Zucc

Growing up, zucchini squash was never much of a favorite. Toward the middle or end of summer, everyone had lots of the squash and it became a ubiquitous side dish. In aid of using the surplus we'd have it boiled (not great), fried (good) sauted (good), in chocolate cake (ok- lots of chocolate) and in bread (very good). It also appeared in soup, salads and on crudite platters. Back then, if anyone had told me I'd pay $.99/lb for zucchini, I never would have believed them.

As an adult, I'm much more fond of zucchini and eat it quite a bit. I haven't seen anything new to do with zucchini in a long time, barring its appearance in vegetarian lasagna, at least until perusing the below mentioned "River Cottage Cookbook". There, Fearnley-Whittingstall counsels to cook zucchini very slowly in a bit of olive oil and salt until the liquid has largely been cooked out and it is very soft. He then uses it as a base for soup, souffle, or pasta sauce. The latter is completed by adding a bit of cream and Parmesan cheese to the zucchini pulp. Having a couple of plants producing, we gave it a try.



It takes a long time to cook down, but you don't want to brown it:



A very little bit of cream and some grated cheese:



makes a very nice pasta sauce. The green, fresh flavor of the squash comes through nicely and the texture is creamy and rich, despite being largely vegetable. I'll bet you could feed this to almost any kid without complaint.