One of the stars of our Farmers Markets these days is the summer squash. Green ones, yellow ones, green and yellow ones, big ones, little ones… you get the idea. With all of this delicious produce at hand we thought we’d share a few ideas for fixing it at home. And Chef Jerry Pellegrino, the summer squash is nothing if not versatile.
First of all, let’s look at some of the different varieties out there. The Green Zucchini is probably the best known. Backyard farmers grow it, often to enormous sizes. The standard smaller version we see is identical, just smaller, with smaller seeds.
The Straight Neck Yellow Squash is essentially a yellow Zucchini. What’s good for one is good for the other. Its close relative, the Crookneck Squash is nearly identical except for the seeds which are larger.
One of the biggest crowd-pleasers is Pattypan Squash. Almost miniature in appearance, these flattened squash with their scalloped edges add visual appeal to the plate and are ideal for grilling.
Finally, there’s a relatively new squash on the block, the Delicata. This is a tubular shaped vegetable with rounded ends. It carries green and yellow stripes and has ridges running lengthwise. The skin is soft and edible, and the flesh is perhaps the sweetest of any squash not called butternut.
I think most of us are familiar with the traditional ways of cooking summer squash. We like to cut it in half lengthwise, season it and pop it on the grill. Likewise, we like to cut it up into cubes and skewer it as an element of a shish kebab.
One of my father’s favorite recipes was simple and satisfying. He would take one of his giant home-grown zucchinis, slice it up quite thinly, and then slice up a big old onion. All of it went into a skillet with some vegetable oil, and he would quickly sauté it. Once it started to turn brown, he would kill the heat and drain the squash in a colander. To serve it up he would sprinkle it with salt and pepper and throw in a dollop of sour cream. So good!
One trick for cooking yellow squash is to shave off long ribbons with a vegetable peeler. These thin strips of squash will cook quickly in a skillet or add a curvy look to a shish kebab.
Most of the time when you are working with pattypan squash, you will trim the stems away, slice them in half and then cut them up into wedges. But the somewhat larger ones can be scooped out to create space for a delicious stuffing. First off, trim the squash and then boil until tender. Then use a melon baller to scoop out a cavity. For the stuffing, try a mixture of crumbled bacon, breadcrumbs, diced onion and grated cheese, moistened with a little chicken broth.
I love Delicata squash. Not only are they attractive, but their flavor is unique and far from shy. And since the skin is so thin, there’s no need to peel it; just go ahead and eat it. Ordinarily I will slice my Delicata into disks and discard the seeds. From there on you can simply oil them up and roast them in the oven or work it into a casserole. Try mixing up chunks of Delicata with chopped up sausage, peppers, onions and sundried tomatoes, all simmering in a sauce of sour cream and Worcestershire sauce.
You can go shopping this season for all manners of squash, and if you run out of ideas, the Internet has plenty to offer.
