Savoury ‘cake’ with zucchini, bacon & parsley

At the airport in Sydney on our way to South America I brought this novel, ‘Lunch in Paris’ by Elizabeth Band – sounded like my kind of book and it had some recipes too!  A story about an American girl who moves to Paris.  It has lots conversations about lovely French food, restaurant and market descriptions and some fabulous French recipes.

This is one of the recipes, a savoury ‘cake’ which can be adapted to all sorts of ingredients.  In the book she cooked it with bacon, chervil and figs.  I thought I would try it with zucchini, bacon and parsley and cook it in my new Le Creuset square cake pan which fits perfectly into the combi oven.

This is a familiar dish that you may have had at a buffet before.  It’s not a quiche filling, nor a muffin recipe, but something in between.  Cooked ahead of time it re-heated well and was enjoyed at my recent morning tea that I hosted for the Cancer Council.

Ingredients:

1¼ cups flour
1 level tablespoon baking powder (yes tablespoon)
125 g lean bacon
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 eggs
2 large or 4 small zucchini, grated finely
pinch salt
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp. chopped parsley
1 cup grated Colby cheese

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160ºC Fan forced.  Line a 23 cm square tin with baking paper.
2. Grate zucchini, sprinkle with a pinch of salt and mix through.  Let stand in a colander for about 10 minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.
3. On medium heat sauté chopped bacon, onion and garlic until soft.  I reserved a little of the bacon and sliced thinly to decorate the top in a lattice design.  Set aside to cool in a large bowl.
4. Beat eggs, milk and olive oil together.
5. Sift flour and baking powder together.
6. Add flour to egg mixture and mix well but don’t over beat it.
7. Squeeze out all the extra moisture from the zucchini.  There is no need to rinse off the salt as you don’t need to add any extra.
8. Now mix all the ingredients together.  Add a little ground black pepper and pour into pan.
9. Bake for 50 minutes.

Serve warm, cut into squares.  This will soon become one of your party favourites 🙂