Cook up some delicious zucchini and eggs for a healthy and hearty Italian breakfast. We make this recipe all year long in our home and I’m so excited to share the recipe with you. It is SO EASY!
This zucchini recipe is from my Sicilian mother-in-law and my husband taught it to me. It’s so simple to make and tastes great! It can be used for breakfast, brunch or anytime of day. Sometimes we have it for dinner!
In this video I show you how to make this zucchini and eggs recipe, plus I give you LOTS of cooking tips so you can’t go wrong! This is also a very kid-friendly breakfast, and is such a great way to get them to eat their veggies!
🟢 INGREDIENTS:
extra virgin olive oil
onions
zucchini
garlic
eggs
Italian cheese (parmesan or romano)
🟢 FULL RECIPE ON WEBSITE: COMING SOON
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🟢 RESOURCES MENTIONED IN VIDEO:
– Induction burner I use for much of my cooking. https://amzn.to/3IXmg9v
00:00 Introduction
00:42 Ingredients needed
01:19 Heat up the olive oil
02:14 Add the onion
03:55 Add garlic
06:27 Prepare the zucchini
06:51 Cutting zucchini as half moons
09:15 How many zucchini
11:01 To cover or not to cover with lid
12:25 Flexibility with measurements
12:50 Adding and cooking the eggs
14:31 What goes well with this recipe
15:33 Add the cheese
16:43 Taste test time
16:59 Memory lane moment
child friends and welcome to simple Italian cooking my name is Liz and I’m so glad you’re joining me for this wonderfully easy Italian breakfast dish which you can actually eat really any time uh and uh so if you’re wondering what to do with your zucchini uh and you want to do something a little different maybe you haven’t tried before this is a really really good recipe um very flexible so you don’t have to worry about getting exact measurements uh so I’m doing kind of a smaller batch today uh I don’t need to make a lot if you want the full you know four person serving bigger batch I have a link down below where you can go to my website get exact specific measurements and everything so I’m going to walk you through this feel free to follow along if you’re in your kitchen grab the ingredients um or you can just save it for later uh so all you’re going to need is some zucchini I’m going to be using just one zucchini uh that’s really all all I need for for this one you’re going to need about a medium onion and a clove of garlic and you’re going to need some egg egg so I’m doing two eggs uh for this particular dish and uh we’re also going to use some Romano cheese uh which is completely optional you don’t have to use that it’s a nice Italian Dish um that is very flavorful and my husband makes it all the time he loves zucchini and eggs and there’s actually a name for it it’s called cazelle and uh I don’t remember what part of Italy this is from but I do know that my Sicilian mother-in-law made this all the time you can have it for dinner too the first thing we’re going to do is heat up a medium sauce pan not sauce pan saus pan frying pan and we’re going to heat it up to a medium heat okay and then we’re going to go ahead and add in just a little bit of olive oil you want to use um if you can extra version I just use that for like just about everything so you’re going to add about a tablespoon just enough to kind of coat the bottom uh if you need to add more as as you go along nobody’s GNA complain that’s totally fine so what we’re going to do is uh while that’s heating up we’re going to go ahead and cut up the onion we’re going to add the onion first okay the onion and the garlic and I’ll explain why okay so I have my onion chopped up and I just want to explain something here um that I like to chop my onions pretty small so I dice them I mean I don’t them like super super tiny but I don’t do big chunks of onions for this dish I wanted to cook up quickly especially if I’m doing it for breakfast I don’t want it to take forever so and since I said garlic and onion I want to add the onion first and I want to actually make sure that this is nicely spread around in the pan what we’re going to do is we’re going to add this onion and we want to coat that onion with oops I missed a whole chunk here um with the olive oil okay because we want it to sauté we want it to cook and again you want to kind of do it over a medium medium high heat and the reason why we cut the onion up first and cook that is because the onion’s going to release some liquid as it Cooks down and we’re going to sauté this for about just to let you know you can expect anywhere between five to eight minutes and once this is cooking down that’s when I’m going to add the garlic because I’m doing this at a little bit of a higher temperature and I don’t want the garlic to burn I don’t want it to really get brown either so that’s why I add it while the onion kind of releases after the onion releases some of that juices because I still want it to cook for a while but that extra juice helps keep the garlic from burning so a little tip for you there okay and while your onion is cooking again it’s going to take about 5 to8 minutes you want to make sure that the onion is translucent so uh you know by translucent that just simply means it’s kind of uh seethrough okay not opaque opaque is when it’s you can’t see through something so while that’s doing that go ahead and chop up your garlic now you can chop up your garlic rough you can slice your garlic it’s totally up to you um I like to kind of dice my garlic because I want that flavor more throughout I want to be eating it if you’re GNA be serving this to people who aren’t maybe fans of garlic I would recommend slicing the garlic so that way if they get a piece they can kind of push it off so you get the the smell and the flavor a subtle flavor from the garlic but if they don’t want the bigger chunks or they don’t want to eat garlic then you can just kind of they can push that off to the side so real quick before I forget because I always forget to do this