Cooking shmooking

Well, I tried. To be a French chef, that is. Next time might be better, but this time didn’t really work out.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but Mom is a proud member of the Lacoste Public Library. She has to work long distance a few hours every week (but we are thankful that her bosses let her of for seven weeks!) and so goes down and uses the tourist information office/library/post office’s one free computer and internet to check her email and get some work done. Every now and then someone will come in a want to get on while she is working, so as she was reading through a few of the books to pass the time she thought she’d check some out! She brought home a nice cookbook with awesome photos, and I had decided to try and make one of the zucchini recipes.

First hurdle: the whole book is in French.
Second hurdle: they don’t use cup measurements over here, everything is in grams and we couldn’t find a scale in the kitchen (and the bathroom scale only does kilograms, not that I was going to set my flour on it in the first place!).
Third hurdle: No electric beater. I tried to beat the egg whites by hand, and that didn’t work out. We then tried the immersion blender… yeah, that is NOT what it’s meant for.

Let’s just say that instead of coming out with chopped zucchini nicely coated in a fluffy fried batter I made weird pancakes with bits of zucchini in them. They didn’t taste bad, it just wasn’t right. I needed more zucchini (I didn’t measure them at all, just used what we had) and less batter, and I’m guessing that beating the egg whites till they were “snowy firm” might have been important.

Oh well.

I know you are all just dying to know the recipe, but Mom had to return the book and I didn’t write it down. But it wasn’t complicated, so here’s how I remember it (one of the reasons I wanted to try it was because they kept letting everything sit, and I wanted to know if it made a difference).

2 eggs
250 g flour
50 cl milk
2 tbs olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

1 kg zucchini
4 tbs olive oil

Separate the egg whites and set aside. Mix together the egg yolks, flour, milk, olive oil, and salt and pepper till smooth. Let set for 2 hours.

Chop the zucchini and put the olive oil in a skillet. Cook the zucchini in the olive oil over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring delicately every now and then. Empty the skillet into a colander or strainer and let drain for 1 hour.

Beat the egg whites till they are “snowy firm” and add to the flour mixture. Gently stir in the zucchini. Heat skillet with more olive oil. Drop batter by spoonfuls into the skillet, cooking for 2-3 minutes on each side. Serve hot.