It’s not the fanciest meal. No refined ingredients or exotic preparations. Just simple, fresh food from the garden.
There’s a distinct pleasure in knowing that most of the food on my plate came from my garden, picked just minutes before cooking.
Zucchini Stewed with Tomatoes
From The Farmer's Kitchen
2 small zucchini
½ onion, sliced thin
4 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 – 2 cups stewed tomatoes
¼ cup white wine (optional)
2 tablespoons butter (optional)
2 tablespoons fresh herbs such as basil, parsley or tarragon (optional)
1. Slice zucchini into 1/2” thick circles.
2. In a large skillet, over medium flame, add olive oil. Sauté onions and garlic, the edges barely browning, about 5 minutes. Add squash slices, ¾ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon black pepper. Continue cooking and stirring until squash begin to soften, approximately 5 minutes.
3. Add stewed tomatoes. Continue cooking as long or as briefly as you like; this is traditionally cooked until fully soft but need not be.
4. Add the optional fresh herbs at the very end.
From the garden: zucchini, garlic, broccoli, basil, tomatoes
Garden to Table: 30 minutes
Beautiful! Simple ingredients, from close to home are the best!
I feel bad making this comment since I remain conflicted about it, but I’m about halfway through a post of my own about the problem of having a glut of tomatoes and basil growing in our ghetto Brooklyn back yard, to the effect that I can’t really keep up with eating it all. We have twenty new ripe tomatoes a day and 15 basil plants running riot, and one more day of tomato and basil salad for dinner and I might do something drastic. Sure, I could can or jar the tomatoes, but they aren’t romas or san marzanos, so I doubt they’d be great for winter-time red sauces. Any thoughts?
Jealous of your zucchini however, something is attacking ours (snails, slugs, perhaps), so that they flower like crazy but then there’s no fruit. Again, any thoughts?
Jonny, Wow! Your garden sounds amazing. Definitely jar the tomatoes. The only reason people use plum varieties is that they have less water (and usually less flavor too). When making your sauce, just cook it longer to better thicken the sauce.
Last year, I froze basil leaves whole and that worked really well. http://www.growcookeat.com/2010/09/preserving-summer-basil.html
As for your zucchini…. that’s just the way zucchini is – about 1 in 8 will actually become fruit (though my odds are much worse than that). You can tell which flowers will generate fruit early on, so you can still enjoy the blossom without worrying about giving up on the squash. Check out this photo — you can see the difference in the stems. http://www.growcookeat.com/2009/07/boys-and-girls.html