Zucchini Tots

My CSA partner gave me a recipe for Zucchini Tots to help us use up the abundance of zucchini in our weekly box.  I tweaked it based on my dairy restrictions and the tools I had on hand.  It kind of was a disaster, to be honest.  We're in temporary housing while our new house is constructed, and of course I realized that nearly everything needed for the recipe was packed away, somewhere in our POD or in the bowels of our closets.  And this was discovered mid-recipe construction.  Just my luck!  After a quick run to the nearby grocery store to grab muffin foils, I managed to make it work.  The taste was fine, but I'll definitely do some things differently next time.

Link to the original recipe

Ingredients:
1 egg (I used the Simply Basic organic brown eggs from Target)
1/2 C Panko
1 large zucchini
1/4 C diced onion
salt, pepper, or other seasoning to taste

The original idea is to grate the zucchini with a cheese grater, then strain the water out using a paper towel.  I'm sure this is the preferred method.  Well, I couldn't find my cheese grater, even after making my hubby pull apart one of our storage closets to get to the "kitchen" box at the very bottom.  Talk about frustrating!  I ended up dual-purposing the Baby Bullet and pureeing the zucchini.  Doing this meant I couldn't strain the extra water out.  Hence the double-dose of Panko!  I mixed all the ingredients together, then stuck them in the fridge for an hour since I was prepping them for dinner ahead of schedule.  This also helped solidify the mix too. 

The initial directions were to bake these in mini muffin tins, so the muffins came out more like tater tots.  I knew my mini muffin tins were in the POD, but thought I had left one of the big tins out.  Nope.  Failure #3 was when I discovered even my liners were packed away, probably never to be seen again.  This is what made me break down and go to the store.  Byerlys only had large liners, and since they were the sturdier foil ones, I ended up winging it and baking them without the tins.  It worked pretty well! 

Bake these for about 20 minutes at 375F, until the outsides are brown.  They tasted fine, but weren't really crispy like you'd expect for something that's supposed to be tater-tot'ish.  But they were nice and savory, and would be a good side dish.  Plus they're fairly healthy, a pretty green color, and a great way to use up that zucchini!