Zucchini & Charred Cherry Tomato Suace

HELLO! Zucchini.

Yup, it is THAT time.  Good news it is HOT here in the great Spongerific NorthWest.  Questionable news - here comes the zucchini.  I confess, I had long been a zucchini avoider, a “barely-tolerater”, someone who would work around or through it, but not enjoy it… until recently.

The main problem was that I’d been dealing with grocery store zucchini for years. Those zucchini can be bland, potentially fibrous flavor pits.  If not used properly they can suck the savor out of an amazing range of flavorful ingredients - stocks, Parmesan cheese, herbs.
I had never understood why, other than obligation , someone would, on purpose, voluntarily pay for and eat zucchini.

Then - I started getting farm fresh zucchini in my weekly veggie box I had to confront this food nemesis and figure out how to make it good.

It turns out... the secret is how much you cook it.  Zucchini is one of those special things that can get cooked both too much and too little.

When zucchini is tiny and tender and sweet and crunchy raw, it should be barely cooked – merely charred on the outside, and the inside should be sweet and crunchy, almost cucumber-like.  When these small sweet ones are cooked to softness, it is a pity.  So char them and eat them crunchy – that was my first revelation.

The second revelation was the bigger zucchini.  They still have that sweetness, but it is buried and must be coaxed out.  When not cooked long enough the large amounts of water makes the cooked zucchini somewhat bland and bitter.  Incompletely cooked eggplant suffers from this as well.  But that is another column for another day.

The answers for larger zucchini: cut them smaller – 

and use a cast iron or other heavy pan. 

And cook them longer. 

Cook it until it gets brown!
You've cooked off enough water
and brought out the sugar.

The results are almost unexpected; and it is the key to a deep, delicious zucchini tomato sauce you will be proud to share.

On the other hand - TOMATOES

Despite my whining, this year there are great tomatoes in Seattle.  And this year - it looks like there is going to be an amazing season!

Grow tomatoes? I confess,
totally beyond me.  MAJOR thanks to
Helsing Junction Farms of Chehalis, WA  &
Garden Treasures of Arlington, WA

And the acid, sweetness and flavor of a good tomato are more than a match for a zucchini.  IN FACT there is a whole category of Mediterranean cooking dedicated to the marriage of the two ingredients.

They also include garlic, oil, onions, pepper and/or eggplant.  Why fight such a delicious tradition?

Zucchini and Charred Cherry Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

zucchini – 2 banana sized

cherry tomatoes – 1 pint (2 cups, same thing)

garlic – 2 cloves finely chopped or pressed

red wine – ½ C

salt – to taste

oil – 1.5 tsp & 1.5 tsp & 2 tsp

water – as needed

Optionals – tasty bread to char or delicious noodles or polenta, and excellent mozzarella (worth it this time).

Equipment:

heavy sauté pan – cast iron is best for the charring

2^nd sauté pan (optional – but it allows you to work on the two vegetables at the same time)

lid or other splatter guard (optional)

cutting board

knife

spatulas or stirring spoons

Prep:

Rinse off the zucchini, rubbing off any prickly hairs.  Trim off the ends, and cut the sides to square off the sides.  Cut into 2 or 3 rectangles so each zucchini is manageable.

You are going for diced cubes.

Slice each rectangular box into slices thinner than your pinky (about 4), tip this stack on its side, and do it again so you get sticks.  Now cut these sticks into slices so you get cubes (or something like it).  The most important part is that you have small pieces about the same size and shape so they all cook pretty quickly.  The perfect cube will come with practice.

Smash or chop the garlic and rinse the tomatoes.

Cook:

(Note: if you have two sauté pans, cook both vegetables at the same time – and use the heavier pan for the tomatoes.  Otherwise, just follow the recipe.  Please don’t “throw it all in together” or the browning will not happen and it will be a very different sauce.)

Heat 1.5 tsp of oil in your heavy sauté pan over medium-high heat with a small piece of zucchini.  When the test piece of zucchini is sizzling, add half of the zucchini and about ½ tsp of salt.  Let the zucchini sit and cook for about 3 minutes – until a few pieces are starting to get a little browned.  Stir the zucchini and continue to cook it until the pieces are getting browned again – and so on.  If brown is sticking to the pan – this is good, and part of the plan.

When the zucchinis thoroughly browned and soft, add ¼ of the wine to dissolved the brown stuck on stuff.  If you need more liquid, add ¼ of water.  Keep cooking until most of the brown is dissolved.  Remove this zucchini sauce from the pan and repeat with the second half of the zucchini.  If the tomatoes go here, wipe out any large amounts of zucchini, and move on to the tomatoes.

For the tomatoes, heat up the last 2 tsp of oil over high heat.

