Member Hilary emails me “I have two quick recipes to share if you find yourself wanting for newsletter filler.” so here they are, with my comments italicized:
One is a raw zucchini salad (I know, ewwww! your mother made you eat raw zucchini!) but this one is good tasting and great when it’s too hot to turn on the stove. Hilary is referencing my Mom’s sliced raw zucchini marinated in soy sauce, seseame oil, and scallionis, which as a small child made me resent zucchini; it might be good now, but it wasn’t until I started cooking with zucchini myself that I recovered from the trama 😉
Zucchini Ribbon Salad—take 2
Peel a zucchini or two. Discard the peels. Shave the zucchini down into wide strips with the peeler until you hit the seeds. Sprinkle the strips with minced garlic and lemon juice (half a lemon per zucch.) and a modest splash of olive oil and salt. Let sit for and hour or so and eat! Yum! Classic southern Italian dish I learned from my college roommate’s father. Very refreshing. I like this too… it also works as a very fine julienne (use multiple colors of squash) and is slaw-like.
The other recipe involves the oven but uses up all those beets you’ve been giving us.
I marinate them and roast them and then add them to salads in the following days or eat them cold as a snack. They are sooo great to have on hand.
Roasted Beets
Trim and cut the beets into 1/5″/ 2″ pieces. I don’t trim much, just the REALLY rough parts.
To marinate toss them with olive oil and any combo of herbs – dried or fresh, the “easy” part is that you use whatever you have. Tonight I did them with oil, salt, lots of black pepper, a little bit of crushed red pepper, lemon juice and grated lemon zest (I’m a big zester) and then spread them out on a glass dish or baking pan (glass gets hotter in my opinion) and roast at 400 for an hour or so. Toss mid roasting once or twice if you remember. The sour lemon juice and bitter lemon rind turned out to be wonderful compliments to the sweet beets. It’s true, glass does get hotter and is perfect for roasting veggies at high heats for the best caramelized flavor.
