Maggiano's Tomato Cream Sauce and Breaded Zucchini - At home!

Continuing our "restaurant dinners at home" theme, I attempted one of our favorites from Maggiano's last night. The pasta was perfect! But that is because I totally cheated and bought the Maggiano's Tomato Cream Sauce from the store. Literally the same sauce they use at the restaurant. I thought, why reinvent the wheel? If they are selling it, I'm buying it!

So my next challenge was the breaded zucchini and lemon aioli dipping sauce. I went surfing online to find recipes and decided to combine two of them, baking half the batch and frying the other to compare which works better.

Here is the recipe...
• 3 medium zucchini – washed, stems removed, sliced lengthwise into thin pieces.

Batter:
• 1 ½ cups club soda
• ¾ cups plain flour
• ½ cups corn starch
• 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon course ground pepper
• Panko Bread crumbs for breading – poured into a shallow 9×9 dish.

Mix soda, flour, starch, salt, onion powder, and pepper together and pour into a shallow 9×9 dish. Dip zucchini strips into batter. Then dip the strips into the Panko bread crumbs, coating each side.

In a large skillet, pour vegetable oil 1” deep. Heat oil over medium high flame. Add battered zucchini and fry for 2-3 minutes or until golden brown on bottom side, turn zucchini and repeat. Drain on layers of paper towels. Shake Parmesan Cheese over fired zucchini right before serving. Serve hot with Lemon Aioli dipping sauce.

LEMON AIOLI DIPPING SAUCE:
• ½ Cup Hellman’s Mayo
• ½ Cup Sour Cream
• Juice of one lemon
• ½ teaspoon Dill Weed.

Whisk all together in small bowl.

So this is what they should look like...

And these were mine...

They didn't turn out very well but the flavor was there. The baked version definitely won. It was just so hard to get the breading to stick. Looks like we will have to take out the zucchini and make the pasta at home on this one!