Zucchini Carpaccio with Lemon and Herbs

It’s nearly July but it feels like summer just started. [Probably because technically today is the first day of summer, and also because it was so chilly until just a few weeks ago.] My CSA share is still all about late spring - lettuce, strawberries, herbs, radishes - which further reinforces this "it's barely summer" feeling, but the Carroll Gardens greenmarket looked a little more summery this past Sunday, what with piles of zucchini and their blossoms.

As is now customary in my family, my parents came over for a homemade brunch for Fathers Day (and, yes, we have my mom over for Mothers Day). The menu consisted entirely of one of my dad’s favorite foods: pizza. I planned to make three different types, but realized only that morning that I really needed something else with which to start off our meal.

The Minimalist's Zucchini Pear Soup

This is another one that I made a few weeks ago but never got around to posting.  Those of you who are regular New York Times readers might know that Mark Bittman aka The Minimalist writes a weekly column in the Wednesday Dining section. He usually takes seasonal ingredients and makes a simple dish with them, hence his title of The Minimalist. A few weeks ago, he provided us with a recipe for Zucchini Pear Soup.

I made the soup that night, but I threw in a few modifications. So while I can’t take credit for the recipe or even the idea to put these two ingredients together, I can take credit for sneaking in some wine and for cutting down the prep time by grating the ingredients rather than chopping them.

 

Couscous-Stuffed Globe Zucchini

I bought some globe zucchini at the market a while back and completely forgot about them due to my lack of cooking for a while after the aforementioned cocktail party and other events on the weekends. Thankfully, zucchini last a while in the fridge. But they don’t last forever, and so I had to do something with them this week.




Over the past month or so, I’ve seen a bunch of recipes for stuffed zucchini, but none of them appealed to me – either the flavors were just not up my alley or they used merguez or some other sort of sausage (definitely NOT up my alley). I decided to stop looking for inspiration elsewhere and be original by modifying and re-purposing my own recipe for a Mediterranean couscous salad that I normally utilize as a light summer lunch.

Yellow Zucchini and Taleggio Risotto

Today is another one of those days on which I feel completely uninspired to write. Between after-hours meetings for work and planning an amazing cocktail party, I’ve been really busy and haven’t cooked that much this week. I made this risotto a couple of weeks ago because I had a good-sized chunk of taleggio left over from my pizza and I also had yellow zucchini in my fridge (I always have zucchini in my fridge in the summer). This was also an uninspired dinner; I didn’t have the energy to come up with anything innovative so I just stole the flavors from the aforementioned pizza and turned it into risotto. Is it meta if I steal my own recipes? 

Zucchini Blossom and Taleggio Pizza

Summer is winding down and that means saying goodbye to, amongst other things, my pseudo-garden. My zucchini plant hasn’t given me any flowers in the past week, and I think that zucchini blossoms will shortly be gone from stands at the market.

I came up with this recipe one afternoon a few weeks ago when I was trying to figure out what to do with all the blossoms my zucchini plant was sending my way. I had already stuffed and fried some of them, but I didn’t know what to do with the rest. I had seen recipes for fritattas and tacos, but none of them appealed to me or seemed as if the blossoms would even be discernible amongst all the other bold flavors in the recipe.

I have also recently become obsessed with making pizza after my recent purchases of a pizza stone (at the Ohio State Fair, of all places) and a peel, which I learned is essential when you bake pizza on a stone – try pulling a pizza out of an oven that is 500° F and a stone that is even hotter with just a spatula and you will be met with disaster and possibly burns. The stone makes for an incredibly crisp crust, but you could just as well cook your pizza on a baking sheet.