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August 7, 2014 by Gina Stipo 1 Comment

Mom’s Zucchini Relish – Day 4

With so many zucchini to eat now, it’s nice to have a dish that you can make to save for another day. Jars of preserves are such a welcome site in the winter when the garden is dead, the leaves have fallen and all we have left of the hot summer are memories. In Italy, the summer season is filled with activities for preserving the fruits and vegetables coming out of the garden, and stacks of canning jars and lids are front and center in every grocery and hardware store.

Zucchini relish was always my mom’s favorite preserve to make. Somewhere she found a wonderful grating machine with a hand crank that reduces chunks of cheese or vegetables to beautifully shredded mounds almost instantly. Mom was a night owl and would stay up late doing little tasks around the house or kitchen. Her favorite time to can was when everyone had gone to bed and she had the quiet of the evening to herself. In the summer, we would wake in the morning to rows of jars on the kitchen counter, filled with colorful shreds of zucchini and peppers, pickled peach halves or green tomato preserves. After mom died and I inherited the miracle grater, I promised myself that I would make zucchini relish in the summer.

With this large basket of big zucchini sitting in the kitchen I realized no time like the present. I grated the zucchini, onions and peppers early in the day and left them sitting on the kitchen counter for several hours, salted and sweating. Last night, after I cleaned the kitchen from a dinner with friends, I dug out mom’s recipe and pulled out a big pot, just as she would. Thirty minutes later I had three large jars filled with hot relish, waiting to greet me in the morning.

The relish is sweet and tangy with a nice crunch. My favorite way to use it is in tuna salad, mixed with a little celery and some mayonnaise. It’s also good on a roasted pork sandwich or a cheese burger. The best part is when you open a jar and remember that bumper crop of zucchini that you were able to put to good use!

Zucchini Relish
10 cups zucchini, grated
2 red bell peppers, grated
2 onions, grated
Sea salt
5 cups Cider vinegar
4 cups sugar
1 tbsp dry mustard
1 cinnamon stick
1 tbsp pickling spce
Grate all the vegetables, salt them well and leave them to sit for at least 3 hours. Rinse and drain well. Place the vinegar, sugar and spices in a large pot and bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes, then strain out the whole spices. Add the zucchini, stir and bring to a boil. Simmer for one minute.
Place the relish in large, clean canning jars and screw the lids on tight. The seal will form a vacuum as it cools.

August 7, 2014 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Stuffed Gagootz – overgrown zucchini – day 3

This is the time of year that the zucchini you’ve left on the vine just keep getting bigger and bigger and you’re wondering if you should even bother to pick them. Grandma called them ‘gagootz”. And why wouldn’t you call them that?! – it’s such a fun name! They’re the huge zucchini that people refuse and won’t buy and farmers can’t sell. But they’re still juicy and can be stuffed and baked or grated for pancakes or relish or bread, which we’ll get into later in this zucchini series.

Here’s a picture of two foot long gagootz in the field. I picked them and baked some great stuffed zucchini! Try to get them cheap at a farmers market (good luck with that one, they seem to have the same attitude as many produce departments at chain stores: they’d rather throw it away than sell it cheap.)

So get a big gagootz, slice it in half lengthwise and scoop out all the big seeds, leaving a margin of 1/2 inch around the edge. Put the two halves in a baking dish, drizzle with great extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of salt, then stuff them and bake them til done. You can dress them with a little pesto or tomato sauce, but I usually just eat them as is. Buon Appetito!

Zucchini Ripieno (stuffed zucchini)
This is an excellent summer recipe when the zucchini in the garden have gotten too large and have big seeds, not great for sautéing but perfect for stuffing.
2 large zucchini
2 lb ground meat, beef, lamb and/or pork sausage
Extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1 tbsp parsley, chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
1-2 cups chopped tomato
¾ cup grated Parmigiano or pecorino Romano
1 tbsp basil, chopped
Bread crumbs, optional
Sea salt & pepper
Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise, being careful to maintain even halves. Scoop out the inside of the zucchini, leaving the halves about ½ inch thick, depending on how big the zucchini are. Chop the zucchini you’ve scooped out and put aside.
Sauté the onion and garlic until the onion is clear, add the extra chopped zucchini and the tomato paste and chopped tomatoes, sautéing for a few minutes. Put the mixture in a bowl and add the meat, cheese, basil and salt & pepper to taste. If you’d like to add bread crumbs, mix those in as well.
Place the zucchini halves on a baking dish and coat with olive oil and a sprinkle of sea salt. Stuff the mixture into each half, pressing down to fill, drizzle with olive oil. Put a little water in the bottom of the pan to keep them moist. Bake the zucchini until browned and bubbling. They can be served hot or at room temperature.

