Cook Along: Volume Three - Zucchini Orzo

Since the first two Cook Alongs were main dishes, we decided for this one that we should do a side dish.  At first, we were going to do potatoes, but do you know how hard it is to find a non-salad, non-baked potato dish that doesn’t take an hour to make?  Anyway, we quickly changed it and decided to try our hand at Zucchini Orzo from AllRecipes.com (which, by the way, is an all-around awesome website…you should really check it out).

And now, on to the reviews!

Take One:

We eat a lot of zucchini and yellow squash in our house, but always cooked the same way, sauted with garlic in a pan, so I was psyched about doing something new.  I almost always have zucchini and squash in the house, so the only thing I had to buy was the pasta.  This recipe was super easy, just saute the veggies, stir in cooked pasta, add lemon juice and bingo, bango, boingo - dinner.   I kind of (blatantly) broke the rules because I couldn't stop my self from adding a sprinkle of parmesan cheese on top as I served it, but I say that parmesan was a garnish, so it doesn't count.  (That caviar is a GARNISH!  Quick, name that movie!).    This came together really easily, and the reviews were positive.  Andrew liked it and Max was stuffing into his mouth by the handful, so I assume he liked it.  It was a nice summery side dish, and I'll definitely be making it again.  The only thing I would change is that I would chop up some garlic to add in when I cooked the onions, and I would use less pasta and more zucchini and squash.  Also, how delicious would this be for fall with some butternut squash in place of the zucchini, et al, and some nutmeg/allspice/cinnamon?  Yummmmmmmm.


This time I served it with a mustard and herb marinated round steak, which did not come out as well as I would have liked, but I think it would be fantastic with a parmesan crusted chicken breast, so that might be my next try.  This one gets two thumbs up all around and you should defnitely try it.  The only advice I have is be careful straining the orzo, a bunch of mine slid right through the holes in my strainer and ended up in the sink.  I'd probably put a piece of paper towel in the bottom of the strainer to prevent that.


AH

Take Two:

I love zucchini.  I love it sautéed, baked, in bread, and therefore, I love that Tuesday was the first day of summer, which means that it’s Zucchini Time!  I’m glad we decided to do this dish, and I think it turned out really, really well (to be made next time with just a couple of minor adjustments).

First though, I have to be honest with you all.  I did break a teeny tiny (okay, okay, the Cardinal) rule of the Cook Along and (only slightly!) altered the recipe.  And by “altered,” I mean that I just changed the amount of the veggies that were in it.  Even though I LOVE sautéed onions, Josh really hates onions of any kind and tries his hardest to avoid them at all possible costs.  He tolerates them to a degree as long as they’re sautéed to death, which I didn’t totally want to do, so I used only half the amount of onion that the recipe called for.  On a similar note, my grocery store only had pretty small zucchini, so I got two instead of one.  No biggie.

There’s not really a whole lot to say about the preparation of this dish.  It was cooking pasta (easy) and chopping vegetables (which I love to do!).  No rocket science involved.  The ONLY drawback to this recipe was the fact that orzo pasta is really difficult to strain.  It’s little and rice-like, so I ended up with a bunch of pasta at the bottom of my sink (not that big of a deal, but to someone that doesn’t have garbage disposal, it was kind of a pain to clean up).  Also, we had this with beer-braised pork chops (okay – shameless plug for one of my favorite ways to cook pork chops: go here), and they were awesome, too.

The verdict?  Like I said above, this turned out really well.  It was fresh and summery and delicious!  The only two (tiny) things I’d do differently are add some garlic to the veggie sauté and a little bit of fresh parmesan at the end.  Other than that, I think this recipe is great!  Josh wasn’t wild about the onions, but he picked around them and ate everything else.  He agreed that a little garlic and fresh parmesan would be good additions to this recipe.

I like close-up pictures of food, so that’s what you get of my finished product tonight.  Enjoy!

A.V.