Zuchinni. Yellow Crook-neck. Patty pan. These vegetables are running my life right now. You can see them skulking about, just outside your field of vision, waiting for their chance to come in the house. They creep up to the porch at night and as soon as someone opens a door, they rush inside and refuse to leave. And down in the garden, their partner in crime, Larry, is growing reinforcements by the -you guessed it – bucketful. So you know what I do? I cook those suckers!
Here is one way that is quick and easy. First, you need some squash [no squash you say? park your car in my driveway for about 5 minutes and I will take care of that for you], some onions and peppers and some garlic, salt pepper and olive oil. That’s it – no herbs or other seasonings. We are going for pure squashiness today. Obviously, if you don’t care for one of the ingredients, just leave it out. Except if you don’t like summer squash. That would just be silly.
Prepping your ingredients will simplify the cooking. Clean and chop the veg.
Hmmmm. A squadron of alien spaceship squashes just made their way into the kitchen.
No problem – we’ll just chop them up and put them with the rest. Salt and pepper everything generously.
Put a couple tablespoons of olive oil in the pan, turn the heat to high and when it is nearly to the smoke point, put in the squash and spread it out. Squirt another tablespoon of olive oil in there too.
Don’t be stirring that around now. Leave the heat high and let that first side get nicely carmelized and yummy. Then you want to more or less turn it all over rather than stirring.
See that nice color? That is flavor and you want as much as possible. Keeping the heat high and not stirring much are the keys to lots of color and sealing the surface of the vegetables so that they don’t give up the liquid trapped in their cells.
Keep an eye on things and when the bottom layer of squash is browned, get some unbrowned pieces down on the bottom. If it starts to get too dry, add another tablespoon or so of olive oil. When about half of the squash is nicely colored, add your onions and peppers. Now you can do a bit more stirring. You want the onions and peppers to carmelize too, but they will burn a little more easily than the squash, so you have to be more careful.
Once the onions and peppers are about half done, lower the heat and add the garlic. You especially don’t want to brown the garlic much since that will give it a bitter taste. If you prefer a milder garlic flavor, you can add it a little sooner or use a little less, but again, you have to watch it more carefully too. We do not skimp on the garlic. I don’t like to say we use more than most people, but we are never bothered by vampires. Mosquitos never bite us either. And we don’t have to worry much about each other having an affair really – no one wants to get close enough to us.
About 2 or 3 minutes after adding the galic, you are done. Total cooking time was probably 10 or 12 minutes – maybe 15 for a big pan of squash. And look at this:
Man – do I love summer!
for the hummingbirds on our porch.
