Zucchini. Seasonality. Apricots

Travel

17 Jul

When the first zucchini comes in from the garden — with that sweet green scent of their slightly prickly skin, and the first sauté of slices in olive oil with a smashed clove of new garlic, a fleck of chile — it is so welcome after a spring full of salads and greens. In midsummer the persistence of mottled emerald Romanesco, ridged Fiorentino, droplet-shaped yellow crookneck, softball-sized Ronde de Nice, and the dense buttery Rugosa Friulana becomes overwhelming. The key is diversity: few plants of several varieties. And cooking them in contrasting ways. Here’s a checklist in case you forget, in a daze under the deluge of courgettes.

Stewed. Larger pieces cut lengthwise put in a cold pan with a few cherry tomatoes, a branch of basil, lots of olive oil, salt, a splash of wine vinegar and gently braised.

Puréed soup, hot or chilled. Sweat sliced zucchini or yellow squash with onion and butter. Add a single chosen spice like toasted cumin or coriander, or chile (jalapeño is nice with yelllow squash and/or sweet corn soup made in the same way). Add water to cover, cook through and then purée. Serve with a pinch of the same spice on top and a thread of olive oil.

Fried to brown. Zucchini is particularly tasty slightly charred. Just browned in hot oil turns its flavors caramelly and the texture of the flesh fluffy.

Deep fried. Salt and drain slabs of larger fruit. Dredge in flour, dip in egg, then flour again and fry in hot oil. Hit with salt and lemon.

‘Carpaccio’. Mandolin long strips and dress with olive oil, a slight splash of red wine vinegar, salt, black pepper and shaved parmigiano.

Melted down with butter and onions. A classic of the American South. Comforting and good accompanying a steak.

With tomato. A quick toss in olive oil with garlic and smashed cherry tomatoes, then hot spaghetti. Add a little pasta water to loosen the sauce.

In a Tian, the Provençal casserole. Layer thick slices of zucchini, eggplant, tomato, basil leaves in a casserole dish. Particularly nice if the slices are stacked vertically. Season heavily and cover in olive oil. Bake until melting and browned, eat with bread for sopping up the juices.

Fritters. Don’t forget fritters! Grate zucchini, salt, drain for half an hour, and wring out. Mix with egg and flour and dollop into hot, shallow oil. Add grated or fine onion to the mix, or shredded zucchini blossoms.

Zucchini Bread. Or better, cake.

Another flare on the path of this season is the brief blaze of local apricots. The quintessential golden sunset color of the precious fruit appears well before peach season. Apricots always reminds me what seasonality is about. Apricots simply are not good out of season. And even within the few weeks they are being harvested, there is a peak. They start out tart, deceptively acidic, and firm and quickly pass over into insipid pulp. When you catch one just right it is sublime.

Rolled out pastry wrapped roughly around halved apricots tossed in sugar and baked till jammy takes care of any fruit that has ‘gone over’.

Seasonality, following the season with our senses, is rooted in what we eat. The changes in weather and light, the festivals that mark the seasons, the emotion of Christmas or the start of spring or ‘back to school’ — it’s all punctuated with food. To taste the apricots and know I will not eat them for the rest of year — unless dried or preserved as jam — grounds me in this moment. When peaches come on after that the season had really shifted. By the time plums arrive I can almost face apples again. An apple in peach season feels all wrong.

Zucchini does not preserve well in any form (other than perhaps a jarred caponata). This is why I eat it every day until I feel I never want to see it again. Following this tide of ripeness is not just ecologically correct or a foodie trend, it is a sensual, physical attunement with what’s happening in the natural world. It’s responding to what the earth is giving us, telling us about what our bodies need. Taste is a primordial sense, connected with survival. When the particularity of apricot hits the palate —or that scent of zucchini fuzz takes us to the pan to sizzle garlic in olive oil, it’s to be taken seriously — yet celebratorily — a cue from our deepest nature.