Now I know my ABC's...?

If you have ever read the "About" section on this blog, you will know that I started Alphabake as a personal quest to make better use of my collection of cook books.  In three years and seven months I have FINALLY baked my way through the alphabet.  Alphabake took me on a journey around the world as I attempted to improve my culinary and photography skills. I am really lucky that I got to do a lot of travelling these past few years and I really enjoyed filling my baking void on the blog with pictures from my adventures abroad.

Links to all of my previous entries can be found in the "Recipes" and "Travel Posts" sections.  For those of you who are just starting to get introduced to this project, here are some of my favourite posts from earlier on:

I have certainly taken my sweet time with putting up my first round of alphabetical posts, and in that time there have been many people who have been very supportive who I must thank:

1) All the roommates I have had during this process, thank you for being so cool with me occasionally hijacking the kitchen and for saying such nice things about the food I made

2) The people who had me as their house guest (Mum, Sarah and her mother, and the Harveys), who were so kind as to let me use their kitchens for blogging purposes

3) Mike for all of your technical assistance

4) Phil and Victor for teaching me as much as they could about photography during my short stint in San Francisco

5) AND EVERYONE who has taken the time over the last few years to check out and comment on the blog

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!!!

This is in no way the end of Alphabake.  The alphabet will be repeated!  There are a few new ideas I would like to try out on here in the future.  One thing I would like to start doing right away is use my ice cream maker more and experiment with making the frozen dessert while it is still summer.  If you have any flavour ideas you are curious about, leave me a comment below and I will see if I can turn them into something cold and tasty. If you have any other general thoughts about the blog, I would love to hear about those too!

Thank you again!

- Louise 

Z: (Stuffed) Zucchini

Here we are, folks!  After about three and a half years on the Alphabake train, we have finally arrived at letter "Z". What a culinary journey it has been!

For the final pick I decided to go with this stuffed zucchini recipe from Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi.  I have not whipped up too many savoury recipes on the blog so this made for a nice change. It was also such a breeze to prepare compared to the yogurt bread I made for the previous food entry.

These stuffed zucchinis would make a lovely little starter or an accompaniment with a main. There were some great flavours in this dish; the kitchen smelled amazing.  The recipe said that the rice should be "al dente" and that was the result I got.  My two taste testers and I were not entirely pleased with the slightly crunchy texture of the rice filling.  The rice is supposed to get "cooked" while it is inside the zucchini and steaming the zucchini any longer than what the recipe calls for would make it mushy and not very nice to serve up.  If you would like to try this recipe and want to have a softer rice filling, I would cook it a bit, but not fully, before scooping it into the zucchini "boats".

I made this recipe and took the photos while I was staying in San Francisco in early March of this year.  At the time I was working with local commercial photographer, Philip Harvey.  Due to this, I had the exciting opportunity to shoot the final results from this recipe in his professional photography studio.  I have to send a big shout out to Phil's intern at the time, Victor Tseng, for helping me out with the equipment and a lot of the setup for this shoot.  I learned a lot in that session and I am really happy with the photos we got from it.