Do you know that too. In the spring, you plant 3 small zucchini plants, nurse them, defend them bravely against the creepy snails – and when they grow up, they thank you with a plethora of zucchini that you can barely master. Hence here are my two tried and tested processing tips: 1. Harvest the courgettes if possible at a length of 10 – 20 cm, then they taste incredibly tender and fit raw, cut into fine slices, in each salad. 2. Once a “Monster Zucchini” is in your vegetable patch, make the very best Zucchini Fritters out of it. Whether with quark dip or wrapped in a wrap – they always make a good figure ?.
ZUCCHINI FRITTERS
Zutaten
- 1800 g of zucchini cores removed
- 1300 g of flour potatoes Agria, Bintje
- 200 g of feta cheese
- 220 g mountain cheese
- 3 onions finely chopped
- 2 eggs
- 1 bunch of parsley
- 10 stems of thyme
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 1 tbsp coriander
- 2 tbsp salt
- Pepper
- 1 tsp grated nutmeg
- some rape oil
- Panco
Zubereitung
- Wash the potatoes, peel and cook for 35 minutes at 100°C in a steamer. Let cool down.
- Wash, halve and core the zucchini. Quarter the halves and then grate roughly with a kitchen grater or food processor.
- Place the coarsely grated zucchini in a cotton cloth and squeeze the juice well (the mass now weighs only about half of the starting material: 900 g).
- Crumble sheep’s cheese with a fork. Rub the cheese roughly with a grater.
- Roast 1 tbsp cumin and 1 tbsp cilantro in a pan without oil until the spices begin to smell. Then finely grind the spices in a mortar.
- Finely chop the onions and fry in a pan with a little rape oil.
- Grate the steamed potatoes roughly with a grater.
- Finely chop the parsley and thyme.
- Mix all ingredients together.
- Add 2 tablespoons salt, pepper, 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg, the ground cumin and cilantro to the mixture and mix.
- Allow mass to cool for 1 hour.
- Then form the patties (80 g/patty) from the mixture and coat with panko.
- Preheat the grill to 200°C and fry on the well-oiled Plancha plate for 10 minutes with the lid closed, then turn and sauté for another 5 minutes on the other side.
Notes
Tip: If the mass is too moist when forming the patties, simply mix Panko under it until the patties are easy to process.
Interesting facts for the Zucchini harvest in the small garden
Basically, if the zucchini dish tastes bitter, it must not be consumed and must be disposed of immediately. Because then it contains dangerous bitter substances, so-called cucurbitacine. They are very toxic and can also cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea in small amounts, up to life-threatening intestinal damage.
How can I test if my Zucchini is toxic?
Quite simply: Take a small sample at the zucchini tip, where the cucurbitacine content is greatest, take and spit out the sample immediately in case of bitterness. Important to know: The toxic bitter substances, the cucurbitacine, are not destroyed by cooking and attack the gastric and intestinal mucosa after consumption.
Zucchini from the supermarket can be eaten without hesitation, the poisonous bitter substances were removed in the varieties.
So why can Zucchini from your own garden be toxic?
For one thing, experts have discovered that the dangerous cucurbitacine are increasingly found in zucchini when grown with their own seeds from the previous season. Always use fresh Zucchini seeds from the garden center.
The second danger is from ornamental pumpkins. If they grow next to a zucchini, they can provide backcrossings at the zucchini (which are also pumpkin plants), the cucurbitacine then return to the plants.
Finally, high temperatures put the vegetables under stress, which can boost poison production.
Therefore, with bitter taste of pumpkin plants, such as zucchini, pumpkin or cucumber, dispose of them immediately!