Zucchini Pasta

We are getting lots of Zucchini this year. I wanted to try this unique pasta where you substitute your pasta with Zucchini. I tried to keep everything in this dish raw. It was a fun alternative to regular pasta.

Ingredients
- 5 medium sized Zucchini
- 2 tomatoes roughly chopped
- 1 small onion roughly chopped
- 2 tbsp sun dried tomatoes soaked in oil
- red chili flakes add it according to your taste
- ground black pepper to taste
- salt to taste
- few sprigs of basil

Method:
1. Peal your Zucchini into thin strips. I just used a regular vegetable pealer. Save the core to make soup.
2. In a food processor add tomatoes, onion, sun dried tomatoes and pulse it a few times. Do not over process it. You want it to be slightly chunky.
3. Remove and add salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and the chopped basil
4. Toss Zucchini with the sauce just before serving. If you do this earlier it will become very watery.

This is perfect for a nice summer day.

Quinoa Chocolate Zucchini muffins

I wanted to bake something with quinoa. I had some sorry looking zucchini in my fridge and so I decided to try out a vegan version of zucchini bread. I hunted down some zucchini bread recipe's but my only issues with them were that they used too much oil. I try to cook with as little oil as possible so I started to modify the recipe and ended up with a pretty tasty version. Here is the link to my original inspiration. I used apple sauce instead of oil or eggs.



Ingredients :
(Yields 18 muffins if you bake in the standard 12 muffin pan)
- 1 cup qunioa flour
- 1 cup flour (I used 1/2 all purpose and 1/2 whole wheat flour)
- 2 cups apple sauce (As there are no eggs or butter you need quite a bit of apple sauce)
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar (If you don't want your bread too sweet then half cup will do)
- 1/2 cup walnuts (optional - they give a nice crunch to the muffin)
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
- 2 tbs unsweetened coco powder
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 2 cups shredded zucchini

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 350F degree
2. In a bowl mix all the ingredients until they are all incorporated. If you find your zucchini is not moist then add a little bit more apple sauce.
3. Now fill the muffin tin to about 2/3rd and bake them for 20 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean when you insert it in the middle,

Serve them warm with a hot cup of tea.

Note: If you don't have quinoa flour just take the 3/4 th cup whole qunioa and grind it in a mixer till it becomes a smooth powder. If you don't have chocolate chip then increase your coco powder.

This one goes to Whole Grain Baking Event – Quinoa hosted by Maduram's eggless cooking and to Bake-off event at Versatile Kitchen.