Double Take: Zucchini, Ham, Basil, and Ricotta Fritters

Zucchini, Ham, Basil, and Ricotta Fritter

Wow. Tabitha and I got to cook together again! Yippee. Bender and I are settled in Winston-Salem and starting back to work and “normal life.” Tabitha and I busted out two items, and we'll be showcasing one of them today: Zucchini, Ham, Basil, and Ricotta Fritters.

The original recipe called for slicing the zucchini into long, thin strips. We opted for a medium dice. If you prefer your zucchini to disappear a bit more, go ahead and shred it. Your cheese grater will thank you for the use. 

Double Take: Ham-and-Cheese Omelets

I picked out this recipe for one simple reason: I wanted something other than bacon and eggs for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Apparently, I was more than willing to replace bacon and eggs with ham and eggs.

I went to gather the ingredients. After looking through the list, I knew locating havarti cheese might be problematic. That is one is difficult to find around here, and I’ve never seen it in block form. However, we do have butter cheese here and the cookbook described havarti as buttery, so I decided that would be a simple sub. But when I got to the store, I actually found havarti. I was so excited to find it that I didn’t look at the package closely or check the expiration date. Oops.

I set out my ingredients the next morning. Our plans for canoeing that day had been cancelled because the river was so high, so we opted to go visit the castles we would have looked at from the river instead. It was raining when we got moving that morning, so it looked like we wouldn’t even get to go hiking either. I gathered my ingredients that morning and decided first things first: grate the cheese. The swiss grated, I turned to the havarti. I opened the package and was hit with a foul smell. I closely inspected the cheese: it was slimy. Into the trash went the havarti. Swiss only it was.

Double Take: The Grinder

A couple weeks ago, Tabitha from Double the Garlic and I were discussing fig cake. A friend of hers was cooking through a cookbook with her mom and brought a fig cake (recipe from the aforementioned book of course) to Tabitha's bookclub. The cake interested me, but cooking through a cookbook with someone else is what really peaked my attention. Tabitha and I cooked dinner together most Thursday nights for well over a year. We've both been missing that since I moved away, so we decided we should cook through a cookbook together.

We made a LOT of Asian food and other non-traditional foods since my picky eater wasn't around those nights (he had to teach, which actually is how we started cooking together in the first place... I had the house to myself and could experiment with foods I liked, and, as it turned out, so did Tabitha). However, my picky eater is around now, so we had to chose a cookbook that would satisfy him too. Amazingly, it only took us about a week to pick one out!  And the winner is...


The All-New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook!

This cookbook had a nice mix of southern classics and other random food styles thrown in for good measure. My copy arrived last Thursday, and I spent the evening thumbing through it while Hubby and I watched Frasier (we finished the series Friday and promptly put in season 1 episode 1). I even got Hubby to look at the book (which he describes as a textbook... it does have over 1250 recipes) and he picked out several recipes and even asked me to make one for lunch on Saturday. I was thrilled that he was interested, but a bit worried since Tabitha and I had not laid out any rules yet. We knew we wanted to cook the same recipe around the same time and blog about it, but that's where our planning had ended. So I made Hubby tell Tabitha that we'd be making a dish from the book before her copy even arrived.

It did, however, work out just fine. Tabitha's copy arrived Saturday and she was able to make the sandwich Monday night for dinner. We threw together a few rules (no subsitutions if at all possible, post Thursdays after making the recipe at 12pm EST). So now the unveiling of our first intercontinental cooking event!

The Grinder is a warm sandwich (which means that I like it), but comes together quite quickly (which means Hubby likes it). As far as the recipes goes, the cooking time seemed a bit too long, the prep time listed a bit short, but overall it was a tasty sandwich! I'm not a fan of bell peppers, but I cooked them long enough such that they didn't bother me. The recipe asks you to put the olive oil (used to cook the garlic and peppers) on top of the bell peppers, but it seems the sandwich would be less messy if you placed it on the top piece of the bread instead. I also used fresh mozzarella, which was a bit too moist for the sandwich and made the lower layer a bit soggy. Hubby wanted a bit more spice, but with a few tweaks the sandwich will be great! Oh, the recipe does call for green peppers, but our grocer was out so I substituted red (with the blessing of the cookbook of course). Since the recipe is not available online, I won't be posting it, but you can find it in the All-New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook.  Enjoy!

VERDICT:
Make Again: 2 votes! :)
Never Again: 0 votes

For more pictures and a third opinion, head on over to Double the Garlic and see what Tabitha has to say about The Grinder!