Ingredient Tue Jul 22 2008

Zucchini

A lot of us can't get enough of some vegetables — tomatoes or cucumbers, maybe. But we reach our saturation point quickly with others. Zucchini, I'm looking at you.

July is high season for zucchini and summer squash. If you have a CSA subscription, a garden, a neighbor with a garden, an acquaintance with a garden, or an enemy with a garden, chances are you're seeing a lot of zucchini these days. And they're great. Up to a point. But you can get sick of them. Sighing at the sight of them is an early warning sign. Sighing at the thought of them is a definitive symptom.

In her excellent account of eating locally for a year, Barbara Kingsolver writes of summer squash and zucchini. As if having her own bumper crop to deal with weren't enough:

"Other people were trying to give them to us. One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of them hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight."

Even if you're not the victim of a squash-and-run, give Gourmet's zucchini carpaccio a shot. It requires no cooking. Instead of mint, try it with arugula or basil. Balsamic vinegar can stand in for lemon juice. If you don't have a mandoline, just spend some time with a knife trying to slice the zucchini as thinly as possible.

The result is a dish that transforms zucchini into something you'll welcome back to the dinner table.

- Daniel Shumski