Series: From my Covid gardens
It was and of July last year when I created this interesting dish. It is not something that many will embrace since one has to actually grow their own zucchini or squash for it. However, it deserves a separate post in my Covid gardens series, just because it was so incredibly labour intensive, resulted in incredibly little volume, yet was so incredibly delicious. It made for a small appetizer similar to the tea-spoon delicacies (amuse-bouches) often served in restaurants. I served it in small glass bowls, but it could easily be served in the bowls that are usually used for soy sauce to accompany sushi.
The leaves of the zucchini were overtaking all my gardens. I should have trimmed some earlier, but at that point I had to cut many for the sun to get through to the fruiting zucchini.
The leaves were too old at that point of time, but what if I used some of the younger the stems?
The stems were somewhat prickly, so I first “peeled” the edges,
if peeling is the word for trying to scrape the long prickly “strings” off the stems.
After all stems were smoothed, I sliced them slightly diagonally on pieces resembling a penne pasta shape.
Sautéed them for about 3 min or until softened, but still keeping their shape. If overboiled they’d lose their shape. In parallel I sliced a handful of freshly-picked cherry tomatoes from the garden and sautéed them with olive oil and a few basil leaves (you guessed it, fresh from the garden: if you’ve never grown tomatoes next to basil, I highly recommend trying it; the tomatoes taste wonderful).
Mix the tomatoes with the zucchini stems and serve warm or cold. I let it cool and placed in the fridge overnight, for all the flavours to mix. Next day I served it as appetizers with a pinch of fresh basil.
Writing this in early 2021 I don’t think the vaccine will reach us until mid summer and therefore there will be more gardening, a new round of Covid gardens and new attempts to use every part of my plants.
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