EVEN BETTER ZUCCHINI
You can never have enough garlic.
With enough garlic, you can eat the New York Times. ~Morley Safer (1931 – )
VEGETABLE VARIATION
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I hope you’ve decided upon the meal of your choice, and have begun shopping the big day/night. With lots of things to chose from, here’s one more thing to consider, especially if you’re anxious for something a little more challenging than steamed vegetables. This is my all-time favorite vegetable dish. Zucchini is available all year round in most American metropolitan areas due to the miracle of interstate shipping. It can be made many different ways, even in this preparation, depending upon what you’ve bought and what you like.
BUTTER
I use butter because nothing tastes like butter. You can certainly use oil, but I would use olive oil rather than corn oil. The onions may take a little longer to brown in oil, and you will use a higher heat.
ONION
Caramelized onions is sort of the point of making this dish. Although it will be good with sautéed onions, with caramelized onions it’s great. Caramelizing the onion adds flavor as cooking breaks down the natural sugar in the onion and produces the brown goodness. Your nose will begin to tell you very shortly – and your taste buds will confirm – in the end, like anything of value, it was worth it! Skeptics, gather around. Go ahead and lightly sauté the onions this time. The dish will be okay. When you feel like disproving someone and have a bit of time on your hands, make it at another, more leisurely, pace, letting the onions slowly caramelize before proceeding. In the end let your taste buds be the impartial judge. If you cannot taste the difference, I defer to your time-saving necessity. Like colors, everyone sees & tastes something a little different. I’d rather you make zucchini twice a month with sauteéd onions than to never make it at all. You the cook. I’d rather the time saved be invested in something that resonates with each individual because it will mean so much more. And as you continue to cook basic foods for you/your family/your friends, you will begin to gain a feel for what is best, what is essential and what works. I like yellow onions, or white, but you can easily use shallots or even scallions. Yellow and white onions caramelize like no other, however, so if you like the taste that caramelizing gives, don’t use shallots. If you really feel like cooking, you can use onions and scallions because the scallions provide textural and visual variety.
GARLIC
Garlic can be added or not, depending upon how much you like garlic. And you can use more or less than I’ve suggested. You can even roast garlic in the oven (while you’re cooking something else) so you will have it ready to go.
SWEET PEPPER
Sweet red bell pepper adds a bit of sweetness as well as color. I consider it a must for this dish.
ZUCCHINI
Select the freshest zucchini you can find with no wrinkling of the skin. As soon as the skin begins to age it turns bitter. You can get around this by peeling the zucchini, but it would be a shame. The skin provides color and contains most of the nutrients. Buy your zucchini very close to the day you’re going to cook it. Squash is a healing food, a good thing to eat if you’re battling the sniffles. It smells good while cooking (especially with garlic), and a pot of zucchini prepared this way can be a meal when you’re not up to snuff. You can also use yellow squash to make this dish or, for even more color, combine the two.
TOMATO
Better to not use tomatoes if they are not in season. Stay away from ‘cello’ packaging as they have almost no flavor. I prefer cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half because the insides stay inside the skin more than in tomatoes that are quartered. If you use tomatoes, quartering them will retain the insides better than cutting them any other way. I do not recommend using canned tomatoes; they have a distinctly different flavor than fresh. Of course, you can do anything you wish, so if you like canned tomatoes, have at it.
REGGIANO
A little grated cheese can be tossed in to finished off he dish if you like, but I prefer it without. I’ve never understood the American penchant for adding cheese to everything, so maybe I’m just rebellious in this respect. Try it without and see what you think. You can pick up a tablespoon of parmesan cheese at the salad bar if you have a good one nearby’ it will cost you almost nothing.
