Thursday, August 12, 2010

Zucchini & Carrot a Scapece

Scapece (pro. skahpeysay) is an Italian dish -side or salad and usually has a poached/fried  vegetable/meat in an vinegary/acidic sauce/marinade before serving. The word scapece is supposed to be from Persian 'sikbag' which means acidic.The dish is also called Escabeche (pro.eskabesh) in Spain and Savoro in parts of Italy and Greece.The preparation is very simple and zucchini scapece is popular in Naples. I was looking for a zucchini recipe-when I have something like zucchini I always think of a new dish first rather than go for a tried and tested ones- as I had one waiting for turn in my fridge and since this dish was simple and involved deep frying -a favourite when its chilly outside- I did it.I used Giada's recipe from FoodNetwork for making my scapece but the estimates could be a bit off the mark as I had a single medium size zucchini.

Ingredients:
Zucchini: 1
Carrot:1

Garlic: 1-2 cloves
Fresh Basil
Fresh mint
Salt
Pepper

Red Wine Vinegar: 4 tbsp +

Olive Oil: for deep frying:

Preparation:
Slice the zucchini into little bit thick rounds.Likewise peel and slice the carrot in a similar way.No need to peel the skin of zucchini. Crush together garlic,mint and basil.

Meanwhile heat the oil in a pan and deepfry zucchini rounds if needed in batches.Drain on papertowels and while still warm arrange in a single layer on a serving dish.Sprinkle salt and pepper and half of the garlic-herbs mixture.You may not go for layering,but toss everything together in a bowl as in the original recipe,but I wanted it in a layered way as the green and orange look good.The first layer looks like


Meanwhile deepfry the carrot slices in the same oil adding more if needed.Drain these on paper towels and while still warm,arrange them on top of zucchini layer and sprinkle salt and pepper and rest of the garlic -herb mix on these too.


Now drizzle vinegar on top of the layers.I used capfuls of vinegar and it looks like..

Cover with a plastic wrap and let it marinate overnight in the fridge.

Serve cold or room temp as a side salad.

Not much of a recipe,but I made the pics colourful.Iwish I could serve it as a starter,but as the name and taste suggests,it is acidic or very vinegary or tangy and not many may like a very tangy starter.I suppose you use this as a side salad  with certain  dishes to balance out the flavours. It is also said that this is used as a way of preserving rabbits,quails and other game meat and can also be served as starter,but unless you are a very tangy person(I am ),you may not like this dish.So do check out the original Giada recipe and make your scapece.Anyway my zucchini was put to the best use as we liked it.



6 Comments:

chef and her kitchen said...

lol..looks super easy n yummy

Merut said...

These look so good. Another creative thing to do with zucchini (because I have to steal other people's imaginations)!

Akila said...

simply looks wonderful....

Suman Singh said...

a new dish to me..looks delicious.

Unknown said...

That is a very new and interesting recipe. Sounds delicious.

Aparna Balasubramanian said...

Never heard of this before. Love the way you keep trying and experimenting with food all the time. :)

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