Zucchini Season

I have been resisting Zucchini Season. Once it begins, it feels like a forced march - zucchinis everywhere, offered free by friends, left like orphaned babies at your doorstep in the dark of the night, on special at the supermarket. All those zucchinis, begging to be made into something. So much need. It's enough to make me retreat to bed with a good book, even when I'm not growing them myself.

This week at the farmer's market, I finally succumbed to Zucchini Season. My Beloved found four absolutely beautiful, medium-sized, dark green and bright yellow summer squashes, plus a nice bright red bell pepper and a couple of tomatoes, so we brought them home to make barbouille, which may or may not be a classic dish. I sort of invented it many years ago in Zucchini Season. I keep coming back to it because neither My Beloved nor I like eggplant, so the other most common Zucchini Season dish, ratatouille, is not in our kitchen vocabulary.

Barbouille is like ratatouille without the eggplant. I cut up onions in spears through the root end, which makes them mysteriously sweeter than chopping, mince a few (or sometimes several) cloves of garlic, sautéing them in olive oil, then add slices of bright summer squashes, coarsely chopped bell pepper and tomato, and a glug of white wine of some kind, plus herbs.

I often use thyme and oregano from the garden but sometimes I'm too lazy to saunter out to the front steps, so I just sprinkle in some dried Herbes de Provence, s & p, cover and let it simmer for at least half an hour. If the squashes and tomatoes are very juicy, you can lift the cover for the last 20 minutes or so to concentrate the pan juices. It's better if you cook this one day and eat it the next day, but even the first day, it's delicious. You can serve it over rice or pasta, or simply scoop it into bowls and eat it plain. You can also grate some cheese over it if you want but I like it just the way it comes from the pan. This time, I added some of the bright yellow flowers from the wild fennel plant that is volunteering outside my front door for a little sweet licorice kick.

When you succumb to Zucchini Season, I can recommend barbouille as an alternative to hiding in your bed.

And While We're On The Topic Of Zucchini...

When my sister and I were little children, before we learned to read for ourselves, our parents read to us each evening. A special treat was to be tucked up in our parents' bed, one of us on either side of our mother while she read to us and we enjoyed the pictures. Being pressed against her warm shoulder was a wonderfully contented sensation.

When my Dad read to us, it was very properly on the couch. He often brought home books for us when he was on one of his bookstore shopping sprees. My mother would roll her eyes when she saw him bringing yet more hardbound books into the house, which inevitably had to be jettisoned before each successive Navy move, but he never could resist a bestseller. And when he saw a children's book that he liked, he scooped that up as well.

Mom loved A.A.Milne and Rudyard Kipling; both authors brought an almost British inflection to her voice as she read with very precise diction and lively presentation. She preferred to be called "Mummy" as mothers in those books were. Dad favored books with rhyming texts, such as "The Cat in the Hat" and "Madeline." He always did love rhymes and limericks, quoting them with relish. Ogden Nash was a favorite of his.

The other day, my sister sent me a colorful postcard from North Carolina and, on the reverse, she had copied a little limerick that she found in the Christian Science Monitor. Reading it was Proustian for me - I was carried back to those days when my parents read to us. Nancy seems to have absorbed the love of rhyming from them, too.

Zucchini, by Ann Carranza

Consider the humble zucchini,

Some huge and others quite teeny.

Try some of both

And never be loath

To serve them with fresh tortellini.

Withdrawal

The day after we got back from Grass Valley with the fridge virtually empty and our appetites leaning away from serious protein for a while, I scrounged around in pantry and refrigerator for dinner fixings and came up, magically, with one of the best meals ever.

I had four eightball zucchinis in the fridge, cute little ones no larger than a billiard ball, a single, cooked, four-inch length of the Italian sausage we had made over the Fourth of July weekend, an onion, some garlic, three kinds of Italian cheese, a small head of broccoli and half a box of fancypants pasta. Add a little dried basil and you've got dinner.

