Yesterday, Jane and I were extremely excited (and nervous) to release our first cooking video! If you haven’t seen it, you can watch it here (Greek Pumpkin Pie), it’s above the recipe at the bottom.
We’d been discussing making videos for some time. We’d shot a few, with us in front of the camera, but we were not happy with them. Not having good equipment, our voices sounded bad, like we were too far away. We bought one of those mic clips, but syncing up the audio was hard, and we still thought it didn’t sound too good.
With all that, we decided to scrap the idea. We continued cooking, and working on the blog. However, we just could not escape the desire to make a video. We tried a few other ways, and came up with the format we presented yesterday.
Short, sweet, and to the point. When we’re in the kitchen, we want things delivered quickly, we want a video to present itself in the simplest form with directions, so we went that route. We kept it to 3 minutes, showed shots of each step, and paired it with music.
We were so excited by the reception! People, you, our readers, actually liked it! We were so pleased, that you’ll be seeing more as we go. We’d like to have one for every recipe, but if we did that, it might slow us down in terms of releasing new stuff. We’ll have to see. We also want to go back and create videos for our popular dishes.
Rest assure that now, you’ll be seeing more cooking videos from us. And in time, if we can figure it out, we’ll do some with us talking.
Alright, now let’s turn our attention to a new Greek meze (appetizer) recipe: κoλοκυθάκια τηγανητά (Kolokythakia Tiganita) Sliced Zucchini Fried In Batter.
Both Jane and I eat a lot of zucchini (also known as courgettes). I know that zucchini season is predominantly during the summer, but we eat them all year around. We’ve stuffed them, we’ve diced them and made Kolokythokeftedes, and we’ve added them to our Rhodes Quiche, Sfougato.
However, we’d never made them this way. Sure, we’ve enjoyed them like this in Greece, but never has it come out of our kitchen.
One of the ingredients that might throw you a bit in this recipe is the use of club soda (soda water outside the USA I believe). I learned about this a few years ago while ordering fish and chips at a nice place in Los Angeles. The batter was very light and airy. I asked the server how they achieved this. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back out, “they make the batter with club soda.”
Since then, we try to incorporate it when we make fish and chips. However, with this recipe, we decided to use it for the perfect light batter to encompass the zucchini.
The recipe is overall very easy to make. Moreover, I encourage you to add in or alter the herbs to ones you like. Add everything into a bowl, mix, coat the zucchini, and off you go.
Serve them hot, and enjoy the crispy exterior and soft zucchini center. It’s got to be healthy right? Zucchini cancels everything out…right? 🙂
Kali Orexi!
- 1 zucchini
- ½ cup flour
- 1 teaspoon garlic salt
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- ½ teaspoon thyme
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Dash of pepper
- 8 oz club soda
- ¼ cup olive oil for frying + more if needed
- Wash zucchini and cut off ends. Cut in half. Cut each piece in half length wise, lay flat side surface down, slice length wise into strips, set aside.
- In a large bowl, combine: flour, garlic salt, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper, mix.
- Add club soda to bowl, mix well until batter is formed.
- Add sliced zucchini, mix to coat pieces.
- Add oil to pan, and heat over medium-high heat.
- Once pan is hot, using a fork, remove zucchini from the batter, and place in pan.
- Fry for 5 minutes on each side, making sure each side is golden brown.
- Remove and place on paper towel to absorb excess oil.
- Repeat until all zucchini pieces are cooked.
- Once done, put on plate, and serve!
I make this recipe using beer in the batter this makes the batter lite also. I also add butter and garlic to my oil it helps the oil from burning. I have a lot of Greek recipes but I don’t know how to share them.