Gutsy Cooks Club Menu #28 part A and a Little Babysitting

This weekend we had the privilege to babysit one of our family friend's little guy. He happens to be a vegetarian so we thought the Zucchini Sticks from this week's Gustsy Cooks menu assignment and some semi- homemade pizzas might work to meet the hungry guy's appetite.

For some reason finding zucchini took a trip to 3 different stores this weekend. But perseverance prevailed and the lovely green torpedoes were found.

I first used a 2 day old loaf of artisan bread to make fresh bread crumbs. This was a mistake on my part. It took a good 40 minutes to grate the bread and make crumbs. It got a bit annoying how long it took to do this when I could have easy just used the perfectly adequate panko in the pantry.

Next I cut the zucchini into sticks.Then chopped some parsley, grated some Parmesan reggiano and lemon zest and mixed it with the bread crumbs.

I heated some vegetable oil and the beat 2 eggs and poured some flour out to prepare the breading station. I seasoned the zucchini with salt & pepper and then dipped in the flour, next the egg and finally the bread crumb mixture. A messy affair.

Next I fried the zucchini in the vegetable oil.

We served the zucchini with some store bought marinara and an Airfield Estates unoaked chardonnay. Airfield Estates is a fun, non pretentious winery in Prosser that we've visited during our yearly tri- cities wine trip. Airfield makes a ton of wines that their tasting is almost an overwhelming experience.

On one visit we were given a personal tour of the winery by the owner of Airfield Estates. We toured the wine making area and tasted some wine while still doing it's turning into wine thing. He took us back to his board room for private tasting and shared the history of his winery. He was rightfully very proud of his place and story and it was a visit that we 'll all never forget.

The zucchini sticks were good although lacking enough salt initially but we fixed that. Unfortunately our little guest was not at all interested in trying a zucchini stick.

At this point G had to head up to the airport to pick up his cousin arriving from Denver. So the little guy and I worked on the pizza.

I purchased prepared dough at Metropolitan Market. We've made dough in the past and it was fine but this store bought dough is just a good and it makes making homemade pizza far more doable.

I first started by placing a red pepper under the broiler to roast and started cooking the hot Italian chicken sausage.

I then sliced some mushrooms

and gathered some pizza sauce, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese and shredded mozzarella  together.

The little guy and  I rolled out the pizza dough and put them both in the oven to pre-cook before adding our toppings.

Next we made 2 pizzas one with just sauce & mozzarella for our vegetarian friend and for us carnivores we add sauce, hot Italian chicken sausage, mushrooms, roasted red pepper, shredded mozzarella and fresh mozzarella and goat cheese.

I opened a bottle of Charles & Charles red made by Charles Smith of K vinters that we've had before and is a "good pizza" kind of wine. (if you're not familiar with K vinters it's worth reading the link information he's an interesting character to say the least.)

G & T arrived back from the airport and we all sat down to some pizza and catching up.