Oven-roasted zucchini spears

It's not quite as cold this morning as it was yesterday morning. The thermometer reading right now is between 10 and 11 in ºC, but the temperature normally keeps dropping until 7 or 7: 30 a.m. (it's 6:30 right now). Despite the cold mornings, we're still harvesting tomatoes — I'll be making stuffed tomatoes today for lunch — and zucchini squashes. That's what this post is about.

Oven-roasting is a really good way to cook zucchini spears. What I did was cut the squash in half across the middle, and then cut each half into six or eight spears, leaving on the green skin. The spears were about 5 inches long. (Those are potatoes on the left and zucchini spears on the right — in the photo below too.)

Next, make a mixture of bread crumbs (panko, in this case) and grated Parmesan cheese — half a cup or more of each, in equal quantities. Add some dried herbs including thyme, oregano, tarragon, or parsley and, finally, some black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic and/or onion powder, and salt. You can vary the herbs and spices to your taste.

Pour a little olive oil in a wide, flat dish. Put in the zucchini spears and turn them to coat them with oil. Then dredge them in the crumb and cheese mixture and put them on a baking pan skin-side down. Set the pan in a hot oven and let the zucchini brown for 15 or 20 minutes. Cook them more or less time depending on whether you want them crunchier or softer.

I added some potato spears made with potatoes that I had partially cooked in a steamer pot. I did them the same way as the zucchini spears. You can see them in the photos — their color is lighter. All the spears were delicious. We ate ours with a couple of chorizette sausages (beef, lamb, and pork) and a red and yellow tomato salad with feta cheese.