Zucchini

Rich-tasting, thick, and so flavorful—no one will miss the meat in this stew.

This recipe is a great example of how to prepare a classic French dinner in minutes and in only one pan.

Roasting vegetables usually takes 45 minutes or longer. The technique we use here takes only 15 minutes, yet provides excellent slow-roasted flavor. For a change, omit the pasta and serve the vegetables as a side dish.

With its Old World flavors and tempting aroma, this versatile dish is a big hit at potluck suppers. Depending on whether you use the main recipe or one of the variations, you can create an entrée, a one-dish meal, or a side dish from the same basic ingredients

Lemon-tinged cream cheese tempers peppery arugula in this nutrition-packed entrée.

A seasoned cornmeal crust makes the zucchini so crisp that you could easily mistake it for deep-fried. Try the zucchini and dip for a party appetizer as well as for a side dish.

Unlike many other poppy seed dressings, the one used in this fresh vegetable salad is sweet and sour.

You’ll be happy to eat veggies for dessert when you taste these cakelike brownies. Zucchini is the surprise ingredient.

With their slightly caramelized flavor, roasted vegetables make a wonderful spread. Serve with pieces of toasted whole-grain pita rounds or baked tortilla chips.

This dish has few ingredients but a complex flavor. I love using Gourmet Garden’s Italian Seasoning Herb Blend here because you can really taste all of the individual herbs without going to the trouble of washing, drying, and chopping them. If you find another brand, that will work too. We’ve found Gourmet Garden is most common across the country. Though it seems pricy at first, it’s really not if you consider how many uses you’ll get from one tube and how long it lasts (be sure to check the date when you buy it to get one that will last for months).

Gina: If you’ve never spent a summer in the South, then you don’t know heat like we know heat! Baby, this dish is perfect for a sultry Memphis evening, because it requires very little cooking. The shrimp and zucchini are grilled briefly, and the rest of the ingredients are simply heated in olive oil for a few minutes, to coax out their flavor. Then everything is tossed with pasta shells, and you are done, sugar. We call for cherry tomatoes, but feel free to use Sweet 100, currant, or pear tomatoes, or any other small tomatoes available at your local farmers’ market. Best of all, you’ll walk away from the table feeling satisfied but not too full. Choose a nice Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio, and you are set.

The secret to bringing out the flavor of the zucchini without making it soggy is to cook it whole for just long enough to soften it. If you don’t have cherry tomatoes, cut regular tomatoes into chunks more or less the size of the sliced zucchini.

Picking the mussels from their shells before you toss the pasta together with the sauce means less work for your guests, but feel free to skip that step. If you do skip it, put the pasta on to boil just before you start the sauce. Both will be done at about the same time.

Sprinkling the onions with salt as they cook not only seasons them, but extracts some of the water and intensifies their flavor. Keep the water hot before adding it to the soup, as described below, and you won’t interrupt the cooking—it will flow smoothly from start to end. Remember this when braising meats like the short ribs on page 218, or when making risotto. You can use the method outlined below—bringing the beans to a boil, then soaking them in hot water for an hour—anytime you want to cook beans without soaking them overnight, or anytime you’ve forgotten to soak them a day in advance. It works especially well here because, by soaking the pork along with the beans, you kill two birds with one stone. (I soak the dried or cured pork to remove some of the intense curing-and-smoking flavor. If you like it intense, just rinse the pork under cold water before adding it to the soup.)

Stock will make a much more flavorful soup, but if you do not have any handy, use canned broth or even water—the soup will still be quite good. When using canned stock for this soup, I always dilute it by half with water. In most cases, the flavor of canned broth is too pronounced when taken straight and masks the fresh vegetal flavor of the other ingredients.

Sometimes I peel eggplants completely, sometimes not at all. Leaving the peel on adds a slightly bitter taste—which I like—but also helps the eggplant hold its shape after you cut it into cubes or slices. If you want the best of both worlds, remove thick stripes of peel from the eggplant, leaving half the peel intact. Caponata can last several days in the refrigerator and is even better after marinating for a day. It is best eaten at room temperature, so remove it from the refrigerator about 2 hours before serving. Caponata is usually served as part of an antipasto assortment, although it makes a wonderful summer contorno, or side dish, to grilled meats or fish.