First, I sautéed half of the chopped onion and three cloves of crushed garlic in olive oil in a wide pan, then added the sausage, finely diced. After the sausage was heated through, I set the pan aside to cool while I sliced the tops off the zucchinis and scooped out the innards with a small spoon. When the sausage mixture was cool enough to handle, I stuffed it into the zucchinis, placed them in a small roasting dish and slid them into a 400 degree oven until they were just soft but not mushy, about an hour.

While the zucchinis roasted, I boiled salted water for the pasta and, cut the broccoli into florets. This pasta takes about 20 minutes to cook; when it was nearly done, I threw the florets in the water to cook until it was bright green, perhaps two or three minutes.

While the pasta was cooking, I grated about a cup of half Romano and half Parmesan cheeses into a large bowl with olive oil and the basil, mixing that together into a paste. When the pasta and broccoli were scooped out of the water, I dumped them into the bowl and added about a quarter cup of the pasta water, quickly mixing it all around until the cheese melted over the pasta and broccoli. A tablespoon or two of butter added a little more richness as I stirred it around.

When the zucchinis emerged from the oven, I lifted the tops and laid a triangle of provolone cheese over the filling, then replaced the tops to help melt the cheese.

Plated in pasta bowls with a nest of the pasta surrounding the zucchini, it made a pretty presentation. When we cut into the zucchinis, releasing the spicy, juicy, flavorful contents to mix with the pasta, the result was truly ambrosial. This is one of those meals that proves that meat makes a great condiment - just a little is needed to punch a dish up from good to great, and it doesn't have to be the main event. That one small link fed three people amply.

It was perfect after the Giant Steak Weekend, to ease us down off the meaty high.

Summer Is Coming!

Lookee what I found at last week's farmer's market - a sure sign of summer! Zucchini already, despite the cold and the wet and the less-than-springlike weather around here.

While we were whining about the clouds and rain, the stalwart zucchinis just got on with the business of reproduction. Opened up those big golden flowers and said, "Why don't you come up some time and see me? You can be had."

I enjoy the novelty of these eightball zucchinis. They are nearly as big in my hand as a softball and are just asking to be stuffed. I obliged. I made a simple stuffing by sautéing together half a chopped onion, five or six coarsely chopped crimini mushrooms, one chopped spicy Italian sausage (this particular one was fully cooked - Fra'Mani) and fresh snipped thyme and oregano from the garden, plus all the little garlic budettes from one scape. It was just the right amount of stuffing for two of the zucchinis. I cut the tops off about 1/4 of the way down, scooped out the forming seeds and flesh with a spoon, leaving about a 1/4 inch thick shell, and piled in the stuffing.

Into a 350 degree F oven for about an hour or a tad more and they were ready. The bland zucchini tempered the spice of the sausages and the onion and mushrooms did their usual magic. If your zucchinis are big enough, this is easily a whole meal in itself with perhaps a bit of bread alongside, toasted and rubbed with a cut clove of garlic. The best part of the meal, aside from the flavor, is the knowledge that summer really is on the way.

Spun Up

Stocking up in our little grocery market at the bottom of the hill, I noted that they had some really lovely small zucchinis, still shiny and dark green. This little market has chancy vegetables - some days they are all wilted and sad, other days you can score fresh zucchinis that look just-picked from the garden. I was there on the right day.

So, I took three of them home with me, as well as two big bunches of flowers - recently, the market has been offering huge bouquets of fresh flowers at an amazingly affordable price. I have no sales resistance for beautiful flowers, having spent six years as a florist.

Anyway, with the school bus yellow sunflowers and pale pink mums decorating different corners of my house, I set to work to make a fresh pasta dish out of the zucchinis. I chopped and sautéed, simmered and tasted, and it was all good - just not stellar. So I kept adding things I found in the cupboard or on the counter and ended up using tomatoes four ways and alliums three ways.

First, I chopped an onion and minced three cloves of garlic, and sautéed them in olive oil. I had some leeks in the fridge, which had survived our absence, so I chopped two of those and added them to the allium mix, as well.

Next, I added a can of peeled tomatoes (I'm feeling lazy after our ten days of travel and tending small children). Then I had the idea to add a couple of fresh tomatoes for extra flavor. Still not satisfied with the taste, I added a big spoonful of sun dried tomatoes to ratchet up the richness. Finally, a big squeeze of tomato paste from the tube in the fridge, and that did the trick. Mixed in with the other three kinds, it added the serious tomato taste I was seeking.