um is self-promote right I am not a self-promoter oh my my goodness so anyway if you like Italian recipes especially when they’re easy and they taste absolutely amazing then please subscribe to the channel give this video a like get that notification button click it so that way you get notified every time we come out with new videos and give it a share share it with your friends make a comment tell me do you make this have you ever made this before have you ever heard of this cazelle I think it’s spelled Co o z e l e I believe or e l l e all right so this is coming along real nice smells nice love the smell of onion um if it starts Browning if the onion starts Browning that means you’re cooking it too high because we really don’t want a um like a Mexican flavor like that’s the only thing that comes to my mind like a grilled flavor so I’m going to go ahead and um add the garlic and again give that garlic a stir because we want it to coat with some of that olive oil now remember zucchini has a high water content so when we add the zucchini it’s the dish is going to get a little more watery as that releases um unless we do it at a much higher temperature keep in mind um if you need to add a little bit of olive oil because it’s getting too dry in the pan you can go ahead and do that but don’t do it for the sake of just making sure there’s liquid in here because we’re going to get liquid from the zucchini in just a few minutes okay so the next step while the uh onion is doing its thing is we’re going to go ahead and um cut up the zucchini and turn the onions down if they are cooking a little too quickly okay or you can prep all your ingredients too um and that’s fine I’m going to do half Moons the way you do half Moons is you take your zucchini and you then well I cut it in half but so you have your zucchini and then you cut it in half lengthwise this part is your half moon okay so when you hear the term half Moons that’s what it is and then what you do is you just simply slice these and this is to your preferred thickness so some recipes might say to do it chopped where you can do it cubes that’s completely fine if you want to do whole circles that’s fine as well I am partial to half Moons I just like them and I think they’re easier to eat and I’m going to go ahead and add the zucchini in because I want to start cooking that I think the zucchini is a very underrated uh vegetable there’s so many different types of zucchinis out there I learned about a zucchini called a sicilian um squash Cil uh Sicilian serpent I think is what it’s called it’s actually a squash not necessarily the zucchini but anyway people often refer to it as zucchini uh and uh it actually grow it can grow five to six feet and it actually kind of is like a Vine it actually people kind of grow it on a trellis and it’ll just dangle down or in a tree I learned about it from an interview uh that I did with an Italian seed company and seeds from Italy and uh you can check out the interview that I did I’ll put a link on it below fascinating interview about um all types of stuff there’s so many different types of zucchini I wish it was more readily available where I live um I did not grow a garden this year I love to grow Italian Zucchini they’re just more mild right now I’m using I think it’s called Black Beauty it’s just the typical kind you get at the store which is completely fine um and we often use this a lot so uh you know especially during off summer months we’re going to let this cook for oh probably about five or eight minutes it depends on how high you have the heat um one thing that that you don’t want to do necessarily is cover this you can to help it get a quicker start um but you really this is not a runny dish U where we don’t want a ton of moisture in it so I like to uh keep the lid off um but I can see the steam coming as the moist coming up as the moisture is being released from the zucchini so you might be wondering why am I just using one zucchini that doesn’t how much will this actually make uh this recipe here will be enough for two people uh and again it kind of depends on how much now my husband can eat he he will make a huge amount and have it for breakfast and have some over but then that will like satisfy him for most of the day um but when he does that he makes he makes a lot um I’m making enough for probably about two servings two to three servings in my opinion for a breakfast if you’re doing it where it’s going to be like a main meal um I would I would recommend probably about one small zucchini per person is kind of the rule of thumb that I go with a lot of times when preparing the meals so um if you like more onion add more onion if you like less garlic you don’t even have to add the garlic but I mean that is part of in my opinion the recipe um and the way that we’ve cooked it for many years this is a recipe that you can have um throughout the entire uh year you don’t have to have it just for summer although I would say it’s probably more commonly used in the summer simply because zucchini is more in season but you can certainly use it any time of year you can use it like I said as a brunch for holidays um and it’s nice and you know what’s also nice too is you can even use it as leftovers or you know prepare in advance cook it and then uh cook heat it up in the oven or just heat it up over a skillet again so it’s been probably about three minutes and just to give you an estimate on cooking time so that you know some of the real thin ones that I cut are already they’re kind of getting very limp some of the thicker ones not so much yet so just letting you know um how much time to expect to cook so it’s been about four minutes now and the zucchini is more of the zucchini is beginning to cook down it’s getting a little bit more liquidy again another reason why I don’t cover it is because when we serve this dish I don’t want soggy zucchini I don’t want it mushy that’s what we’re going to try