It's not summer if there's not a glut of zucchini

The inevitable, unavoidable "Summer Zucchini Post"

Some of my very favorite zucchini recipes live in these books!

Stories about having too much zucchini — from your garden, from your neighbor’s garden, dropped in the break room at work, or mysteriously left in your car during a break-in — are beyond cliché at this point. But clichés happen for a reason, and zucchini plants sure do like to GROW. So figuring out what to do with “all that zucchini” has just become part of summer.

For me, of course that means leaning on cookbooks, and there’s no shortage of answers to be found there. Zucchini can be raw and sliced in ribbons, gently poached in olive oil, grated in meatballs or dumplings or fritters, fried until deep golden and melting into a sauce, in bite-size chunks and stir-fried hot, shaved and layered in a Spanish tortilla, and so much more. It can be delicate, crisp and fresh, or nutty and rich and creamy. Baked into bread or munched on raw. Even with an over-abundance of zucchini, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of the possibilities.

Olive oil-poached zucchini and raw tomatoes

from Canal House Cooks Every Day by Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer

I have cooked zucchini so many ways, but this is the first time I tried slow poaching in olive oil. I loved the outcome — the cherry tomatoes brought brightness, while the olive oil mellowed the zucchini while preserving some crispness, which was a nice touch. It won’t go down as my favorite method for cooking zucchini, but it’s a nice one to add to my repertoire, and honestly it’s tough to go wrong with these flavors.

Also, don’t worry about how much olive oil this uses: it’s great to re-use with just about anything, including this next pasta.

Fried zucchini pasta

from Tenderheart: A Book About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds by Hetty Lui McKinnon

I have a tough time putting together any roundup of recipes without including a Hetty McKinnon one. The zucchini in this recipe is basically the opposite of the Canal House salad above: it’s cooked and cooked and cooked. You fry it and then sauté it, and the result is heaven. I didn’t really stop to take nice pictures here, because pasta is meant to be eaten right away, but trust me: this is a recipe you need to make. The butteriness of the fried zucchini, the crunch of the pine nuts, the freshness of basil — it all comes together into something really special.

But also trust me on this: you need A LOT of zucchini. Don’t doubt the recipe! The pasta shown here used 7 pounds, so it’s a good thing it was on sale at my local co-op. If you have one, I recommend using the slicer attachment in your food processor to save time.

Peppery zucchini with whipped feta

from What Goes with What: 100 Recipes, 20 Charts, Endless Possibilities by Julia Turshen

I love a recipe that highlights pepper like the delicious spice that it is, and Julia Turshen’s peppery zucchini does just that. We served it alongside lamb kebabs on a rooftop in summer, so honestly we would have thought it was great no matter what, but really: it was great. (Buy a good pepper grinder! It’s worth it!)

Zucchini mutiya

from Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora by Khushbu Shah

Another recipe that gets bonus points for being something I’ve definitely never tried before! Mutiya is a Gujarati street food made with chickpea flour, and Khushbu Shah’s version incorporates a pretty good quantity of grated zucchini. It was delicious served with some cilantro-mint chutney which I will admit was leftover from a takeout order from Spice Waala (if you’re in Seattle, you either already know and love Spice Waala, or you need to try it ASAP).

I’m a big fan of Amrikan: it so beautifully highlights the way Indian food mixes and blends with the cuisines around it in the diaspora. I’ve loved every recipe I’ve tried, but special shout-outs to the Cauliflower Manchurian, both egg curries, and the Malai broccoli.

Non-Cookbook Tip: Add zucchini strands to your noodles

First of all, let me make this clear: I refuse to call them “zoodles.” They are zucchini strands and they are NOT a replacement for noodles or pasta, they are their own delicious thing.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m here to tell you that zucchini strands make a lovely addition to so many noodle dishes. As you can see above, I made Top Ramen with zucchini, topped with a drizzle of nice sesame oil, and I am not remotely ashamed of it (my first food memory is Top Ramen at daycare when I was maybe 3 or 4, and it remains a beloved comfort food for me). Last night, I threw a bunch of zucchini strands and julienned carrots into Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Sesame Noodles (minus the chicken, subbing cashew butter for peanut butter for my allergic brother-in-law) from The Wok. Served with a nice glass of Alsatian white (shout out to my other business, Little Thing Wine), it was a perfect meal for an extra-warm Seattle evening.

More zucchini, because it’s never enough

It may shock you to hear that this is not the only newsletter writing about zucchini at this time of year!! So let me include a nowhere-near-complete, but still-pretty-awesome, list of zucchini ideas from some favorite Substack writers:

1. The Dinner Plan by Maggie Hoffman: How to eat all the zucchini (and love it)

2. Keep Calm & Cook On by Julia Turshen: what do I do with all of this zucchini???

3. To Vegetables, With Love by Hetty Lui McKinnon: Cold spicy rice noodles with smashed zucchini

4. Modern Chinese Cook by Betty Liu: Miso Zucchini Mixed Rice

5. Stories from Catbird Cottage by Melina Hammer: Feta brine pasta salad

6. Saturday Table by Rita Kokshanian Mashkova: Lemon pepper zucchini bucatini

Jane, the founder of Eat Your Books and my fantastic coworker, also recommends the Arabic frittata with zucchini, peas, and leeks from Sami Tamimi’s new Boustany. I can’t wait to try it.

And if you’re looking for zucchini recipes in your own cookbooks, check out the newly released(!) CookShelf app: you can scan your cookbook barcodes and have a complete index of all your books in one place, so you can see every single zucchini recipe you have, even if it’s called “courgette” in the book.

I promise I won’t make this newsletter all about the app, but we just shipped it on Friday and I’m very proud!

Finally: I cannot promise I won’t be posting another zucchini post in a couple weeks. We’re nowhere near done with zucchini season.