Sometimes I come across recipes I follow almost verbatim, and want to share my experiences with them. Sometimes I play around with them, and decide that playing around is not great. That’s what happened with this recipe for oven-fried zucchini. We happened to have some egg whites I wanted to use up, as well as some zucchini. Unfortunately, I was in a bit of a rush making it, because I was also trying to keep the Fudgelet entertained. Unfortunately, the days of wearing him in my baby carrier for cooking don’t always work. He wants to be on the move and looking at everything, so I either have to cook while he’s napping, or find him a good spot to play.
Anyway, I was running a bit low on panko breadcrumbs, and that was also part of my problem. I decided to try a few ways of coating the “fries”, just to see what would happen. Well, the best luck I had was by following the original recipe:
Cutting up the zucchini…
Coating with the flour, then egg whites, then panko mixture…
Baking…
The one thing I would change for the recipe is baking them even longer. I actually baked them for double what the recipe called for, and found them still better when we had them as leftovers because I baked them again, which helped them get extra crunchy. So, sometimes my shortcuts and changes don’t work, but sometimes I come up with good ideas (like baking them longer for extra crunchiness). To be honest, even leaving off the extra coating and baking them longer was okay. But, the egg white idea did work really well. I want to try it again, especially during the summer when zucchini are so cheap and plentiful!
