Recycled veg - the dreaded glut

A recipe for courgette and coriander soup

Photo by Kasia Gajek on Unsplash

If there’s one single vegetable regularly ‘re-cycled’, it’s the courgette. Or ‘zucchini’, as these squash are known in the country where I came across this far from philanthropic practice. At least once a week during a Washington DC summer, I’d wake up to find a small hillock of courgettes left outside my front door by the Glut Fairy. They might well have been my very own zucchini, since the previous night I, too, will have tiptoed down the street, arms laden, to dispose of part of my personal overabundance on another neighbour’s porch. 

Zucchini are so easy to grow that responsible seed companies should only put three seeds into any single packet, not those dozens and dozens that encourage excitable gardeners to sow too many of them. While the plant is a prolific producer, few growers seem to appreciate that the perfect time to cook zucchini is when they are no longer than 5-7cm/2-3 inches (the length of a forefinger) and are so delicious you won’t want to share them with your street. Larger than that, let them explode to full marrow torpedo, stuff them with cooked rice and left-over ground lamb, bake them - then feed them to your dog.

Zucchini, closely related to the marrow, are only one of a very large family of squash first domesticated over 7000 years ago in Mesoamerica. But the zucchini we’re familiar with were only bred in the late 19th century, in Milan.

The first records in the US date from the early 1920s when they were probably taken to America by Italian immigrants, which is why they’re known as zucchini not courgettes. They were first cultivated in California; then a 1928 record of vegetables grown in New York State cites 60 different varieties of zucchini.

Costata Romanesco

If you’re going to select just one type to plant, consider choosing the Italian ribbed Costata Romanesco. Its flesh is more dense than the regular courgette so is less watery when cooked. It also has a more distinctive flavour. In fact, the common courgette could be said to have very little flavour. (I’m reverting to ‘courgette’ not only to give the French an equal chance but to avoid having to use the singular of zucchini, which you may be surprised to learn is zucchina not zucchino, for fear of provoking well-deserved criticism that I’m being precious.)

Courgettes didn’t show up in the UK anywhere north of London (where they were also a rarity) until, at the earliest, the 1960s. Yet British national Elizabeth Lucas, who ran a refuge during the First World War for wounded and orphaned children at the Chateau de Bettancourt-la-Longue, south-east of Reims, had written about them in 1907, in her book Vegetable Cookery.

Then French chef, restaurateur and cookery book writer Marcel Boulestin, who came, as did other dazzling French chefs, from the Dordogne (shameless excuse here for a plug of my cookbook) established himself in London in 1906 and gave courgette recipes in 1931 in What Shall We Have To-day? One instructed the cook to boil the finger-length ‘little vegetable marrows’ in salted water, in a method in which the Costata Romanesco would shine: Do not peel them, nor cut them up. Drain and serve with fresh butter and chopped parsley or minced chives or tarragon. His other courgette recipe used them in a kind of moussaka, layered with minced lamb.

But the effective promotion of the vegetable in the UK can be attributed, as so much else, to cookery writer Elizabeth David, who with her 1950 landmark A Book of Mediterranean Food, showed the British that good ingredients, freshly and simply cooked, were an attainable goal, to replace the decades of poor cooking the standard family had been subjected to.

I was fed last week an eye-openingly delicious bruschetta with ribbons of courgette which had been quickly fried in olive oil with a grating of orange zest and sprinkled with parmesan, bruschette being, as we’ve previously investigated ‘fridge-cleaners’. Before that, one of my favourite solutions to a zucchini glut was Patricia Lousada’s Coriander Soup, which really emphasises that contentious herb. So before cooking this for them, check if any of your diners have the aversion to fresh coriander/cilantro caused by a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes that exposes them to cilantro’s soapy-flavoured aldehydes.

It can be served hot or cold but as a summer soup it shines when chilled. (I confess when serving it cold, I sometimes use half yogurt, half single cream.) It has the advantage that you can make this up to 3 days ahead without it spoiling.

Photo by Megan Bucknall on Unsplash

Serves 8-10

1 medium onion, very finely diced
2 tablespoons butter
175g/6 oz courgettes, peeled and roughly chopped
75g/3oz fresh coriander/cilantro leaves, roughly chopped (plus more, chopped, to sprinkle over)
900ml/1½ pints water
3 tablespoons semolina (for smoothness but I consider optional)
900ml/1½ pints chicken stock
110ml/4 fl oz whipping cream (if serving hot)
250g/9oz thick Greek yogurt (if serving cold)

Sweat the onion in the butter until soft but not browning. Add the courgettes and coriander and stir for a few minutes.

Add 900ml/1½ pints water and salt to taste and bring to the boil. Stir in the semolina if using. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until the courgettes are tender.

Blitz in a blender. Thin by adding the stock. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve, hot or cold.