now you can see that changes the texture. When you beat those eggs in it’s important because it beats air into it. Okay? Now we’re gonna stir in our flour. And that is one in three fourths cup of flour. And our baking powder. Now something has to be in here to cause these to raise. And that’s what the baking powder does. And this is one in a one half teaspoons of baking powder. And when I add like that, what I like to do is mix those two mix the flour and the baking powder together before I mix it in, so it evenly distributes it. Now with your trusty spatula you’re gonna stir this in. What I like to do too because I’ve told you before, if you’re gonna add raisins or anything, nuts to a butter, if you add it with the flour before you stirred it together, the nuts or raisins, zucchini won’t settle to the bottom. So I’m gonna go ahead and put my zucchini in now, that’s two cups of shredded zucchini. moist that is, this is wonderful. It’s one of God’s creations. One of the good things He put on the earth, He put all good things on earth, but one of the things that’s good for you, low calorie, tastes good and it’s so versatile. That’s what I appreciate about it. And we’re gonna add about a cup of coconut too. just add that to it. And about three fourths of a cup of chopped walnuts. Now this bakes for about 40 minutes, let’s mixed it all together. Clean up a little bit here, getting a little chunk of Brown sugar out of the way. And after it bakes, while it’s still warm, we’re gonna add some ingredients together to make, it’s called a frosting, but it’s really not a frosting. What it is really is a glaze and you’ll think this doesn’t look like a frosting and I’m gonna put that together for you, so you see what I’m talking about, but right now we need to mix this very well, and you think, boy that looks like too much zucchini, for that little bit of flour. Yeah and you think, oh my kids would never eat that, that’s got all that good stuff in there like zucchini and the things that they don’t like. But I’m gonna tell you, if you don’t tell them about the zucchini, they might see it in there, but they’re gonna like it because it’s a tasty bar. It’s a moist bar and it tastes good, freezes well. And this frosting that I’ve been telling you about that you put on the top of it, is flavored with cinnamon. So it really brings out a delicious taste to these bars and perks it up a little bit. No, there’s no onions in these bars, but there is a lot of good zucchini and walnuts and coconut, which adds another flavor. Did you know that if you want to make something with zucchini and you could come up with a recipe, you could take your regular banana bread recipe. the flour, the sugar keep all those ingredients the same, but where it calls for the bananas substitute that same amount of zucchini. You’ve got a wonderful zucchini bread, it’s very easy. All right, this looks very thick and it is, cause it’s supposed to be like that. We’re gonna spoon it out, clean the bowl. No chance leaving one bar in there for the dishwasher. Okay, we’ll clean that all out. And just spread, now you think maybe this wasn’t gonna fit, this is a jelly roll size pan by the way, important to use the correct size pans, when you do these things. Just spread it out, it’s kind of gummy gooey But it tastes so good when it’s baked, its delicious. Okay. Get it in the corners. Make sure that you well grease the pan too, cause that’s very important. Make sure it’s well greased, push it into the corners. If you have a high and low area, what will happen where it’s low, it will burn as its baking. Because this is gonna bake. Like I told you for about 40 minutes. And these bars are good to freeze. They’re excellent take on a picnic, because once the glaze gets on there, they’re ready to go and they don’t have to have any refrigeration or anything like that. So this goes into that oven. And when we come back, I’m gonna show you all about how to make that delicious glaze for our zucchini bars. Besides show you our casserole and our stuffed zucchini. We’ll be right back.
[Man] If you would like a free copy of the recipes from today’s program, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to ‘At Home’ CTV Wall, Pennsylvania, one five one four eight one four nine nine. Be sure to include the number of today’s recipe with your request.
Well, we have the zucchini bars already baked, and as I promised, I’m going to do the glaze that goes over it. This is one cup of powdered sugar. We add that, we add some vanilla. You just toss all this in at one time, there’s a couple of tablespoons, about two and a half tablespoons of milk, some melted butter or margarine. And the key ingredient that really sparks the flavor of the zucchini is that cinnamon. And really, like I told you, it’s called a frosting but it does not look like a frosting, it’s a glaze really. Because it doesn’t get thick like a frosting, and you need a little whip to be sure that you can whip out all of the, that you can blend them all together, all the little bits of cinnamon and dissolve the powdered sugar. And when it gets like that, while after you’ve baked your bars and you bring them out while they’re still warm, I’d let them cool about 15 minutes. Then you just pour this over the pan of bars and let it soak in and I want you to take a good look at the zucchini bars that we’ve prepared for you. This, I’ve dusted just a little bit of powdered sugar over the top, makes a wonderful moist cookie or a bar, whatever you want to call it, delicious and really good for your family. Next, we wanna go to our stuffed zucchini. Look how nice and brown that cheese makes the stuffing, the filling for the zucchini. And Bill Kilchenstein, everybody’s mouth is watering for this delicious casserole that you gave us the recipe for. We’re gonna taste that in just a little bit. I want to remind you if you want today’s recipes that’s recipe, number one five three self-addressed stamped envelope, please be sure to do that, because it’s important for you to send that self-addressed stamped envelope. And as I always say, be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here ‘At Home.’ See you then.
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