Zucchini Slice

I have been hankering after a good zucchini slice for a little while now. I can't explain where the hankering came from, but it was quite persistent.

When I first moved out of home and before I got my food blogger wings, my flatmate's mother gave us a recipe for a simple and healthy zucchini slice that we could easily pull together. It was the best zucchini slice I had ever tasted and it was that zucchini slice that I wanted. Typically, I couldn't find the recipe, so I headed over to Taste.com.au.

There are two recipes for zucchini slice on Taste.com.au. One from Fresh Living with 9 reader reviews that required 6 eggs and one from delicious. with 337 reviews and a little message saying that it was the most printed recipe on Taste.com.au. Plus, it only needed 5 eggs and I'm all about egg conservation.

It was really easy. The most difficult part was the grating of the zucchini and cheese. See, I broke out the grater discs on my food processor for the first time (I've had the food processor for 2 and a half years) and when I cut the zucchini and cheese into chunks to be fed into the chute, I must have cut them too small. When it came to the end of the piece of zucchini/cheese, the end bit got caught up into the disc and whirled around between the disc and the lid. Is this normal or did I just cut the pieces too small?

In case you were wondering, 375g of grated zucchini turned out to be 4 large zucchinis minus the little end bits.

I used some Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp Vintage Cheddar for the cheese. I had tasted the Special Reserve Vintage Cheddar at the Good Food and Wine Show last year and really enjoyed it. It was a lovely strong flavoured cheese, quite sharp. I wanted something strong in the slice, but I thought the Special Reserve would be too sharp for what I wanted. Luckily, the Extra Sharp worked perfectly. It was strong enough to add a lovely flavour but it wasn't too much. I hadn't tasted the Extra Sharp before, but I'm sold - I may have found my new go-to cheddar.

Some of the reviewers mentioned that they fried off the onions and bacon before adding them to the mix and I thought that was a great idea. It softened the onions and added a nice crispy outside to the bacon. I added some garlic to the mix too, because I love garlic.

The only other change I made was inspired by the other zucchini slice recipe, which called for the addition of curry powder. I thought this was a great idea too. I love curried eggs and I know curry powder and eggs work really well together, so I had to add some to my slice. Unfortunately, I wasn't really measuring at this stage, I just took the curry powder tin and tried to sprinkle it into my flour. I had a little bit of a shaking hand and a rather large tablespoon of curry powder fell into the bowl. I tried to remove some, but there wasn't a lot I could do so I kept on going.

Happily, everything came together really well. The curry powder is quite distinctive, but it works very well with the slice. It also smells wonderful. The texture is really pleasing, it has more body than a frittata but it is lovely and light. Apparently it freezes quite well too, I've got some in the freezer now and I'll let you know how it goes.

The recipes made heaps. Where I would normally take my leftovers to work, but this time I hoarded the whole thing - it's all mine!!

Zucchini Slice
adapted from delicious magazine

5 eggs
150g (1 cup) self-raising flour, sifted
1 tbs curry powder
375g zucchini, grated
1 large onion, finely chopped
200g rindless bacon, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
60ml (1/4 cup) vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 170°C. Grease and line a 30 x 20cm lamington pan.

Heat a small frying pan over a medium heat and cook the onion and bacon with the garlic until the onion is soft and the bacon is crispy. Remove from pan to cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs then add the flour and curry powder and mix until smooth.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined. Pour into the prepared lamington pan and bake for 30 minutes or until cooked through.