So zucchini has been a prominent feature in the last two week’s CSA boxes and I’ve been having trouble using it up. The classic answer to “what do I do with so much zucchini” is make zucchini bread. However, there were two reason this wouldn’t work for me.
- I needed vegetables to go with my meals this week
- My freezer is nearly full and I don’t have room for loaves of zucchini bread!
So I started thinking about what I might use the zucchini for. Typically I grill it or saute it. But I’ve done both those things in the last week. I wanted to so something different. I came up with a few ideas
- Make moussaka but with zucchini instead of eggplant
- Make a zucchini casserole similar to eggplant Parmesan
- Make zucchini lasagna
I ended up doing option two. I used some frozen tomatoes from the CSA box, some basil and oregano from my garden, onions, garlic, and some tomato paste to make a nice fresh tomato sauce. Then I sliced the zucchini lengthwise into thin slices and layered tomato sauce, zucchini, breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese until all the zucchini was used up. Baked for 60 minutes.
The final result was quite tasty. Only downside was not pre-cooking the zucchini meant there was an extraordinary amount of liquid in the pan. 🙁 I’m sure the left overs will be superior as they removed from the pan and are less liquidy. Next time I’ll precook the zucchini.