This zucchini is hiding behind a bag of beans and kale, waiting to surprise one of my coworkers

I have my coolest friend, Ms. W, to thank for the title of this post, which also describes one of my activities this week. Even though I pledged to pick all my zucchinis when they were small and tender, I am still ending up with lots of extras.  I’ve been leaving zucchinis on the desks of my coworkers and hiding them at the bottom of the bags of beans and kale that I’ve given my neighbors.

You don’t need to be a handwriting analyst to tell that the zucchini numbers are bringing me down.

Yep, the zucchini count is not up to nineteen and there are still about six more on the way.  HOWEVER, I made a fabulous zucchini recipe for lunch today which may inspire me to let the next few grow a little larger. The recipe was from page 118 from “The Kitchen Garden Cookbook” by Caroline Bretherton (ISBN 978-0-7566-7188-4).

ZUCCHINI FRITTERS WITH DILL TZATZIKI (Apparently serves 4 regular people. I doubled the recipe and still there was barely enough for three of us)

Sprinkle 200 g of coursely grated zucchini with 1 tsp of salt and drain in a sieve for one hour. Rinse and squeeze dry in a clean tea towel.

In a bowl, whisk 1/2 cup ricotta cheese, one egg and 2TB flour.  Add 2 crushed garlic cloves, a small handful each of chopped basil and chopped flat-leaf parsley. Mix with zucchini.

Drop tablespoons of the batter into hot olive oil (1/4 inch deep). Fry for about 3 minutes on each side until golden brown. Drain on paper towels briefly before serving.

To make the tzatziki, mix one crushed clove garlic with 2 Tbsp dill and some salt and pepper and the juice of one lime with 1 cup greek yoghurt. Since I had regular yoghurt, I drained it for about half an hour in a colander to make it thicker.

Note: this is probably the first time that I have made a recipe that has resembled the picture in the book exactly.  I am going to make this several more times this summer.