A little wine, a drift of Herbes de Provence, a little time on a low flame, a drizzle of olive oil and a snowfall of parmesan grated fresh at the table and it was as tasty a vegetarian pasta as I've ever spun around my fork.

Behind The Eight Balls

I should try to grow these. Every summer, I look forward to these little round zucchinis and only find them every now and then. There's something playful and funny about the shape - it's really the only difference between these and the long ones.

Normally, I cut off the tops, remove the innards, mix said innards with other tasty things and stuff them right back in. This time, a neighbor had given me a small summer squash and a tiny new zucchini, so I used those instead of the innards to make a stuffing.

Cut the top quarter off the eightball squashes and hollow out the body with a spoon, leaving about 1/2-1/4 inch thickness in the walls and bottom. Chop a small zucchini and a small summer squash (crookneck). Mince garlic a couple of cloves of garlic and about half a small onion, lightly sauté in olive oil with Italian herb seasoning warming in the same pan. Add the finely chopped squash cubes and cook for about five minutes, until the zucchini is even brighter green and the summer squash is still a sunny yellow. Off the heat, add a handful of grated ParmReg and stir it around to mix it in, then stuff the mixture into the hollowed eightball zucchinis. Top with the stem end caps. Roast in a 400 degree oven for about an hour, basting once with butter or pan juices; I usually stick them in the oven with a chicken and they finish roasting at about the same time.

Of course, you can play around with the stuffing - next time, I'm going to add some Sartain's Menu sauce for fun. Italians would probably add tomato sauce or the tomatoes themselves. Some like to mix in bread crumbs or cubes. You might want to try different cheeses. Zucchinis are so bland that they lend themselves to embellishment and experimentation. Knock yourself out.

Pseudo Greek

I've never been to Greece; the closest I've come is watching "Zorba the Greek" when it was the coolest movie around. I have heard friends extol the beauties of Greece the wonder of its cuisine but, so far, I haven't experienced it first hand.

My father, mother, sister and brother went once briefly - they came back amazed by the blue skies and ancient culture but rolling their eyes and groaning at Dad's joke: He would point to the street and shop signs in Athens and say, "See all those signs? It's all Greek to me."

Ouch.

However, despite my lack of Greek experience, by a series of happenstances I ended up with a fridge full of Greek-style ingredients - a couple of lamb shoulder chops, some leftover brown rice, purple onion, garlic, tart black olives, fresh marjoram from the garden, a lemon, green onions, a zucchini and a summer squash, and some feta cheese.

I slapped the chops on the grill while I chopped and sliced all the other ingredients including cutting little cubes of the firm feta and stripping the leaves off the marjoram stems. I cut the zucchini and the summer squash in chunks and laid them alongside the chops on the grill to get striped. Reheated the rice and plated that while the red onion and garlic sautéed in a wide pan, then added the olives, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash and marjoram leaves to the pan to heat briefly together after the striping was accomplished. At the last minute, I added the green onion and squeezed a lemon's worth of juice over the veggies to sparkle the flavors. The chop went on top of the rice, alongside all those colorful veggies and I laid a line of feta cubes between the two for accent.

Okay, here's the lesson: the word pseudo is from the Greek, meaning "false" or "lying" but I'm not lying when I tell you this was the best meal I've made in weeks and weeks. When do we leave for Greece?

Summer Yummer Veggies

What is better to nestle into the curve of a grilled Italian sausage than some summer veggies such as dark green zucchini, colorful yellow, orange and red bell pepper and purple onion chunks quickly sautéed in a squiggle of olive oil and topped with some chopped oregano?

Nothing.

Energizer Bunny of the Garden World

Leave a waning veggie garden for ten days and look what you get upon return - six dark green zucchinis (I didn't photograph the baseball bat-sized one) and two green tomatoes which refuse to redden but which dropped off the vine into my hand, signaling their readiness.

