Melting zucchini

Suddenly, it's all I can think about. Could it be contagious?

What is this mysterious melted zucchini dish?

Happy Friday, melting cook!

“Summer’s over,” I just heard a newscaster say on TV — her chirpy lede into a back-to-school story.

Over? Oh, but it’s not! Fall is still six weeks away. Let’s not rush things, when late summer is such great time produce-wise. Innit?!

With the unrelenting triple-digit heat wave here in Texas, you’d think I’d be yearning for winter. But some kind of inner biological produce clock is overriding that, and all I can think about is zucchini — melting zucchini, to be exact.

I have this picture in my mind of a dish I don’t think I’ve ever tasted. Here’s what I know about it. It involves zucchini, olive oil and herbs; I’m not sure which herbs yet. Could be basil, mint, thyme, parsley. Definitely not dill. There might or might not be garlic involved. It involves bite-size chunks of zucchini, but they’re somehow cooked to just the beginning of meltiness. Maybe the chunks would be like cucumber pieces in a smashed cucumber salad. There would be some texture.

My imagined dish is either warm or room-temp, not hot or cold. In some mind-flashes it’s vegan; in others, there’s some kind of cheese. (Feta? Burrata? Shaved parm?) In other visions, there are flecks of red (Aleppo pepper? Espelette?) Definitely it’s so good, I could eat a big plate of it and call it dinner.

Something tells me I’ve had something approaching it before, but I can’t put my finger on what, where or when.

Then a flash — it was a dish I tested for a cookbook review sometime in the last couple years. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. It was almost like a zucchini spread — perfect as part of a mezze, but not something you’d want to sit with a fork and eat an entire bowl of. Its texture was too uniformly soft for that, too close to purée. I can see it in my mind’s eye, but can’t remember what book or what author. Maybe José Andrés’s Vegetables Unleashed. Maybe something by Ottolenghi. What was it? Surely I’d photographed it.

I’m not home, so can’t access my bookshelf, but I do have my laptop with me and look in Lightroom, the photo editing/storage app I use. Because I cook seasonally, I might find it searching by season, August or September. Before long, voilà! A series of pix I took on September 8, 2020.

But no clue from the pix around it to what it was, and I hadn’t entered any tags.

As you’ll see from the larger photo at the top of this post, it was really like a spread, and topped with dill. Not exactly what I was craving, but if I can find the recipe, I’ll know how to achieve that wonderful melty texture.

Determined to achieve melted zucchini bliss, I pick up zucchini on the way home.

And then once home, eureka! There it is in Ottolenghi Simple: Crushed Zucchini.

My plan: Use the same basic technique — tossing zucchini pieces in herbs, seasonings and olive oil, roasting them with garlic, setting them over a colander and pressing them so the squash releases some of their liquid, then mashing it all with the roasted garlic. But I’ll make some significant tweaks: Reduce the roasting time to preserve more texture. Let’s skip the mashing, instead just pressing it slightly to break up the pieces a bit. And now that I’m staring down ingredients, let’s omit the garlic, to focus more on the pure zucchini flavor. Also leave off the dill, which just isn’t the aromatic profile I’m after. (Here I am simplifying Simple!) While I’m at it, let’s omit the mint (both the dried mint Ottolenghi tosses it with and his fresh mint garnish), as well as the lemon juice that finishes it.

What’s left, you may ask? Something that melts the zucchini down to its creamy essential-ness.

Then a trio of new complements: Aleppo pepper, for a little zingy pepper vibe; toasted pine nuts for crunch; torn basil for an aromatic finish that plays well with the fresh thyme it gets roasted with. My version leans Italian.

The melted zucchini in my mind’s eye — achieved!

Picture a speeded-up cooking video, me making the dish, and OMG — this is it!!! It totally works. The zucchini pieces are soft and yielding, creamy inside, yet spear-able with a fork, not baby-food. Just the textural variation I’m after. The pine nuts add lovely crunch. The basil’s perfect, and I don’t miss the lemon-acid. It totally satisfies my melted zucchini yearning — and it’s so good I know I’ll be making it again and again as the summer wears on.

For SIX MORE WEEKS! Preceded by a tomato-and-burrata salad, it’s a perfect, dreamy easy dinner.

I can picture so many variations. Skip the tomato-and-burrata salad starter, and plop torn burrata right on the zucchini. Or spoon some good ricotta on top, then drizzle with good olive oil. Or follow Ottolenghi’s dried-plus-fresh-mint program, with or without lemon, but going for my new texture. You could drizzle a little good balsamic vinegar over it. Or shave parm or pecorino on top, or ricotta salata. Or you could skip all cheeses and pile on lots of fresh herbs: parsley, cilantro, basil, mint — maybe even a little fresh oregano. Good thing (sort of!) that summer is ABSOLUTELY NOT OVER!

OK, here’s the basic recipe — it serves two or three as a main course, four or five as a side dish.