Made at Home: The food I cook for the people I love. Giorgio Locatelli
eat courgettes, and she loved them. I only wish we saw more interesting varieties, as so many seem to have disappeared in favour of the universal sleek green one. Where are the yellow ones, the ones that are so pale green they are almost white, and the round ones that are the perfect shape for stuffing?
Each recipe makes enough for 6.
Marinated
You can eat the courgettes on their own, in a salad, or serve them with burrata, or fish.
1 Cut 6 large courgettes lengthways into thin slices (about 3mm) with a sharp knife or mandoline. Heat some olive oil in a sauté pan and fry the courgettes until golden on each side. Lift out and drain on kitchen paper.
2 Very finely chop a handful of large fresh mint leaves with a small handful of fresh parsley leaves and 2 cloves of garlic, and mix with about a teaspoon of dried chilli.
3 In a large pan heat 500ml of extra virgin olive oil to 120°C (just under a simmer). Very slowly and carefully add 70ml of white wine vinegar and allow to bubble up for a minute. Take off the heat and leave to cool.
4 Layer some of the courgettes in a serving dish, sprinkle with some of the herb and garlic mixture, then spoon in some of the oil and vinegar. Repeat until you have used up all the components. Cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge to marinate for 24 hours.
Pan-fried with garlic, tomato and white wine
This is a good side dish for white meat, fish, or whatever you like.
1 Put a clove of garlic on a chopping board, and with the back of a large knife, crush it into a paste.
2 Put a large handful of fresh parsley leaves on top and chop finely, so that the garlic and parsley combine and release their flavours into each other.
3 Cut 3 medium courgettes in half lengthways, then slice into half-moons about 5mm thick. Heat some olive oil in a large sauté pan, add 2 lightly crushed cloves of garlic and cook gently until golden (take care not to let them burn). Add the courgettes, season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, then spread them out so that they are all in contact with the pan and sauté quickly – you will need to do this in batches – until golden on both sides.
4 Add half a glass (35ml) of white wine and about 5 halved cherry tomatoes to the pan and cook for about 3 minutes. Remove the whole garlic cloves and sprinkle in the parsley and garlic mixture.
Deep-fried
1 With a mandoline, cut about 3 large courgettes into long, thin strips. The trick is to cut only two strips from each side: one, two, then turn, one, two, turn, so you get a homogenous amount of firm white courgette and courgette with a little bit of skin attached. That way when you fry them they will be fantastically crispy, whereas if you carry on cutting all the way through to the soft middle of the courgette when you fry those strips they will just turn to mush.
2 Put the strips into a shallow bowl, season with sea salt and leave for about 30 minutes, until some of the water has been drawn out.
3 Mix equal quantities of 00 flour and semolina flour in a shallow bowl and lift the courgettes into the flour. Don’t rinse, drain or squeeze them, as you want them to be moist, so that the flour will cling to them.
4 Heat some vegetable oil to 180°C in a deep-fryer (alternatively, heat the oil in a large pan, no more than a third full – if you don’t have a kitchen thermometer, drop a little flour into the oil and it will sizzle very gently).
5 Lower the floured courgettes into the hot oil and fry for a few minutes until golden and crisp.
6 Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with sea salt to taste.
Stuffed
For a starter or a light lunch, you need 8 courgettes.
1 Cut 6 of the courgettes lengthways and scoop out the seeds. Sprinkle with sea salt and put into a colander for an hour to draw out some of the water and season the courgettes at the same time. Rinse and pat dry.
2 Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan, add a diced onion and 2 diced stalks of celery, and cook gently until the onion is soft and translucent.
3 Add 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, bring to the boil, stir in a tablespoon of tomato passata and take off the heat.
4 Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4 and line a roasting tin with baking paper. Chop the remaining 2 courgettes and an aubergine.
5 Heat some olive oil in a sauté pan and fry both together until golden. Add to the onion and tomato mixture, stirring in a little extra tomato passata if the mixture is too dry.
6 Spoon into the cavities of the courgettes and lay them in the lined roasting tin. Put into the preheated oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the vegetable stuffing has turned dark golden.
Creamed salt cod salad with cicerchia purée
Salt cod has become very fashionable, and yet the technique of salting and then drying fish goes back hundreds of years. It is hard for us to understand now how important and valuable salt cod was to inland regions of Italy and other Mediterranean countries in the days before refrigeration, especially on Fridays, the traditional fish day decreed by the Catholic church. In some remote areas, where animals couldn’t easily graze, salt cod possibly even kept some families alive. Take a region like Calabria, which has a big beautiful coast full of lovely fish, but the mountains are so close to the sea that only a short distance away the only fish that would have been available would be salted and dried. There is a particular village, Gerace, which was known for its salt cod, because the people used to soak it in the local spring, and there is still a shop there where you can buy the whole salted fish, which look like prehistoric creatures.
I remember, also, that my grandmother thought that the fish would be better if you soaked it under the fountain in our village of Corgeno. She used to de-salt it and cook fat pieces of it in milk, with onions and garlic, alla vicentina, in the style of the town of Vicenza in the north of Italy, or in umido, with tomatoes and onions, but my favourite is to turn it into a creamy paste, as in this recipe and the one that follows. It is quite magical to see the transformation of this fibrous fish as you beat it, adding olive oil very, very gently until it becomes whiter and whiter. You do need to use a lighter northern oil, such as a Ligurian one, though, as a strong green Sicilian or Tuscan oil will give a green tinge to the cod, and also impose its own flavour too much.
With the popularity of salt cod, it is now easy to buy it already de-salted. In the markets in Italy, there will often be a salt cod specialist selling it both ways, in many different cuts. There may be a few eggs or anchovies on the stall, but nothing else. It is all about the salt cod. But if you are soaking it yourself, you need to do this in cold water in the fridge, for up to three days, changing the water every day, depending on the thickness and the particular cut of cod.
The creamed cod is fantastic just on its own with a little salad as a starter, and it makes a great crostini to put out with drinks. You can have it ready in a bowl in the fridge and toast your bread in advance and keep it in an airtight container. Then you can just scoop some of the creamed cod on to the pieces of toast and put some halved cherry tomatoes on top, if you like. I was once served creamed salt cod on top of a thick, firm slice of a green Cuore di Bue – the massive, ribbed ox-heart tomato – which had been pan-fried really quickly, and it was fantastic.
Cicerchia is an ancient chickpea-like legume (known in Britain as the grass pea) that is one of the almost-extinct crops that has been revived and championed and made fashionable by the Slow