The great zucchini

Revisiting Roger Ebert’s “How to Read a Movie,” I was struck by this line: “One of the reasons I started teaching was to teach myself.” Well, that was exactly why I started this blog! The more I write about food, the more I realize how much there is to learn.

“If you want to know,” a friend likes to say, “ask.” So I asked Google. About zucchini. It’s the kind of produce we rarely see in these parts, being suited to much cooler climes. Jenny thought they were cucumber. Botanically a fruit, zucchini belongs to the squash/pumpkin family. In a culinary context, however, it is considered a vegetable.

Zucchini is one versatile ingredient. It can be eaten raw, fried (see above), braised, grilled, stewed, made into soup, and baked. Baked into a cake, too. Like so:

Looks like regular chocolate cake, right? Well, it contains at least a whole zucchini (the cake them slices came from, that is). Which leads me to ask: is it a chocolate zucchini cake, or zucchini chocolate cake? I’m inclined to the former. One friend noted that it tasted like fruit cake, but I believe that’s because I added orange zest to the batter (it wasn’t in the recipe). Okay — some pine nuts, too. Otherwise it was light, fluffy, and moist, just so. It did get even better after a day or two. Then I took the half left over, slathered it with ganache, and presented that to a special lady on her birthday. It was suitably over-the-top for the occasion, but believe me, plain is just fine, not to mention healthier.

If you are interested in making this cake. Metro Hyper (Maasin) should still have zucchini in stock. Choose those that are smaller, firmer, and blemish-free. At nearly 10 inches long, the ones in the picture up top were actually less than ideal, with prominent seeds (around 6 to 8 inches is best). As long as you clean them well, don’t bother to peel zucchini: most of its nutrients are concentrated in its skin; the flesh is mostly water, thus that moist cake. Because of its mild taste, zucchini cake does not call attention to its central ingredient — unlike carrot or banana, say. Should you volunteer that bit of information, or wait for someone’s query? Because chances are, everyone will just assume you’re some kind of whiz at baking.