Calabacín Bravas
The excess zucchini coming from the garden allowed for some experimentation today. So, I broke out the tools, fired up the dehydrator, pored over scribblings in the notebook and got to work...
Sometimes, in experimentation, you even get accidental "art" ;)
The zucchini was big enough to use the melon baller instead of the smaller parisian scoops. Plus, I wanted to begin from a larger starting size in case of shrinkage in the dehydrator.
The zucchini balls were first rolled around with a mixture of 1 tbs. olive oil, 1 clove of garlic, one small red pepper, 1 tsp. nama shoyu, 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar, black pepper and 1 tsp. thyme all pounded together with a mortar and pestle. Then they were placed in the dehydrator for two hours at 105F, checking on them every 20 minutes or so, but they didn't shrink nearly as much as I had guessed.
The red bell pepper sauce was one small red bell pepper, 1 tbs. olive oil, 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp. nama shoyu, a clove of garlic and black pepper pureed together with an immersion blender (as the volume was too small to use the Vita-Mix).
Next time, I might want to roll the zucchini in the sauce and dehydrate for an additional hour to see if that changes the texture. As it was, they were very flavorful on their own, but really came together with the pepper sauce. A worthy addition to a raw tapas meal...
All in all, a tasty experiment, that we'll have to try again, playing around with the the sauce, marinating & dehydrating times.
p.s. yeah, I totally made the name up ;)
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