When the oil shimmers – about 4 minutes – add the cherry tomatoes whole.  Let them sit for two minutes.  Shake the pan to roll the cherry tomatoes.  Let them cook until they char and burst.

Add the garlic, about a ½ tsp of salt, and cook it with the tomatoes until it mellows and the juice thickens. 

Turn the heat down to low.  Add the zucchini mixture back in, stir it together and taste for salt.  Add a little carefully until it tastes just right.

Sauce ready!

I tried eating this Charred Tomato and Zucchini sauce on some grilled bread

OW! That bread is hot!
Rub the grilled bread with a cut, raw garlic clove
for extra special flavor!

Mmmmm.... spiffy mozzarella over the sauce
on grilled bread.

Also - try it on some noodles.

 Wow, that is incredibly good!
(Oh yeah... and if you make a double recipe - this freezes and captures summer flavor!)

Fava Bean & Beet Salad

I dunno where YOU are, but up here in the Pacific North West, the sun has been shining more than usual - and around here that is a good thing.  The result is beautiful beets, the arrival of the fava beans and spectacular lettuces.  And then, fresh garlic is here to.  That means salads with garlicky vinaigrette.

This year, I ran across a fascinating hybrid of Chioggia (candy stripe) beets and golden beets.  They ended up looking particularly psychedelic.

The hardest part about this salad is the fava beans - they need to come out of their well-padded, fuzzy pods AND out of their tough, slippery, light green skins.  But go ahead, don't be afraid.  Jump in and try this one.  It is worth the effort.  Other than the lettuce, everything is really hearty, so you can make  lots of beets, onions and beans one cool night, then make this salad over and over on hot steamy days.

Fava Bean & Pickled Beet Salad

(Serves 1 for an excellent lunch.  Multiply for the crowd you have.  OR, make lots, and have the salad several times.  The pickled beets and blanched favas keep for about a week in the fridge.)

This is what you do with favas and beets to make them easier to handle – which is important when you find out how tasty this combination is.

Ingredients:

beets - 2 small, any color

fava beans 4-5 pods

lettuce – 1 small head or 5-6 leaves from a large head

fresh cheese – crumbles (think goat cheese, queso fresco, feta)

sweet onion – ¼ of a large one, or 1 small

herbs – a handful of what’s handy (dill & parsley are excellent)

pickling liquid –

water – 1 C

vinegar – ½ C (rice, cider or wine)

peppercorns – 6

cinnamon stick – 1 (or 6 allspice berries)

cloves – 2 whole

salt – 2 tsp

sugar – 2 Tbs

dressing –

3 Tbs used pickling liquid

pepper (& salt) -  to taste

mustard – 2 tsp

garlic – 2 cloves (fresh garlic if you see it!)

tasty oil - ¼ C (nice olive oil is excellent here)

optional – garlic bread or nifty crackers

Equipment:

knife

cutting board

vegetable peeler

saucepan

slotted spoon

2 – 3 medium and small bowls

sauce pan with lid

whisk or fork

small snap-top container with tight lid for mixing dressing (or another bowl & whisk)

salad spinner (optional)

salad bowl or serving plate

measuring cups and spoons

Prep:

Grab the fava pods.  Break off the stem end, use it to pull the sting off the top seam of the pod.  Pull out the beans (but leave them in their skins – the trick for getting them off is a little further down).

Chop the greens off the beets if they have them.  If they are small, tender and tasty looking, put them with your lettuces, or to the side for cooking later (just like chard).

Peel the beets with your vegetable peeler.  Slice them into wedges the thickness of your pinky, or thinner.

Rinse and dry your lettuce, and any optional herbs (use your salad spinner here if you have one).

Slice the onion thinly.

Measure out all the dressing ingredients into the small snap-top container EXCEPT for the pickling liquid.

Measure out the pickling liquid ingredients into the saucepan.

Cook:

Put the pickling liquid ingredients in the saucepan, on the stove.  Bring to a boil.

Put the fava beans in the boiling liquid.  Fish one out with the slotted spoon after 3 minutes – run under cool water so you can handle it.  See if the bean slips out of the  pale green skin easily.  If not – try each minute until they do.  When the skin slips off easily, scoop out the rest of the beans and let them cool in one of the small bowls.

Put the sliced beets and half the onions into the pickling liquid.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Let them simmer until they are fork tender – this will take about 10 minutes.

While the beets are cooking, peel the fava beans (run under cool water if you need to, so you can handle them).  Also chop or crumble a tablespoon or two of cheese.

Make the optional garlic bread or toast.

When the beets are cooked through, take the saucepan off the heat.

Add 3 Tbs of the pickling liquid to the dressing and shake it well to combine all the ingredients.

