So I was feeling a little bored with my baking exploits of late. Chocolate mousse, not too exciting, cookies, meh. This recipe is the first in my series on baking with vegetables. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I will enjoy working with these less common ingredients. I begin with a zucchini cake from that master Italian cook featured on PBS, Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, and is available in her book Lidia's Italian Table. I was surprised to find that this isn't a chocolate zucchini cake, which is the only kind of zucchini cake I've ever heard of.

Zucchini Cake (Torta di Zucchini)
From Lidia's Italian Table

• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for the loaf pan
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for the loaf pan
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 large eggs
• 1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups shredded trimmed small, firm zucchini
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup golden raisins
• grated zest of 1 lemon

Directions:

• Place the rack in the center position in the oven and preheat it to 325° F.
• Lightly brush a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan with flour and tap the pan to coat evenly and remove any excess.
• Sift the 2 cups flour, the cinnamon, salt, and baking soda together in a small bowl.
• In a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed, beat the eggs and 1 cup of olive oil together until well blended.
• Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat, then beat until mixture is foamy and pale yellow and the sugar dissolved.
• Beat in the vanilla.
• Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and beat at low speed just until blended. Don't over mix.
• Add the zucchini, 3/4 cups walnuts, the raisins, and lemon zest and fold in with a rubber spatula until evenly distributed.
• Transfer the batter to the prepared loaf pan and sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup walnuts over the top.
• Bake until the cake has risen above the sides of the pan and a wooden skewer comes out clean, about 1 hour and 10 minutes.
• Cool the cake on a wire rack for 20 to 30 minutes.
• Remove the cake from the pan by inverting it onto a kitchen towel. Allow to cool completely before slicing.

About this recipe: Lidia is nothing if not thorough in her directions for mixing this cake. While a little more on the verbose side than I care for (and I even cut out a tiny bit) this recipe was very specific and easy to follow. That's what you're paying for, after all, when you spend good money on a cookbook.

Once I had made the batter, before adding the zucchini, walnuts, etc., I realized that, in consistency and weight, it was very similar to a pumpkin bread batter I make. It struck me that the thing they have most in common is that they both use oil as the main form of butter or shortening and not a few eggs. I know, baking with extra virgin olive oil sounds pretty strange and it appealed to me right away.

I grated my zucchini using the smaller grating teeth on my box grater (yes, I do have one, and not the spiky teeth used for zesting) instead of the microplane because I felt the latter made it too much like zucchini mush and I wanted more distinct, but fine, shreds. I didn't leave all the green skin on my zucchini. Before I grated it I ran a peeler over each one, removing roughly 1/2 to 1/3 of the skin. 3 small zucchini gave me just over 2 cups shredded.

A few changes I made to this recipe: I left out the raisins, you already know my feeling on that subject, and I used bleached all-purpose flour because, after all, who's got unbleached all-purpose flour around the house?

I made mini-loaves for faster cooking and portability. I baked them in these smaller pans for a total of 45 minutes. Lidia's towel trick worked like a charm. I have to remember and use that one again. My loaves slid right out thanks to the pam with flour I used instead of Lidia's method. (For those of you keeping track like me, the new pam with flour is 3 and 0).

Three words: moist, moist, moist. And light, surprisingly so! Lidia mentions that oil contributes to tenderness, and that's a great word to describe it. The cinnamon, while not overpowering, is the predominant flavor that comes through balancing out the olive oil, which you can definitely recognize. For those of you worried that this cake will taste like zucchini, all I have to say is, unless someone told you, you'd never know it. Despite the large amount of sugar, I felt the sweetness was just right. The more you eat the better it tastes. Just delicious. The walnuts add a nice crunch--I would add more than 3/4 of a cup. Wow, really a great recipe and a great result. While not really summer fare, I can't wait to make this again on a chilly fall afternoon.