Why not have zucchini for lunch and — I’m serious here — more for dinner?
Not only do I crave zucchini, not only do I celebrate when it first appears – a couple of weeks ago, where we live – but I miss it so much in the winter that I sometimes “cheat” and buy it in the supermarket. This is our time of year, folks.
The natural comparison is to eggplant — although they’re not from the same family; zucchini is a squash, and eggplant a nightshade, more closely related to tomatoes and potatoes, for what it’s worth — and we often treat them similarly.
But because zucchini (let’s just say “summer squash,” since it can all be treated about the same) is about twenty times as prolific as eggplant and also has a far longer season (that’s not science, just my experience), people sometimes treat it as a nuisance, as in “I had so much freaking zucchini I had to make zucchini bread,” which, admittedly, is a last resort. But I personally think that if you take good zucchini (small-to-medium, without any of that cottony, seedy stuff inside) and cut it into pieces, you can treat it like cucumber, which means that eating one or two a day is hardly a challenge, especially if you have some hummus or labne or, for that matter, good olive oil lying around.
I’m won’t list zucchini recipes here (we’ve already done that, to some extent), but will discuss two in a little detail. And — I’m not lying here — I ate the first of these yesterday for lunch and the second for dinner.
Zucchini and Garlic Confit, a/k/a (Not) Grilled (Not) Eggplant
This derives from my friend Pamela’s “grilled eggplant” recipe. Of course this variation is neither grilled nor eggplant, but still, the concept and seasoning are Pamela’s, or at least let’s say she taught them to me.
Pasta with Zucchini Sauce
The second recipe is either a natural evolution or a classic that I’ve never been served. You might call it “pasta with zucchini” (clever, huh?). It involves, again, thin-sliced zucchini, but in this case a lot: for two people, two or three medium; for four people, at least four. (Again, avoid super-large zucchini.)
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