New York Times Magazine
August 19, 2007
If you’re looking for a sign of the culinary times, you could do no better than the one prominently displayed here in San Francisco, in my local Übermarket for the conscientious shopper: “Organic Summer Squash, $3.99 a pound.” As if $10-a-dozen farm eggs and $20-per-pound hand-assembled salami weren’t bad enough, our growing food fetishization has created a new produce category: luxury squash.
Maybe we’ve gone too far. Stacked in neat piles behind the sign were not some rare heirloom variety grown from seeds that a renegade farmer smuggled from Italy in his underwear, but common, everyday green and yellow squash — the most prolific and banal of summer vegetables.
I was disturbed but also intrigued: perhaps familiarity had blinded me to squash’s delicate charms — at these prices it clearly deserved more than a typically bland sauté or a quick turn on the grill. Given its etymology (the word “squash” comes from a Native American word meaning “eaten raw”), maybe it shouldn’t be cooked at all. So I swallowed hard, bought some zucchini and shaved them into a salad with fennel, mint and pecorino, which made a delicious and interesting starter.
One problem with squash is that it’s largely water, so my initial idea for a gratin prompted visions of a soggy mess. But the same concept inverted — zucchini that is quickly grilled, layered with niçoise olives and herbs and then pressed to push out excess liquid — yielded an elegant and beautiful terrine.
I discovered that cooking squash whole, like pattypans stewed in a rustic tomato sauce scented with chorizo and cilantro, leads to tender, deeply flavorful flesh. Thinking of a traditional confit, I stuffed ronde de Nice squash — which look like zucchini that are about the size and shape of a light bulb — with a savory mixture of onion and sausage and poached them slowly in an herb-and-garlic-infused olive oil. They tasted even better reheated the next day. But the real surprise was the chilled yellow-squash soup. Amid the aromatic spices and lime, what registered loudest and longest — and delightfully so — was the essential flavor of … squash. Which, considering the cost, it should have.