I'll give some of the zucchini to my neighbor to thank her for watching the house but I'm at a loss as to what to do with the two green tomatoes. I've tried fried green tomatoes - maybe it's just me, but they were underwhelming - and I have no other good ideas. Guess I'll go online this afternoon and see what looks yummy, unless you have some suggestions...

Damning with Faint Praise

Just as my zucchini plants are revving into high production gear, we are looking for new ways to serve a veggie we've been eating all summer a little at a time.

Here's the latest iteration, zucchini tossed in dill butter in a pan over medium heat until the skin turns brightly green, then throwing in some colorful cherry tomatoes at the very end. I didn't want to cook the tomatoes, just to heat them through so they retained their integrity and bright color.

It was fine, okay, acceptable - but not what in my family we called "acceptable plus," our highest accolade. The warmed and dilly tomatoes were the best part. Another time, I think I'd try a fresh basil chiffonade - or just warm tomatoes alone in the dill butter. Luckily, we have more zucchinis growing in the garden and I invested in a basil plant a couple of weeks ago, so stand by for the next experiments. In the meantime, this one wasn't half bad.

The Garden's Last Gasp

See that ripe, red, juicy, gorgeous Brandywine tomato? I grew that. I'm proud.

I'd be truly puffed up if I had managed to grow more than one, but one is all we got from that plant this year.

Oh, well... at least it was delicious, as perfectly sweet and tasty a tomato as everI have eaten. It fell off the vine into my palm this morning and ended up simply sliced on our plates this evening. Lovely.

Don't stop there! The zucchini boat in the picture also came from the garden, one of those sneaky ones that hides under those platter-sized leaves until it attains approximate shape and heft of a cudgel. I scooped out the seedy part and filled the boat with a mixture of garlic, onion, fennel, sweet pepper, chicken apple sausage ballettes (new word, I just invented it) and little bread cubes, all sauteed in olive oil before inserting in the boats and baking in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes. Quite tasty.

Oh, there will be another zucchini or two and perhaps a handfull of green beans but this is the last true offering from the funny little garden I planted this year, all tucked in among the daisies and irises. I noticed some strawberry plants at the market this morning and I must admit I was tempted to plant some of those for next year's garden.

Ratty Touie

Not being a lover of eggplant, still I love the rest of ratatouille, so sometimes I fudge it a little and make what I call Ratty Touie, a bastardized version of the real thing. The ingredients change a little each time - there's not a lot you can do to ruin Ratty Touie!

This time, I got a little creative, mostly because I didn't have all the ingredients in the house but had some other stuff that sounded fun and Mediterranean-ish - so, what the heck?

I sliced fairly thinly zucchinis, pattypan squash, fresh tomatoes and marinated artichoke hearts, the kind that come in a squat bottle, and peeled the papery skins off some of my slow-roasted tomato* halves.

I quartered some large shallots through the root end and minced two big cloves of garlic. After sauteeing the shallots and garlic in a little olive oil, I skimmed the bottom of a deep, lidded casserole with more olive oil, then layered the veggies in it one by one, alternating the shallot-garlic mixture with the other layers and sprinkling each layer with herbes de Provence. When I got to the top layer, I poured about half the vinaigrette from the jar of artichoke hearts over the whole thing, put on the lid and baked it in a 350 degree oven for about an hour - you'll know when it is ready as the whole house smells of the perfume.

All the veggies relaxed against each other and mingled like guests at a good party where everyone knows everyone else and no one is out to dominate, except perhaps those slow-roasted tomatoes - they are such showoffs! Sweetly oniony and softly savory, it was one of the best things I've made this summer, even if it is a little ratty.

*If you don't have slow-roasted tomatoes on hand, I think sun-dried ones might work but I'd layer them toward the bottom of the casserole where the juices from the other veggies would moisten them.

Trug Soup

I have an active imagination. When I began my garden, I imagined myself wafting out to my productive little patch, probably wearing a floaty Loretta Youngesque sundress and a picture hat, romantic-looking trug in hand, to harvest all the wonders that Nature would have provided.

Right.

