Summer Squash with Wine Vinegar and Mint

See our zucchini plant? It's nearly ready to bloom.

I used a couple of larger yellow squashes last night to make a dish by Viana La Place. Since it is served cold, and will keep a couple of days in the refrigerator, it's a welcome change for hot weather.

Cut two summer squash in small dice. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a skillet until quite hot. Add the squash and saute until there are brown flecks and squash is tender. Remove squash from pan and place in serving dish. Add 1/2 cup red wine vinegar to the skillet and heat to boiling. Pour over the squash.

Then add 2 cloves minced garlic, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint leaves (I used parsley mixed with dried mint), and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and chill before serving.

Advice About Vegetables

Here is some of Dad's beautiful pak choy. I cooked the first smaller heads whole, but these were a little larger so I cut them into slices, sauteed them in a little oil until seared, stir-fried in some garlic and minced ginger, and dressed them with this sauce from Jack Bishop. Searing the pak choy really adds to its character and flavor. Pour in this sauce at the end and let it boil up for a few seconds.

1 1/2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds

And now to the matter of zucchini. It's really important to cut it into small pieces! I'm convinced that people who don't think they like zucchini are really just averse to large, wet chunks of it. I usually cut it in quarters lengthwise, then into small slices. In the dish above it is sauteed with garlic, then cherry tomatoes and black olives are added near the end. I believe I also added oregano, salt, and pepper.

Zucchini Soup

It's great to be back in my own kitchen again. Last night, after a swim at Mary Ellen's, we all had a dinner of cold zucchini soup and homemade bread; followed by a second course of grilled Copper River red salmon, grilled eggplant from the garden, and French potato salad. I call it French to distinguish it from the mayonnaise version.

For the potato salad, I used red potatoes and after boiling them in their skins until barely tender I cut them into chunks and tossed them with this dressing: 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup rice vinegar, a pressed clove of garlic, a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, salt and pepper. I also added a sliced green onion and some fresh tarragon.

Here is the soup recipe:

Curried Zucchini Soup

2 tablespoons butter
2 large zucchini, thinly sliced
1/2 onion, thinly sliced

Melt butter and add zucchini and onion. Cover and cook 10 minutes; do not brown.

2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon salt (maybe a little less)

Add curry powder and salt and cook another 2 minutes.

2 cups chicken broth
1 cup half-and-half (or evaporated milk)

Place vegetables in blender, add broth and cream, and process until creamy. Chill. Garnish with chives or parsley.

Bitter and Sweet, All Green

Sauteed red dandelion greens with just a few drops of red wine vinegar:

Unscripted zucchini soup made with garden zucchini, sweet onions, fresh thyme, a touch of rosemary, parsley, garlic, stock from a smoked chicken, buttermilk, and lots of black pepper:

Together they were magical. The dandelions were ultra-bitter, and the soup quite sweet. Very nice.

We also had steamed garden okra (note the purple pods in with the green this year) and homemade biscuits. No meat, no heavy protein anything -- just lots of green food.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

The ex-girlfriend of an old friend of mine used to make chocolate zucchini cakes a lot. She would sit in front of the oven on a stool watching them bake through the oven door.

I don't have her recipe. But Clotilde's version is about perfect with just one addition: 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon sifted in with the dry ingredients. I used a springform pan.

I made one a few weeks ago when I found a giant zucchini hidden under a leaf in the garden. Lawson ate the entire cake within about three days and politely requested I make another one immediately. Unfortunately, that was the week the local food challenge started...and because there is no local cacao source, I didn't make another one until late last week. It's almost gone, too.

Zucchini Risotto

My first recipe from My Italian Garden was a success. The book is beautiful to leaf through and be inspired by, but that's seldom an indication of whether the recipes are any good. This was -- for something with as difficult a reputation as a risotto, it was simple, fresh, and delicious. I even ran out of medium-grain rice and had to use 1/4 basmati, and the recipe still worked beautifully. The zucchini almost melted into the risotto, but its flavor filled out the whole dish without overpowering the intense rice flavor. It took time, but with a glass of wine and a book there was no reason for me NOT to stand by the stove for a while, right?

We ate it with fresh tomatoes and cold smoked chicken; Lawson was making ribs on Sunday, so we put a chicken in the smoker for the last few hours, thereby ensuring the next day's dinner, several days of good sandwiches, and a carcass to make stock out of later in the week. I need more hours in the day.

Raw and Roasted Summer Pasta

Oh, this was so good. I made a raw tomato sauce out of:

- 10 medium and small ripe garden tomatoes, seeded and chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3/4 cup of fresh basil, chopped
- a few tablespoons olive oil
- salt and pepper

I combined all that and let it blend for about an hour on the counter. Meanwhile, I tossed together:

- 1 zucchini, cubed
- 2 small Japanese eggplant, cubed
- olive oil
- salt

I put all that on a baking sheet and roasted it at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Then I boiled some gemelli and tossed everything together with:

- 1 ball fresh mozzarella, cubed
- grated Parmesan

It tasted like summer. We ate a lot of it with some really cheap and fairly crummy Merlot. It even made the wine taste good.

Breakfast Burrito

Last night we had Zucchini with Bacon (and onions and tomatoes) from Rustic Italian Cooking, roasted potato wedges, and salmon patties. The squash was okay, but not as wonderful as the title sounds. But both the squash and potatoes had new life this morning in this sensational Breakfast Burrito.

Saute together leftover squash, leftover cooked potatoes, and green chiles if you have them.

