Zucchini Parmesan

Alright folks, this is a doozy. Remember my attempts to eat a vegetable the other week? This is like that but very different. Instead of celebrating the healthy and fresh attributes of zucchini, I breaded it, fried it, and then surrounded it with cheese. While insanely rich and coma-inducing, this dish features an edible plant and that’s what matters??

Besides being decadent, this recipe takes a while to make. A long time. Long enough that the sun set halfway through cooking and I was forced to take photos on my unattractive counter top. Sorry! Zucchini parmesan itself isn’t particularly photogenic either, but as my roommate said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder specifically when it comes to cheesy fried food. I recommend making this with a friend because it’s a fair amount of work, and also eating it with a friend instead of entirely by yourself everyday for a week.

Ingredients:

• 4 zucchinis
• 1 cup flour
• 2 eggs
• 8 oz Panko bread crumbs
• Red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• Red pepper flakes
• 15 oz ricotta cheese
• 8 oz mozzarella cheese
• 25 oz tomato sauce
• Olive oil

Zucchini: known to my grocery store’s self-checkout as Green Squash. They have a particularly cool texture and are my favorite thing to slice. Isn’t that interesting?

Slice the zucchinis into about 1/4 inch thick rounds. Enjoy the smooth up and down motion as your knife glides through the zucc.

Prepare a breading station. The zucchinis need to be coated in flour, dredged in eggs, and then covered in a mixture of breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and red pepper flakes.

It is suggested to always keep one hand dry and the other wet while breading. This is good advice, but realistically your hands will start to accumulate layers of egg and crumbs and you will have to wash them eventually. I washed my hands more times while making this dish than I have in the past week! Just kidding.

I only could bread about 10 slices at a time, which is why it took so dang long.

Make sure the slices are totally crumbed.

Fry the chinis in oil for about 5 minutes on each side, until they are golden brown.

Set them on paper towel to soak up the extra oil.

Putting together the zucchini parmesan is an abstract art of sorts. I layered sauce, zucchini, and ricotta cheese haphazardly. No matter how you layer it, it’s going to be good.

Just keep going until you reach the top of the pan or your ingredients run out. Whichever happens first.

I topped the whole zucchini parmesan with sauce and mozzarella cheese and then baked it for 30 minutes.

Oof, delicious but deadly.

In the beautiful light of day, the top of this refrigerated zucc parm looks a bit like marshmallows.

Enjoy!