Beer-Battered Zucchini with Gorgonzola Dipping Sauce

*Post by Angela.

Yesterday, with the leftover ingredients from when I made the zucchini soup and thoughts of my favorite Carl's Jr. menu item in my head, I knew I had to fry myself up some zucchini, with a couple of changes from the fast food version. I decided to go with spears instead of round slices, a beer batter instead of a crumb crust, and a gorgonzola dipping sauce instead of ranch.

List of ingredients for the zucchini:

• 2 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups beer
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp creole seasoning
• 4 medium zucchini

First, I mixed together 1 1/2 cups of the flour with the beer, cayenne pepper, garlic salt and creole seasoning and let sit for 3 hours. I don't know why I needed to let it sit, but that's what the directions said, so I hunkered down with my newly downloaded book (yay! Last entry in the wonderful Hunger Games trilogy!) and waited it out.

 

Once the batter was ready, in a separate bowl, I mixed together the remaining 1/2 cup of flour with about a 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp black pepper, then dredged the zucchini in the mixture.

I heated the vegetable oil in a pot over medium high heat. Once the oil was ready, I dipped the floured zucchini sticks in the beer batter, shook off the excess, and then placed them into the oil and fried until golden brown, about 2-3 minutes per side. I set the fried sticks on a paper-towel lined plate for about 2 minutes to drain off some of the oil before eating.

About 1/2 hour before I started frying up the zucchini, I started in on the dipping sauce, which is actually supposed to be a pasta sauce. I figured if I just thickened it up a little, it'd serve my purpose just fine.

List of ingredients for the dipping sauce:

• 3/4 cup dry white wine
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp grated parmesan cheeese
• 2 oz gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
• Small pinch ground nutmeg
• Small pinch ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp flour

First, I heated the wine in a pan over high heat and reduced by half, about 5-7 minutes.

Next, I lowered the heat, added the cream, and reduced further by one-third, another 7-9 minutes.

I stirred in the cheeses, the nutmeg and the pepper until the sauce was smooth.

I added a tbsp of flour to thicken it up, stirred and cooked an additional 3-5 minutes over medium low heat. 

The batter on the zucchini was just about perfect, crispy and light, and I like the spears better than I like slices, because of the bigger zucchini-to-batter ratio. I'm pretty sure this batter would work for anything you wanted to fry up, like other veggies or fish. The sauce was a little overpowering (I can see how it would be perfect as a pasta sauce), but still pretty good. There may not be a Carl's Jr. east of Texas, but now I can satisfy my fried zucchini jones myself.

Comments

[Kim]

both of these entries were not what i needed on monday morning without breakfast. yum city.

[Angela]

:) Sorry, Kim. Zucchini and gorgonzola is my new favorite flavor combination!