The annual gluttonous mountain of courgettes

I have had so many new posts up my sleeve and so little time. I have stacks of updates including new turkey pictures, pantry storage ideas and what's happening in the vegetable garden. In addition, on Monday it is one of my favourite days out of the year: Aylsham Show; a fabulous agricultural show set in the grounds of Blickling Hall that also showcases everything that is wonderful about Norfolk. I will being creating a separate post on this wonderful day out so keep an eye out next week for that.

Right....courgettes!

This is an annual conundrum that we never learn from. Literally every year, in the depth of winter when we are eating game pies, roast pheasant and root vegetable stews, we dream of hot weather, ratatouille, warm courgette tart and stuffed marrow. We put in a seed order for several varieties and when April comes around we sow about twelve plants-which in fairness doesn't sound many-but, at the height of the season, ie now, you can harvest approximately three courgettes per plant each week: yes, thirty six courgettes every week!

I will endeavour to include as many of our favourite courgette recipes as possible and will try to update when I create something new.

Firstly I am going to turn to Elizabeth David, one of my food writing idols from the late 40s and early 50s.

Elizabeth David (Picture stolen from Wikipedia)

She was almost single-handedly responsible for the introduction of Mediterranean food to English cookery due to her extensive travelling and interest in the French and Italian cuisine. Elizabeth David made Britain aware of the French name, 'courgette' and the Italian name, 'zucchini'. Prior to this, what English housewives had been growing and cooking for years and is referred to in many of my vintage cookery books, was the 'vegetable marrow', which is essentially the same thing, give or take origins of the different varieties. If I had been a young woman in the 1950s, I am certain we would have been good friends! The following recipe could be a light meal by itself or alternatively, if you have a lot of mouths to feed, marry it with a Spanish omelette and some salad. This was very popular with my children, who are not especially fussy, but do get rather sick of courgettes as a side dish.

Courgette au Jambon (courgettes with ham)

4 medium courgettes
3/4 cloves of garlic
olive oil
Ham shredded or chopped cooked bacon
Seasonal garden herbs

Chop the courgettes into 'rustic' sized cubes. Put the olive oil in a large heavy frying pan and fry the courgettes until brown all over.
Add the sliced ham/chopped bacon and simmer for 15 minutes with chopped garlic and a generous sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper.

The liquid from the courgettes should disappear and they should be all soft and smooshy. 

When simmered sprinkle with some seasonal garden herbs such as basil, oregano, parsley or chives. Serve with the Spanish omelette below. It also occurred to me that a generous scattering of grated Parmesan would be lovely on top, particularly if you were just having it with a few new potatoes.

 

Rainbow Chard, which is a type of leaf beet related to the humble beetroot. It acts like spinach, has a lovely earthy, leafy flavour and you can eat the stalks as well as the leaves.

 We often have a glut of eggs when the hens are feeling happy and industrious and the new salad potatoes are perfectly waxy to make omelettes.

Spanish omelette with chorizo and Swiss chard

Chorizo sausage cut into cubes
1 Medium red onion
1lb waxy salad potatoes (Pink fir apples, Ratte or Nicola) thinly sliced
Olive oil
3 cloves garlic sliced
2 big handfuls of Swiss chard including stems
8 free range eggs
Grated mature Chedder

Using a reliable, non-stick frying pan, fry the cubes of chorizo in a little olive oil for 2-3 minutes. Add chopped onion and garlic and fry for 5 more minutes until onion softens a bit and browns at the edges. Add the sliced potato and give everything a good stir so that the potatoes are not all stuck together and everything gets that gorgeous red tinge imparted by the chorizo. Fry for about 10 minutes stirring continuously until the potatoes start to soften.

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Then slice the stalks of the Swiss chard and add to the potato mixture. Stir and fry for 5 more minutes. 

Once the potatoes and stalks are nicely soft, add the roughly chopped chard leaves. These need to be stirred in well. It looks like there is too much to begin with, but as with spinach, the leaves cook down very quickly.



The chard leaves really fill the pan to begin with but soon cook down. See picture below.

 Once your mixture looks like this and the potatoes are firm, but soft to the knife, whisk the eggs in a large jug with a sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper. Pour eggs over the potato mixture and incorporate well. Pre-heat your grill. For the first minute stir well, taking the egg off the bottom of the pan like scrambled eggs.

After a minute, stop stirring and smooth everything down in the pan, turning the heat on the hob down to low. Cook very gently without stirring for 4 minutes. Then stick the pan under the grill for a minute or two. This heats and cooks the omelette from the top. Once it starts to firm up on top and go brown, place back on the hob on a low heat. Cook very gently on the lowest setting until the mixture is completely firm. Grate some mature cheese on top and melt under the grill. Slice in half down the middle and cut each half equally into three. Serve with Courgettes aux Jambon and some salad or green beans.

Divide the finished omelette into six wedges and remove carefully onto the waiting plate with a spatula

The cheesy, firm potatoes incorporated with wholesome chard and chorizo sausage is a winner in our family and the children loved courgettes with meat!

These ingredients can only mean one thing: RATATOUILLE !

The afore mentioned ratatouille is also in Elizabeth David's copy of 'Mediterranean Food' but it is such a staple in our house there is no need for a recipe. Essentially, you just shove peppers, courgettes, onions, aubergines, tomatoes and garlic all in a big pan with a slug of olive oil. This is a traditional Provencal stew, so it must stew not fry! Allow all the vegetables to stew down in the oil and tomato juice with plenty of salt and pepper for about an hour. In terms of herbs, I always add bay leaves and rosemary. This is because my dad has always been the producer of huge vats of ratatouille in my parents' house and he always adds these two herbs. The flavour is wonderful and requires absolutely no tomato puree (you just need lots of fresh, chopped tomatoes). This is a meal for gluts of tomatoes, courgettes and other greenhouse fayre and is the reason why my father, an enthusiastic vegetable gardener, has always made this himself; my mother is too busy for gluts.

Do not add tomato puree. Lots of fresh tomatoes, or several cans if you have to, give the sauce a much more subtle and tomatoey flavour that the bright red, mouth assault that you will create with a tube of puree.