The reality is that I do my harvesting in baggy pants and without a basket, romantic-looking or otherwise, as my two pockets and a single handful pretty much fills the bill. I was pretty resentful of that fact, too, until I made soup one day from the contents of my imaginary trug.

Okay, I did add two red potatoes, a large onion, three garlic cloves, two (Chilebrown) chili peppers, a fennel bulb, four ears of corn and a quart of veggie stock that didn't originate on my property but the fresh thyme, greenie beanies and zucchinis were my very own.

The preparation was the usual for soup - soften the aromatics in olive oil, add the thyme until it becomes fragrant and dump in the stock and the rest of the chopped veggies (except the corn, which I reserved until the end - I like crisp corn) and simmer until you can't wait any longer to ladle it into a bowl for the first taste. Add salt and pepper as you like.

It was dreamy.

Now my romantic vision is of a perfectly set table with the sun setting behind My Beloved's shoulders as we slurp our Trug Soup, holding hands by candlelight. This fantasy is far more likely to come true.

Shirred Eggs with Style

A recent Sunset magazine article featured eggs baked in hollowed pattypan squash, an idea with appeal. Theirs looked like the yellow one in the picture; I also wanted to try a globe zucchini just for fun, changing the recipe a bit to suit my own tastes.

All you do is cut the bottom off the squash to make a stable (and edible) base, then slice off the top and scoop out the insides, leaving a thin 1/4" shell. The squashes are then brushed with olive oil and baked alongside their tops for about 15 minutes in a 375 degree oven until they are fork tender but still hold their shape. So far, so good - but this is where I diverged.

Rather than using sauteed onion and garlic as Sunset recommended, I used some roasted shallot I had left over and fresh, minced thyme from my garden. You just need a little of the filling, unless you are making these for a crowd, perhaps a tablespoon for each squash. Then, you crack an egg into each veggie ramekin (if some of the white runs down the side, just gently wipe it off or lift out the extra so it doesn't cook on the squash and spoil the symmetry of the finished dish) and put them back into the oven for about 15-20 minutes, depending on how firm you like your egg. You can spoon a little milk on top to keep the egg from drying out.

Having baked both in the same pan, I'd probably recommend that you separate the pattypans from the zucchinis another time - the pattypan, being smaller, cooked faster than the zucchini. If I was making the two again, I'd start the zucchini ones about 3-5 minutes before the pattypans.

I liked many things about this dish - the delicate texture of the eggs, the delicious surprise of the savory shallot underneath, the combination with the squash and the flavor of thyme. The only thing it lacked was something to add just a little richness and texture, the way buttered toast enhances poached eggs. Another time, I might serve it with toasted, buttered and garlic-rubbed baguette slices or perhaps on a bed of wilted spinach and drizzled with some hollandaise sauce. Alternatively, you could add some chopped ham or smoked salmon to the onion mixture.

Any way you serve them, these are definitely baked eggs with style.

Cute Zukes

Sadly, my homegrown zucchinis are not doing very well. I'm not sure if they are not getting enough sun or enough bat poop or enough TLC but, whatever the reason, they only give me one or two small zucchinis every now and then, so I had to resort to store bought ones. At least finding these rolypoly little round ones softened the zucchini disappointment a bit.

Having a little leftover rice (you know, the kind you make by sauteeing onion, then the rice grains, and substituting chicken broth for the water) I decided to try stuffing them with some doctored up rice mixture, a riff on Bea's idea of a couple of weeks ago. I sauteed a large minced shallot and half a rib of minced celery with some of the chopped zucchini flesh that I scooped out with a teaspoon, added about a cup of the rice to heat it and, off the heat, mixed in a heaping tablespoon of creme fraiche before filling the shells and replacing the tops.

Before baking them in a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, I added about 1/4 cup of water to the pan. They were tasty and pretty. Another time, I might use cheese or yogurt with a little more zing but, all in all, we loved the cuteness and the fresh flavors.

Med Veg

Because I had successfully harvested my first three zucchinis before they became baseball bats, despite being away on vacation for a good part of the last three weeks, I tried to think of a way to cook them that would enhance their innocent flavor.