Add 2 eggs and cook until scrambled. Toss in whatever cheese is in the house; in my case this was feta and white cheddar. Roll in a big flour tortilla and top with salsa.

Be satisfied.

Return to Vegetables

On the kitchen counter waiting for me when I returned from my DC trip was this tableau:
As you can see, we have a variety of eggplant types, some tomatoes, some okra, some yellow squash, and one dark and enormous zucchini hidden under it all. Last night Lawson roasted eggplant, onions, and zucchini, then made pesto and cooked some rigatoni and tossed it all together. It was delicious.

Grilled Catfish with Peach and Black Bean Salsa

Here's a mostly local meal: U.S. farm-raised catfish fillets marinated in lime juice, cumin, and coriander seed and then grilled; a salsa made of South Carolina peaches and red peppers, black beans, and a can of Herdez salsa verde; and red romaine lettuce. For a second course, Lawson made zucchini soup with zucchini that he grew, chicken stock, a Vidalia onion, coriander seed, sherry, and a little cream.

The catfish was odd: the hind half of each fillet was flaky and tender and delicious, while the front half had big gristly bands of fat and general nasty toughness. I like the idea of locally farmed catfish -- it's sustainable, it's an economic boon to the rural South, it's not from China -- and was really ready to love it. I just wish the whole fillet had been like the back half.

Herdez salsa verde is the ultimate secret ingredient. We keep no fewer than five cans on hand at all times.

Zucchini Gratin II: An Actual Recipe

My camera's broken, which is just as well, because I just went digging through our archives for a zucchini recipe for tonight's dinner and found what has to be my most obnoxious post. There's no actual recipe there, just some blabber and a pretty picture. So for tonight's post I re-reconstructed the zucchini gratin recipe. Here it is:

Combine:
-2 pounds zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch chunks, and lightly steamed if tough
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 small can green chiles, diced
- 1 teaspoon dill seed
- 2 cups cheese. Use any combination of shredded or diced mozzarella, jack, or cheddar; cottage cheese; Parmesan; whatever.
- salt and pepper to taste

If you used drier cheeses, you might also want to add up to 1/4 cup of milk or cream.
Put everything in a buttered casserole dish. Mix together and sprinkle on top:
- 1/2 cup bread crumbs or 2 slices bread, diced
- 1 or 2 tablespoons melted butter or olive oil
- Parmesan, if you have any

Bake uncovered at 375 for about 20 minutes, or until browned and bubbly.

I served it with garden spinach drizzled with a warm caramelized onion and tarragon dressing, an ad hoc and surprisingly good side dish. For dessert we had banana bread.

Zucchini Gratin

Neither Lawson nor I was very hungry tonight, but I bought some nice zucchini, so I went digging through my recipe file* to find the old recipe you gave me for Zucchini Cheese Casserole. It's a recipe from your low-fat cooking era, and thus contains fat-free cottage cheese and egg whites, but that was easily modified. I changed the name to make it sound fancier. It's just zucchini, a few different cheeses, eggs, green chiles, and some dill seed and black pepper.



The Le Creuset dish you gave me makes a perfect gratin -- good browned, crusty cheese all around the edges -- so the answer to your question from three weeks ago is yes, you should buy their gratin dish to replace your old copper one when it finally goes.

* My recipe file is cumbersome, but I am emotionally attached to it and have no intention yet of switching to something more useful. It's a legal-sized folder, so it won't fit on any bookshelves, and it's packed full of hand-scribbled recipes, notecards and postcards with recipes from you and Grandma, printouts of old emails you sent me in undergrad, magazine clippings, and random notes. Some of the recipes are written on the backs of old flyers from shows my first band played. One page contains your old recipe for sesame broccoli with a note in my handwriting saying "Don't buy cooking wine EVER."

***
Edited 05/20/07 to add: Here's an actual recipe to go with this post.

Chicken Tagine with Chickpeas and Almonds

I’m not sure about tagines. I tried a lamb one from my Paula Wolfert cookbook a few months ago, and it was grey. The problem with traditional Moroccan tagine recipes I have read is that (a) they don’t have any garlic in them! and (b) the meat isn’t browned first. I have a hard time getting past those two prejudices, but as I write I am simmering a chicken/almond/chickpea tagine from my new Roden cookbook and it smells wonderful.

Later...

I had to blanch the almonds for the tagine. I had a general idea about boiling water, etc., but I couldn’t find the information in my cookbooks. So I looked it up on the Internet and indeed, I had to pour boiling water over them, wait one minute, drain and rinse in cold water, and then rub the skins off. Ha! About one third of them succumbed the first time around. The remaining ones needed the microwave treatment before giving up their skins. The tagine recipe indicated that they would get quite soft in and hour and a half of stewing, but it didn’t really happen. The chicken was tender, though, and the sauce “unctuous” as promised. Because of the rich blandness of the tagine I accompanied it with yogurt-cucumber-garlic sauce and homemade pear chutney. I served it with couscous and a favorite zucchini dish.

Favorite Zucchini Dish

Slice two smallish zucchini lengthwise into thin slabs. Lay in a baking dish and turn to coat with 1 teaspoon olive oil.

Top with the following mixture:
½ cup bread crumbs
¼ cup parmesan
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt, pepper
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 or 2 cloves minced garlic
Juice of ½ lemon

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 or 30 minutes, or until tender and browned on top.

Of course things take longer to get done just right when you’re in a hurry, have you noticed that?

Interesting Cookbook Note: I looked in the new white 1997 Joy of Cooking for how to blanch almonds—no joy. Later I found the information in the old blue 1964 one.