Its raining zucchini… actually its more like flooding…or maybe its time for pizza?

Zucchini season is in full swing. When I was looking up new zucchini recipes last week, I found that August 8 is actually ‘National Leave Zucchini on Your Neighbours’s Porch Day’  The idea was that you snuck over to your neighbour’s place and stealthily placed zucchini on their porch… this if your neighbour has a porch of course… or doesn’t have a gate… or a dog…. or ?     I think that concept is more figuratively than literal, but I did have a good chuckle as I pictured myself dressed all in black, at night…. sneaking around with baseball bat sized zucchini….
What I did find was some great websites for recipes.  One gal had 20 ways to use zucchini.  In amongst all of them I found a few that really caught my eye. This one seems to be the winner.  I put up a brief description on FB already but thought I had better follow with a blog.

And the winner is zucchini pizza!  It’s really simple and works tremendously on the hot days as it’s all on the grill.  Most people have not picked zucchini at its prime when its nice and slender, so once it gets to about 3 inch diameter, its perfect for this.  Any larger and the centre gets a little too weak.
Get the grill hot and oil it for non-sticking purposes. Slice the zucchini on the round, about 3/4 inch thick. Grill for 8 minutes with the lid closed.  Remove the slices to a pan, grilled side up, and bring to where the rest of your ingredients are.  I found it easier to just bring back into the kitchen to assemble instead of bringing all the ingredients to the grill.

I started with pizza sauce, then added diced ham and pineapple tidbits.On this occasion I made 12, so I did 6 for Don and 6 for me. For his I used goat mozzarella.  For mine just regular.

In the picture, the top cheese is the regular, cow’s mozza, and the lower stuff is the goat mozza.  You can see that the regular one is more yellow… it’s because of the fat content….its higher.  I have made mozzarella from scratch… (see one of my earlier posts) and the full fat mozza comes out far more yellow.

I had some left over bacon bits and chives from last night’s baked potatoes, so I decided to add them to the tropical theme.
Now they went back on the grill for another 8 minutes.  I did them over low heat but had the other 2 burners on high.  The grill then operated like an oven and the cheese got nice a browned up.

And then they were ready to eat.  Bon appetit.

 

Mozzarella in the Making

For years I have wanted to make mozzarella cheese.  I read an article years ago about how easy it was to do.  I saved a number of recipes over the years and then I went to cooking school in New York and we made mozzarella and I was hooked.

At cooking school we had the curds on hand.  Once you have curds, its very easy.  Around here in BC,  raw milk is illegal…  I know, they take all the goodness out of a product and then feed it to us.  So worried they are for our overall health.

So I had to get some curds.  I searched around a bit and found cheddar curds but didn’t have a whole lot of success in finding curds to make Mozza.  So I went online and found a cheesemaking supply place in Washington state.  I know, I should be supporting a cheesemaking supply place in Canada… but I still had the problem with finding raw milk AND Washington state had raw milk for sale because … well maybe, just maybe… someone is still concerned about the health of the populus of Washington.  All you need is citric acid, rennet, raw milk, a big pot and a thermometer.

There are lots of online pictures and videos for making mozzarella.  I am not going to add yet one more site in which you can peruse.  I used 2 and sort of combined the approaches: http://www.cheesemaking.com/howtomakemozzarellacheese.html  and http://www.alineaphile.com/archives/72-Mozzarella-Curd.html.   The latter one had a better description of the various steps… just not enough about the quantities.  The former had quantities.  I like the idea of letting it rest for 4 hours in the latter recipe also.

For my initial experiment I used jersey milk from Jackie’s Jerseys.  Jersey milk is known for its healthful properties and also for its high milk fat content. The first run turned out well… the curdling in the first step was a bit slow.  I added more rennet as a result and that seemed to work.

For the second trial, I used predominantly Holstein milk.  Far whiter in colour.  Jersey milk is very yellow.  In order to make cheese, you need to get the acid content up… hence the addition of citric acid and rennet.  Too much acid is also not that good.  A little too much acid this time… last time not enough.  This mean that during the rennet sitting and cutting time there were no chunks, the whole glob was rather separated like VERY curdled milk.  But the end result was good.  I hung the curds a little longer (was outside trying to sort out my summertime above-ground swimming pool)(yes… summer may just finally be here!). This batch was softer, more like the curds we used at school.  The end result was also a softer, milder cheese.  I do have to sort out how to get it saltier.  I made a caprese salad and just added salt.  It was delicious.  Served it at the BBQ we hosted last night.  It looks like I will now be holding a mozzarella making pool party…..Not even at my house but at a neighbours.  Could be interesting…. at least the hard part is at the beginning.  Pool party + wine could mean that after the hanging stage… the last ‘dipping’ procedure could take on a life of its own 😉   Will keep you posted.