In the day and age of the al dente vegetable, what a joy to find a recipe that celebrates the well-cooked, buttery vegetable.
After flipping through “The Cookbook” the other day, I noticed that the vegetable section has been severely neglected. It’s time to rectify that situation, so expect quite a few veggie posts in the upcoming weeks.
For a while, I believed (incorrectly) that the British seem to really like vegetables that have been mashed up. It was all based upon my knowledge of a beloved fried cod side dish, mushy peas. When I came across this recipe, it served only to back up my (incorrect) assumption. But as I started writing this article, I went out into the great-wide Internet to find a few mushy recipes that I could share. Slowly it began to dawn on me that in reality, mushy peas are fairly common across the pond, but the other members of the vegetable kingdom aren’t usually pulverized at all. That means that this recipe is a bit of an anomaly. And I do enjoy out of the ordinary foodstuffs, if you haven’t noticed.
I picked up these zucchinis at the local supermarket for a decent price. As a quick reminder, make sure you scrub them well when you cook them at home. I thought I had done a good job getting them clean, but there was a slight pesticide flavor in the finished product. A lesson learned there, for sure.
In a pan over low heat, one whole (!) stick of butter was slowly melted. To quote Alton Brown, “I said it was good, not good for you.” Into the pan went a few cloves of garlic that I had finely chopped to sweat.
As the garlic and butter got to know each other, I sliced each zucchini into 1/3 inch rounds. A quick rinse once more, and the veggies were ready for the pan.
Into the pan they went, and I tossed them over and over until each slice was coated with the garlic butter. After they were all properly buttered I added salt and pepper and covered the pan.
After a few minutes on the heat, the zucchini began losing their rigid structure. Here they are after just five minutes.
Ten minutes in, you can see how the middles of the slices are falling out. Mr. Henderson mentions that when the zucchini start to break apart, they’ll start to bind the whole thing together.
And here’s the final dish. I think I probably could have kept them on the heat longer for even mushier results, but their texture was just fine by me. This recipe is going into the old memory bank for those cooking by the seat of the pants moments that tend to crop up. Slightly silky, perfectly mushy, drenched in butter zucchini coins that you can prepare in under 20 minutes? Hell yes, I’ll be preparing this recipe over and over for a very long time.
One down, fifty two to go.
EDIT: Commenter E. Nassar has a similar post about mushy zucchini that just needs to be shared. Quickly, click this link.
‘. A local bookstore had announced that Bourdain would be signing copies, and I wasn’t going to miss a chance to talk to the man who inspired me to start cooking from Fergus Henderson’s grand opus.