August 5, 2014 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Zucchini Pancakes – Day Two

When I was growing up we always had a garden. My dad did the flowers, my mom did the vegetables. She’d compete with the neighbor to see who could grow the biggest carrots and it seems like she always lost. Mainly because I remember her competitive spirit. “That darned Larry Marks did it again! What the heck does he feed his carrots??” She composted and fertilized, weeded and sought out the best seeds. She really cared about doing the best job she could in raising the vegetables she planted and we always had a bumper crop.

Summers of my childhood are remembered by our chores in the garden: picking raspberries, knocking june bugs into cans of gasoline, weeding. But actually picking the vegetables was mom’s job, she didn’t trust it to anyone else.

With zucchini, bigger wasn’t necessarily better and you had to pick them before they were what grandma called “gagooz”, really huge ones that were only good stuffed and baked. Regardless of their size or number, Mom had a great repertoire of recipes to render them delicious. I remember best her zucchini pancakes. They made a perfect side dish to anything and we’d have them hot for dinner and cold the next day for lunch. They’re easy and delicious, filled with grated zucchini, herbs, parmigiano and onion. Held together with a little egg and a tablespoon of flour, fried in olive oil. Enjoy!

Zucchini Pancakes
2 cups grated zucchini
2 eggs
½ cup grated Parmigiano
3-4 scallions, chopped
1 teas sea salt
1 tbsp each parsley and basil, chopped
Dash black pepper
2 tbsp flour
Grate the zucchini on a large grate into a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and stir together well. Heat a saute pan or griddle with a little olive oil, add the zucchini batter in small rounds and fry. Flatten each pancake, flip when browned to brown the other side.

Don’t let the batter sit too long before frying as the salt draws water from the zucchini and becomes very watery, in which case you might have to add another egg and some flour.

August 4, 2014 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Eating with the Zucchini Season

In America we do a lot of talking about “eating with seasons”. But it seems to me we might need a review on what exactly that means.

In Italy it means that when zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant and basil are in abundance in the summer, we eat them. Often. At every meal. Even in the large chain grocery stores, the locally grown vegetables are abundant and cheap. You don’t have to seek out expensive farmers markets. You know what’s in season by seeing mountains of it in the grocery store. And it’s beautiful and crisp and fresh and you’ve been waiting since last summer to make your favorite dishes and now it’s time.

In America, so many people are getting back to the land and tending gardens. Farmers markets are abundant and chic but can be expensive to shop for the week, so lots of people will go to the farmers market on a Saturday and buy one zucchini, one beautiful tomato. It’s hard to get tired of eating local fresh produce when you can’t afford to buy it. Abundance should mean the price goes down. And if the farmer can’t sell it, he leaves it in the field because no one will buy it.

I’ve seen that. It’s a sin.

It’s August 4th and we’re in the middle of zucchini season. Some of them are huge, but even the big ones are edible and are wonderful stuffed or made into zucchini relish. The flowers are hard to come by and I’m finding that I have to volunteer to go out to the field and pick them myself, but I’m willing to do that!

So since we’ll be eating zucchini every day, I’m going to share a great recipe every day on what to do with all the zucchini! Maybe you’ll be inspired, maybe you’ll buy more zucchini to try them all. Let me know if it works!

Today’s recipe: zucchini pasta! Join me tomorrow for zucchini pancakes!

Pasta con Zucchini
3 cups zucchini, sliced into rounds or half moons
1 small onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
olive oil
1 tbsp mint or basil, chopped
1 tbsp Italian parsley, chopped
Sea salt
Add olive oil, onion and garlic to a sauté pan, place over medium heat and sauté gently until garlic is softened, being careful not to brown. Add zucchini and parsley and continue to cook until zucchini is cooked through and soft, adding a little water and covering to steam, at least 30 minutes, adding salt to taste.

Save a small amount of the water you’ve cooked the pasta in, drain cooked pasta and toss with the sauce. The pasta will continue to absorb the liquid and if it appears dry add a little of the pasta water. Toss with additional olive oil, the chopped mint or basil and Parmigiano and serve. If you have some of the flowers, you can tear them up and add them to the dish; the orange color is beautiful against the green and the white!

Another option is to add a tablespoon of pesto when you’re tossing the pasta with the zucchini.