Fried Zucchini

Sorry for the lateness in blogging this week. We took a quick, 3 night trip to Hong Kong for the first part of this week. Hopefully this is our last visa run for some time! But we lived it up for a couple days--went to Disneyland for a fun end-of-the-school-year treat for the kids, visited with some friends, bought a bunch of food (cereal) that we can get cheaper there than here, saw some favorite Hong Kong places, and ate at some of our favorite restaurants. It was a good few days. Now back to trying to finish up our school year, meal planning, and just life around here. My husband already warned me he was going to have to be gone from early morning until late in the day tomorrow. Yep, back to the busyness. But on to the food. I recently learned while watching an episode of the Next Food Network Star on Hulu that what I've been using as zucchini for the six and a half years I've lived here isn't actually zucchini. Apparently its called kusa. Its closely related to the zucchini. I've always known it had a much lighter skin but its always worked in anything I have cooked calling for squash or zucchini. So, grab yourself a couple kusa or zucchini and enjoy this recipe. Its one of my mom's that I grew up on and my family loves it.

Fried Zucchini
2 medium-large zucchini
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp seasoned salt (I use Lawry's)
3/4 cup milk
Oil for frying

Mix together flour and seasoned salt in a bowl. Pour milk into a separate bowl. Slice zucchini--I do mine a few millimeters or so--too thick and they get soggy easy, too thin and they take forever to batter and fry and can get overly crisp (but I do love making a few thin ones to munch on before they get to the table!!).

Take sliced zucchini and toss them in the flour mixture and then lay out on your cutting board.

Heat oil for frying--you can do it deep or shallow, it doesn't matter. You'll just have to flip them more intentionally in shallow oil, but that's what I do. Take coated zucchini and dip them in the milk and then into the flour mixture again. Do just enough to put into your hot oil.

Fry in batches as needed depending on size of skillet and how many zucchini you have. You can test one from the first batch and adjust salt if needed. I've found 2 teaspoons to 1 1/2 cups flour works pretty well with the Lawry's mix, but it may be different for other brands. Sometimes I do my teaspoons a little heaped up if I'm craving slightly saltier! I usually don't make this when we're having guests. We have to make so much just for our family that if I'm making a whole lot, they get cold before I can get enough done to serve.