Combine the chopped herbs, beets, fava beans and onions (both pickled and raw) and cheese.  Toss with enough dressing to make the salad tasty.  Enjoy with our without the garlic bread.

Variation:  If you are using regular onion, pickle it all!

Add, subtract and substitute ingredients as you need to.

Sweet lettuces like little gem, romaine, Boston and bibb are especially good.  Roasted nuts and seeds go well in here as well.

Five Spice Garlic Crab - on a Boat

Ever have that wok-fried, still in the shell, spicy garlic crab at a Chinese restaurant?

I have, twice.  This is not the sort of thing your average, neighborhood, week-night, take-out joint is going to have.  First of all, this doesn't take out. Second, it has to be done with fresh, live crab.  It doesn't work anywhere near as well if you just douse already cooked crab with the flavors.  And it should be eaten as soon at you can handle the crab.

What I'm trying to say is, getting this at a restaurant is kind of an event.  Just finding a restaurant that makes this specialty is an important start.  And then getting there may be an ordeal.  (The second time I got my hands on such a specialty was in Boston's China Town.  So yes, getting to the restaurant was something of an ordeal.)  And both these restaurants were well known for their food - and thus required a reservation, or an ocean of patience for a walk-in table, if that had even been available.

But if you find yourself with a decently large burner on a boat (or kitchen that is crab adjacent), a wok-ish pan, 

There's the pan on my awesome Force-10 stove

(mine's a sauce pan/sauté pan cross that kinda works like a wok), enough oil, a head of garlic, salt and some Five-Spice powder, when you pull up some crabs - well then nothing could be easier.  

Well, throwing them back is easier, and steaming them whole is easier, and so is building a small IKEA bookshelf.  But it is totally doable.

I suppose you can also round up the same ingredients at home, and pick up 2 live Dungeness crabs at the fish market/counter, but where's the sense of adventure?  OK, I will concede live crabs in the kitchen is pretty adventurous.

So how does this go down?

You need some decent crab-handling skills, though rubber-banded claws help.  For a quick video on how to clean live crabs, check out this earlier post. (crab dispatching - boat optional, a dock or deck edge or  railing actually works better.)

Once the crab is split and cleaned, Use scissors or a cleaver (or your bare hands... grrrrrrrrr!) to cut the crab legs into segments at the joints.

Discard the pointy tip toes - they have no meat - or not enough to pursue.

Though the toes make great tools for picking out meat if you don't have picks.

Try to cut the joints cleanly to minimize this:

Try to keep the meat IN the shell so it doesn't get overcooked

Chop/cut the cleaned, de-legged body into 4-6 chunks. 

The shell is pretty thin, you can snip around if
cutting it like this seems to crush the body.

Then follow this recipe:

Five Spice Garlic Wok Fried Crab

Ingredients:

1 - 2 Dungeness Crabs* cleaned and cut up as described above.

1 head garlic

1-2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder

1/2 tsp salt
several grinds black pepper

1/4 C oil

Equipment:

Wok or other large bowl shaped pan

Large stirring spatula

Slotted spoon

Paper towels

(Tongs)

Serving platter

Crab cracking device (nut crackers and pliers work in an emergency)

Prep:

Set the cleaned, split crab to the side.  Break up the head of garlic, and get all the big cloves (don't worry about the annoying, tiny ones in the center).  Smack each of the cloves hard enough to crack the skin (heel of your hand, bottom of a pot, etc.).
Peel them and slice them thinnish.  The garlic pieces need to be small enough to fry into garlic chips, but big enough to not burn instantly, nor drive you insane when you need to retrieve them.  6-8 slices per clove is a good guess.

Set out the paper towels, ready for draining the fried garlic.

Measure out the salt and spice and mix together.

Cook!

Heat the oil in the wok over high heat.  Use a garlic slice as a temperature gauge. When it starts to get crispy, turn the heat back to med-high, pluck it out, and add the sliced garlic.  Stir to get it crispy, but still blond. 

Remove the garlic chips onto the paper towels to drain.

Turn the heat back to high, and place 1/3 - 1/2 of the crab in the oil.  There needs to be plenty or room to stir fry the crab.  After the shell turns red (this happens quickly), sprinkle on 1/3 - 1/2 of the spice-salt.  Keep stirring for about 2 minutes. 

Remove the cooked crab to the serving platter, and repeat until all the crab has been cooked.

Sprinkle the garlic chips back over and serve.

Eat with your hands.  Have a shell bowl and plenty of non-special napkins (paper towels) on hand.

Garlic noodles and a mess of sautéed spinach would go great with this. 

A crisp white wine (Sauvignon Blanc, Dry Riesling, dry Chardonnay)  or a dry Chinese Beer all go great with such a thing as well.