I also had a single ripe tomato from my Early Girl plant, which got me thinking "Mediterranean" and that led me to the half bulb of fennel that was lurking in the vegetable drawer, which reminded me of a jar of nice McEvoy Ranch Tuscan table olives full of briny goodness, and that seemed to call for herbes de Provence.

Somehow, sauteeing didn't seem right and grilling wasn't quite it, nor did I want to add water and steam them - then, finally, I remembered that I had seen veggies roasted in parchment paper using just a little olive oil or butter to add richness - perfect!

Having sliced the veggies thinly, seeded the olives and quartered the tomato, I whipped out my seldom-used parchment paper, made little packets of the mixed veggies and herbs, dotted the top with butter, folding the paper over and tucking it in as my Mom used to do with the waxed paper for our lunchbox sandwiches, and slid them on a cookie sheet into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. The result was simply heavenly, a savory-sweet mixture that made the most of all the veggies in the packet.

I'd make this again for guests - it was that good! It would be easy to make up ahead and pop into the oven 10 or 15 minutes before serving. Each guest would get her/his own packet, which was fun to open, a little like a mysterious present, even for me who knew exactly what went into each one! They'd make a nice vegetarian lunch (even vegan if you went for the olive oil) and are a terrific side dish for dinner.

And all that from three little zucchinis, dark green and shiny, with a Mediterranean twist.

Delish Fish

My Virginia brother's wife, Ann, is an amazing cook. She has the background for it, having been to the Cordon Bleu in Paris to take classes when she and my bro were stationed there. When we visit her, she always makes killer meals - cassoulet that takes her three days to make, Cotelettes Pojarsky rich with butter and cream and, this time, Zucchini-Wrapped Fish Fillets.

She used salmon for her version and it was really pretty with the pink salmon peeking out of the fresh green wrapping but I wanted to try halibut both because it's less threatened here in the west and because I thought the flavors of halibut, basil, lemon and zucchini would meld well. Both versions are really delicious and the wrapping keeps the fish wonderfully moist. While it is fairly simple to prepare, it makes an elegant presentation and looks much more difficult than it really is, once you get the knack of shaving the zucchinis very, very thinly. She adapted hers from the recipe on epicurious.com so if you go there and do a search for Zucchini-Wrapped Fish Fillets, you'll have the basic recipe and can do your own riffs on this swish and delish fish dish!

Good Advice from Down Under

When I kvetched about my snail problems in a previous post, I got some great advice regarding organic solutions to my dilemma in the zingers that farflung bloggers left for me.

Diatomaceous earth, sawdust and beer were all suggested but the idea that seemed to me the most doable came from the Land Down Under.

Dancingmorganmouse from Oz (Aus) suggested that I try coffee grounds so on one of my morning walks, I stopped in at Starbucks to inquire about their used grounds. Turns out they give them away, neatly packaged in recycled coffee bags, free to people like me! I piled some around each plant on top of the bat poop. Miraculous to imagine that my little plants will take those lowly ingredients to make lovely veggies for us and that, via the almost equally amazing internet, I can get gardening solutions from halfway around the world. Shazam!

Veggie Stew

We have some old friends staying with us - that I had never met! These are friends of My Beloved's from his Air Force days, back when Vietnam was the conflict we Americans were botching rather than the current one in Iraq. Annette and Dave are in town for the wedding of their daughter so I got to meet them at last and after just a few days I already count them among my good friends.

This is what I made to share with them from the perfect pepper and a bunch of other fresh veggies like pattypan squash thinly sliced, zucchini chunked, a big onion cut in spears, minced garlic, some white wine, tomato paste, Italian-type herbs and olive oil. All I did was soften the onions and garlic in the olive oil, add the rest and simmer for about half an hour or so.

It made the base on which we laid some fresh halibut fillets to steam with the lid on, skin side up so we could easily peel off the skin once it loosened, then flipped the fillets over in the sauce to coat them and served them simply resting on a bed of the soft, sweet veggies.

The oohs and aaahs from our Florida friends rewarded the not-very-hard work and the Ferrari-Carano 2005 Mill Station chardonnay gave up its oaky essence to enhance the fish and the friendship.