and avoid here so you got to cook the zucchini just right uh so it’s what you what you’d consider for tender okay so it’s tender it’s not mushy um some pieces will you know will be more so than others but I recommend just continue to stir it because that way it cooked more evenly and it really really helps now remember we got to still add the egg um at the end here I actually think this is a really great dish to teach your kids if you have kids or nieces or nephews because especially when they’re young it’s so simple it’s so easy and it’s healthy and it’s something that they will remember uh because you really can’t go wrong with this recipe it’s so flexible and they’ll remember it as they go through life it’ll be a nice go-to recipe um that they can have I mean the measurements that I give you are to give you a guideline because really you probably hear this so many especially from Italian uh people like me we really don’t always go by measurements but just like when I was learning how to cook uh and which is a whole story in and of itself uh I needed measurements to get me started I didn’t know what went with what and too much of this too little of that got turn this down to the Tad and uh you know so it helped me and that’s why I like to give specific to you but at the same time don’t don’t let that get don’t let that freeze you up okay so what I’m going to do now is I’m going to cook the egg so I have two beaten eggs here again in the end and whether you do it exactly the way I do or not is completely up to you uh what I like to do is a little bit like how they do it with fried um fried rice is they kind of cook the egg off to the side and then you mix it in that’s what I like to do but if you want to just put the egg all over everything and cook it that’s fine as well um really a matter of preference I like to make sure that my egg is 1,000% cooked so I like to do it off to the side instead of chancing that it might get caught between some zucchini and that’s not really cooking all the way that’s why I do it this way um again it’s you’re not doing it wrong if you don’t do it uh this way but I like to cook that zucchini I like to keep the zucchini off to the side at this point because I really I’m happy with the texture and the um dness of the zucchini this is just smelling really really good I mean zucchini egg garlic olive oil uh an onion can’t really go wrong with that a wonderful Italian Dish all right I’m just going to let that sit for a little bit and let it cook actually while this is cooking it’s a really good time for me to kind of tell you about some suggestions of how you can modify this recipe and uh even what you can serve it with now starting with the what to serve it with I gotta tell you my ideas are pretty limited because I’m not a big breakfast person uh but honestly one of the things that I know go really really well with this dish are potatoes uh so if you do pan fried potatoes um that you have or you do a baked potato whatever it may be that will go really well with this dish um and of course toast bread Jam all of that will go really well um you could do some french toast um um if you if you’re doing like a big brunch uh if you’re into meat you could do some sausage uh some bacon okay so at this point my egg is pretty much done and I’m going to go ahead and mix it back in at this point with the zucchini and you don’t want to cook I know I said I cook I like to cook egg a th% done uh but really you don’t want to cook it to where it is so dry that um it shrinks to like where you can barely see it okay so real quick at the end what we’re going to be doing I almost forgot this we’re just going to add some Romano cheese now this is optional you don’t have to do it okay but I like to do this add a little bit of cheese in there again measurements I’m just doing a sprinkling of it um but I would probably say maybe about a tablespoon um for this type of quantity probably more obviously more if you’re doing it you don’t have to do it and if you don’t have Romano you can use parmesan just make sure it’s a good quality because I mean I’ve had a lot of store-bought parmesan out there and it friends it a lot of times it just doesn’t have a lot of flavor I’m sorry if you’re a dieh hard parmesan person um unless you’re getting a good quality brand uh it doesn’t have a lot of flavor oftentimes um so if you buy it in the block uh then that’s a little different because uh it’s going to be fresher and it’s usually a brand that H that has better quality let’s go ahead and give this a taste test see if I’ve done it justice so you can add like I told you about the potatoes you can add the potato you can actually cook this with potatoes just cook the potatoes first them off to the side it in the olive oil it’s like really really good let actually just taking that buddy it’s a wonderful summer day actually it’s not summer yet almost summer day outside and it sound may sound cheesy but like the birds were like just chirping really loud when I took that bite you probably couldn’t hear it but it took me back to when I first uh started having these type of dishes for breakfast um when we used to visit uh my husband’s family and uh they would grab the ingredients from the garden and put all this together anyway just kind of took me back there down memory lane a bit all right so I hope that you try this recipe you now know how to make it it’s called cocozelle so you can impress all your friends and family and it’s just so basic I’m sure that different cultures have different variations but uh let me know if you’ve tried it or if you have any of your own tips uh variations of this recipe just do it in the comments below don’t forget to give a like uh join my newsletter too because um I send out more recipes like this on a weekly basis and you’re really going to love them so well thank you so much for watching I really really appreciate it and uh have a wonderful wonderful day [Music]