Zucchini Squares
Photo by James Culcasi
Have you ever played that ‘game’ where you come up with a limited list of foods you couldn’t do without if you were stranded on a desert island? This list has always been limited to three items when I’ve ‘played’, and I tend to change its configuration slightly, but one thing always remains the same - eggs. I really love eggs. I think I always have. As an infant, I was fed soft boiled eggs by my soft-egg-averse mother. She talks about needing to resist the urge to vomit as she fed them to me. My mother really does exist on the other side of the egg spectrum, because when she was a child my grandmother used to say that she had to fry eggs for my mom until they were ‘hard as the devil’s forehead’. To this day if she dares to order eggs at a restaurant, the order comes with the caveat that the eggs need to be fried ‘hard, hard, hard’. This is even funnier when you consider that both my grandmother and my mother spoke/speak with a pretty pronounced Boston accent - hahd, hahd, hahd as the divil’s faw’hed!
For a long time I’ve wanted to raise chickens, both because of my delight in their personalities (it turns out there are 5 distinct chicken personality types - who knew?) and the easy access to eggs. Thom wants chickens too, but I’m starting to think they may be too much work for me. Rob and I have lovely neighbors who have 4 or 5 chickens - all named after Disney princesses by their young daughter. They have an impressive set-up to keep the chickens happy and healthy, including Fort Knox level protection from predators. It seems some of the predators are crafty though, because a while back when my neighbor and her daughter were kindly delivering fresh eggs, I was informed - in an effort to keep the little one from constant fear of chicken predation - that one of the chickens became ill and died from F-O-X. I’m not sure I could handle the aftermath of F-O-X getting the better of one of my Disney princesses. We haven’t received eggs in a while, and I’ve recently learned that since the girls are getting up in chicken years they don’t tend to lay many eggs. I’m sure this phrase has been coined already by someone more clever than I, but Thom and I giggled for a while over the thought of henopause. Listen, I’m right there with them, so here’s to old hens! Now is the time in life to be valued for our (5) personalities instead of our eggs.
It will come as no surprise that I own many egg-centric cookbooks. I’ve read Michael Ruhlman’s Egg cover to cover like the most captivating work of fiction. The pull-out egg flowchart alone is worth the cost of purchasing the book. Teri Lyn Fisher and Jenny Park have written a perfect book called, The Perfect Egg. It’s a gorgeous cookbook that incorporates egg recipes from around the world and organizes them by time of day they might likely be eaten. Chicken and Egg, by Janice Cole, is a combination of recipes and stories from her own exploits in raising chickens, and (spoiler alert) in the end I was devastated to learn of her experience with a chicken’s demise that reinforces my hesitance to have chickens of my own. I just can’t shake the vision of me and my chickens all pecking around in henopause waiting for D-E-A-T-H.
Eggs have gotten a bad rap in the past, but it turns out that they are quite good for us and might even be considered a super food. All I know for certain is that they are delicious, economical, and more versatile than any other food I can think of.
I could write about hundreds of recipes that revolve around eggs, and perhaps I eventually will, but since Thom and I like to focus on food as it relates to memory, the recipe I will start with is one for Zucchini Squares. My Nana (the above mentioned grandmother) made Zucchini Squares for us for years. I don’t know where the recipe came from, but I assume she either clipped it from the newspaper as we did before the internet, or got it from the back of the box of Bisquick she used to make them. Regardless, they routinely appeared, and I’ve been known to eat half a pan and so has Thom. I always assumed that my Nana was the only one who made these savory squares, but a quick internet search will show that most everyone who has a food blog also has a grandmother who made them. And while that may be true, I’m sure my Nana’s were better.
These days, I am not a great fan of Bisquick. There is something about it that tastes like the box it came in. Maybe I’ve just become a snob, or maybe I’d rather eliminate the shortcut and make things more difficult for myself. Either way, it’s very easy to substitute ingredients you likely already have in your kitchen for Bisquick - or you can just use Bisquick. I’ve made some changes to the amounts of individual ingredients in the original recipe, the size of the pan, and I’ve also added some new things, but I’m sure my Nana would approve.
Ingredients:
3 cups sliced zucchini
¾ cup Bisquick alternative (recipe below)*
½ cup chopped onion
½ tsp dried oregano
¼ tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
2 cloves of garlic, chopped (or to taste)
2 tbls chopped fresh parsley
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
¼ cup freshly grated romano cheese
¼ cup olive oil (any other vegetable oil will work)
5 eggs, lightly whisked
¼ cup toasted pine nuts
Paprika
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 x 8 inch pan. Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and pour into prepared pan. Sprinkle with paprika to taste (I prefer a light sprinkle). Bake for 30-35 minutes. I tend to leave them in for about 33 minutes because then the eggs are a bit tighter - my mother would leave them in for the whole 35 (or maybe longer!). Cool on a wire rack and slice into 16 squares. They are great warm, at room temperature, or cold.
*There are as many ways to make a Bisquick alternative as there are grandmothers who made Zucchini Squares, but I like to have extra on hand to keep in the refrigerator, so here is the recipe I use:
3 cups flour
1 ½ tbsp baking powder
½ tbsp salt
8 tbls butter, cold and cubed
Combine all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until just combined. You do not want to pulse enough for the butter and flour to start to combine into something that starts to look like dough.
