Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Grand Prize Zucchini Skillet Recipe

Simple, tasty, and a great use for summer garden produce--this one's a repeater.

It's a recipe I've had in my "possibilities" binder for years, and I should have made it years ago! It tasted much better than I thought it would given the ingredients. It must be the freshness of the vegetables--and the marvels of highly salty soy sauce and garlic powder, probably. It came out of a cookbook that focused on lentil recipes and I love the recipe title. (Unfortunately I cannot find the original source. Nor did I think to take a picture. Sorry!)

Alex actually did most of the cooking on this one which gives you an indication of its simplicity.

Grand Prize Zucchini Skillet
45-60 minutes total
5 servings

1 cup dried lentils, rinsed
2 cups water
1 onion, chopped
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
2 medium zucchini, sliced
2 medium tomatoes, sliced
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 medium onion, sliced (opt.)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Cook the lentils in the water (covered) for 30 minutes. Drain.
2. Saute the chopped onion in the oil in a large skillet.
3. Add the cooked lentils and the zucchini to the skillet and saute for 5 minutes.
4. Add the tomatoes and sprinkle on 2/3 cup of cheese.
5. Arrange the onion slices on top of the cheese (this onion is optional) and sprinkle with the remaining 1/3 cup of cheese.
6. Sprinkle the seasonings over the vegetables. Steam, covered, until the tomatoes are tender.

Nutritional info per serving: 222 calories, 13g protein, 21g carbs, 10g fat, 24g chol, 170mg sodium, 6g fiber

Ingredient notes: We did not use the sliced onion since we don't care for raw or almost raw onions. The amount of vegetables is flexible as well-we used what we had that day. For soy sauce, we use Pearl River Soy Sauce from the Asian food store--our Mongolian renter bought it last year and we love it.