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The smaller, the tastier
Whether you grill or bake it, this vegetable goes well with all kinds of dishes thanks to its neutral taste. Although it was originally a summer product in the Netherlands, this brother of the cucumber is for sale all year round. This is how you cook with zucchini.
Zucchini is a fruit vegetable that is a member of the cucumber family (cucurbitaceae). It is related not only to the cucumber, but also to the gherkin, pumpkin and melon. In every supermarket you will find the dark green, elongated version of 20-25 centimeters. In addition, you sometimes come across bulbous courgettes – the name says it all: courgettes with a spherical shape – and light green and yellow varieties.
These zucchini varieties all have the same, fairly neutral taste. But: the smaller the zucchini, the tastier. Although they are harvested in the Netherlands from a length of 7 centimeters, it takes a while to find these little ones. You can come across them at a greengrocer or Turkish supermarket.
Like other vegetables, zucchini are low in calories but high in fiber and nutrients.
Buy and keep
Zucchini are available all year round. In the winter months, from November to February, they have to come from abroad. The plants are not resistant to frost. That is why they can only grow in the open ground in the Netherlands in June.
Choose firm courgettes with an intact skin, without dents and soft spots, but with a whole crown. It is best to store them in a cool pantry at 12 to 15 degrees Celsius, so that they still ripen. On hot summer days, the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator is the best alternative. They keep well for about a week.
You can also store the vegetable in the freezer if you boil it first or blanch it for a few minutes. Another option is to grate the zucchini, squeeze out as much moisture as possible and freeze the grater. The taste will deteriorate a bit.
Kitchen garden
Do you have a piece of land? You can easily grow zucchini yourself. If you plant seeds in pots in May and put them on the windowsill, you can put the plants outside in the soil or in a large container in June.
Zucchini plants grow quickly and one specimen bears dozens of fruits in the summer. The advantage is that you can harvest the courgettes from your own garden when you find them big enough. Then new fruits appear again. In any case, do not let them grow further: courgettes larger than 30 centimeters are often so bland that they can at most still be put in the soup.
edible flowers
The zucchini plant also produces edible flowers that are known as a delicacy in Italy. Male flowers grow on the stems. These are also called zucchini fioretta. They are somewhat larger and firmer than the female flowers, so you can fill and fry them well. When the zucchini is still small, each fruit grows a female flower, also called zucchini fleur. Due to their striking yellow/orange color, zucchini flowers are often mainly used for decoration.
If you want to use the zucchini flowers from your vegetable garden, you have to set the alarm. Early in the morning the flowers are open, ready to be picked. They wither after about ten hours.
Preparation
Wash zucchini, no need to peel. Cut off the crown and butt and remove unsightly spots. You can eat the seeds. Very large specimens are sometimes a bit fibrous and stringy in the core: in that case remove the middle part.
You can then eat the vegetables raw, but you can also grill, bake, cook, fry, fill, roast, stew or process them in a soup or casserole.
10 x zucchini
- Stir-fried zucchini
- Zucchini with a crumb topping
- Stuffed zucchini
- Penne with salmon and zucchini
- Zucchini potato dish
- Zucchini Soup With Salmon
- Zucchini with sun-dried tomatoes
- Chocolate cake with zucchini
- Zucchini Fritters
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Zucchini carpaccio