Sometimes, I impress myself. I’m not one to really enjoy cooking, which is partly what this whole thing has been about. I force myself to do this personal challenge of cooking locally all summer long, and it makes me actually cook. Every once in a while, I really enjoy making the meal because it’s something new and different, and that’s what I’ve got here. The garden has been giving me ZUCCHINI (all caps, on purpose, because they seem to think they’re watermelons and not zucchini). Anyone who has grown them before knows that if you neglect the plant for two hours, you end up with baseball bats and that I’m really not exaggerating. Ours, instead of growing in length, grew in width, spectacularly, and seemingly overnight. For scale’s sake, that’s a 9″ plate. The zucchini were really seedy inside, but I sliced them up anyway and once I pulled the seeds out, I had enormous zucchini rings. Then inspiration hit. Take zucchini rings, grill, add freshly made polenta (1 cup cornmeal, 3 cup water, boil while stirring until it pulls away from the pan) to the center, bake, flip, top as a pizza and bake until the cheese melts. And that’s exactly what’s on my plate above – I used blue cheese and caramelized onions for the topping, and the sauce was even made from local tomatoes, courtesy of Jack’s Farm who was selling a big big bag of tomatoes for $6 (there’s another whole pint of sauce in the freezer too!). I really don’t have a recipe to give you for this, because it’s the kind of thing that is very basic and I’d rather give you the idea and let you go create.
Zucchini Polenta Pizza:
Monster Overgrown Zucchini – My garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil