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The kids have been home and that means I get to cook for more than just the two of us. And, we joined Fresh Fork market share program, so each week we pick up a huge green bag of yummy local produce.
A few weeks back, while pouring over the Vegetable Revolution article in the July 2013 issue of Bon Appetit,
I met my dream utensil! The Paderno World Cuisine spiralizer! I immediately ordered one from Amazon and as soon as it arrive and was out of the box, there was no vegetable in the house safe from spiraling. The device itself is plastic, easy to operate, dishwasher safe AND it comes with three blades. One makes super thin spiral slices and can turn a cucumber into a cucumber slinky! The other two produce long spaghetti like veggie strands in two thicknesses.
First up – Zucchini!
Zucchini goes through the device very easily and the resulting strands are long enough to twirl on your fork. I didn’t bother to peel the vegetable first because I like the look of the dark and light green. Once the whole vegetable goes through the device, you are left with a round little plug that can also be cut up and cooked.
To serve the zucchini pasta, I made a sauce of onions, garlic, canned fire roasted tomatoes, red peppers and basil. Once the sauce veggies had cooked through I stirred in some tomato paste and then put the zucchini strands on top of the cooked veggies and covered the pan with a lid to steam the zucchini for about 3 minutes..
Then, invert it all in a big pasta bowl and serve with lots of fresh shredded Parmesan.
What could we spiral next? Apples work great. Nice thin spiral slices for a healthy snack. Cucumber run through the larger strand blade and then chopped a bit made a perfect tzatziki sauce for lamb kabobs.
We have also been experimenting this summer with brining and smoking salmon on the grill. I think we have it down.
Grilled salmon goes well with thinly spiralized Yukon gold and red skin potatoes and onions from another recent Fresh Fork bag.
Spiraling for breakfast, anyone? A breakfast skillet made almost entirely from last week’s Fresh Fork bag included potatoes, chorizo, onion, farm fresh brown eggs and havarti cheese.
I am clearly not the only obsessed consumer. This blog post from July’s Epi-blog at Epicurious Magazine shares my enthusiasm. As my son was preparing to head back home to Charlotte, NC. he mentioned he would miss us – and the spiralizer. Thanks to Amazon’s speedy service, one was waiting for him when he got home!