Nothing is as ephemeral or as potetially banal as summer squash. As a teenage cook, working in not-so-fine-dining restaurants on this island I cooked a lot of zucchini every summer. I think the chef I worked for chose zucchini as our perpetual “vegetable of the day” because it was inexpensive and easy to cook. Trucked in from California, it was sort of fresh, and by that I mean it wasn’t frozen and it wasn’t canned. And we certainly didn’t show it a lot of love: We would make up a mixture of sauteed red onion, canned tomato and “Italian seasoning” and saute it all up together. Zucchini came to represent to me the thing you put on a plate because you had a space to fill, the thing that you gave to your guest because you hadn’t thought about it very hard or because you didn’t know what else to do or because you thought it was good enough.
I hated zucchini by the time I was 18.
And then, when I was 22, I went to study in Avignon. And because the program leaders knew I was training to be a chef, they placed me in a host family where the mom was known to be a good cook. Mrs. Seghieri was, indeed, quite a good cook. She cooked for me five nights a week and I have to say I loved almost everything she made. On Friday and Saturday nights all of the students were left to fend for themselves. We would return from our weekend adventures on Sunday evenings, and it was usual for our families to have left dinner there for us to eat by ourselves (the Seghieris usually had dinner with their own, grown kids on Sundays).
On one particular Sunday, I will never forget returning to find the oddest supper I had ever seen: A turned out frittata of egg, potato and onion sitting in the middle of the table like a cake, a bowl of green salad and a pan of cook zucchini. To that point in my life I had never thought that a cold egg dish was an appropriate thing to serve someone for dinner, but that was not the most disappointing part of the meal I had been left. The worst part was the zucchini, or courgette as the French would call it: They were grey and cold, and they were cooked to the point where I could crush them into a pulp with the back of a spoon. I was horrified. Oh God, I thought, I can never eat this!
But I did eat it – because I was raised to always try the food I am offered – and it was a true revelation to me. It was unequivocally delicious in its flavorful mushiness. I could not believe how good it tasted, so much so that I made a point of asking Mrs. Seghieri how she had cooked it. She just shrugged and said she had cooked like everyone does; with olive oil, garlic, parsley and water. Of course she had cooked the bejesus out of it, cooking it about five times longer than I would have. The French cook most of their vegetable a lot more than modern, west coast American would ever even consider cooking them. Ask a French cook and they will tell you that most of the “cooked” vegetables Americans eat are decidedly cru in their estimation. (By and large the way the French cook vegetables has a positive effect not only on their flavor but on their digestibility. Several of us who were exchange students in the south of France that year commented to one another about how incredibly well we pooed… but perhaps that is the subject for a different blog.)
The other thing that made that revelatory squash experience so delicious – and it took me a few years to figure this out – was that Mrs. Seghieri was not cooking the same, mass production, long-haul zucchini that I has used to back in rural Washington in the 1980’s: She had bought her courgettes from a small, local vegetable vender, and they came from close by, and the variety of squash that farmer grew was not selected for its deep green color or its shiny skin or the fact that it was all uniform in shape or that it transported well. It was selected because he and his customers were going to have to eat it and so it was important that they liked the way it tasted.
A few years later in, then living in Napa Valley, I would grow my own ronde de nice heirloom, French, summer squash and I would learn that when you take them right from the plant they practically vibrate with life. You see, they are absolutely bristling with millions of tiny, spiky hairs that disappear within a very short time after harvesting them. If you find summer squash at the farmers’ market that still have that bloom tiny needles on them, you will know that you have found some truly fresh squash.
And so I have become a devote of the lovely, ephemeral summer squash. I love the sweetness of it finely chopped and sautéed simply in olive oil and garlic so that I can add it to risotto, right at the end. I love it cut in half, scored and grilled to a deep brown with salt & pepper. I love it shaved into ribbons and tossed simply in olive oil, lemon, salt and parsley and topped with a shaving of pecorino. But the thing I look forward to the most – and perhaps it is because it is the first thing I get to enjoy each season – are squash blossoms, simply filled and fried tempura style. That to me smacks of the first taste of summer.
The best way to get squash blossoms, because they are sooooo fragile, is to grow a few plants yourself. You will need to know before you harvest your blossoms that there are male and female blossoms. The male blossoms (like all male things) are only there to pollinate the females, so these are the ones to harvest. Leave the females behind and they will give you the squash to enjoy about a week later. (I had a friend whose Italian grandmother had told him the female blossoms were poisonous, a good way to get a not-so-observant grand child to pay attention and not destroy your squash harvest!)
Here is a favorite recipe of mine, for squash blossoms and Dungeness crab. Nothing could be more “summer on Whidbey” than this dish. Cheers!
Dungeness Crab Stuffed Summer Squash Blossoms
This recipe is going to seem a lot more complex than it is. Really it just involves making a gravy-like sauce called a Velouté, folding whipped egg whites and crab into that sauce, and then sticking that inside the natural envelop that fresh squash blossoms provide. Tempura batter, with is used to coat the outside of the blossom with a crispy crust, is very easy to make. In fact, you can make a large batch of the dry mix to have on hand, and use it to crispify innumerable other things, such as summer veggies.
Ingredients for 8 guests:
Tempura Mix:
1 C Corn starch
4 C Cake flour
1 Tbls. Baking powder
2 tsp. Salt
Sparkling water, enough to adjust to the correct consistency
1 Dungeness Crab, cooked, about 1.75 pounds, picked meat thereof
8 large summer squash blossoms
2 tsp. Butter
½ C. Fennel bulb, finely chopped
1 Shallot, finely chopped
1 tsp. Garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp. AP Flour
1/3 C. Milk
2 Tbls. Crab butter
¼ tsp. Thyme leaves
1 tsp. Chives, chopped
2 eggs, separated, whites whipped to soft peaks, yolks reserved
salt & white pepper to taste
Optional: Fennel Pollen to garnish
Technique:
Prepare the dry ingredients for the tempura and reserve.
In a thick bottom pan, melt the butter and sweat the fennel, shallot and garlic until completely softened, but not browned. Add the flour and cook over moderate heat for 5 minutes. Add the crab butter and milk and stir well until the sauce thickens. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Add the egg yolk, herbs and crab body meat. Season with salt & white pepper. The mixture can now be reserved until about ten minutes before you plan on serving it. If you need to hold the mixture for longer than one hour, refrigerate it, but remember to pull it out of the refrigerator at least 20 minutes before adding the egg whites, as the sauce will set up when chilled.
To complete the dish, pre-heat a fryer to 350 degrees. Whip the egg whites to soft peaks and fold them gently into the crab mixture. Using a teaspoon, carefully fill the squash blossoms about half full. Make sure to leave them empty enough so that the pedals close all the way around the crab filling, and remember that the filling will expand in the fryer.
Mix the sparkling water with about ¼ of the tempura dry mix. The batter should be thin; about the consistency of cream. Dip the filled blossoms in the tempura, then holding them by the pedal end, set them gently in the hot fryer oil. Cook 3 minutes, until crisp and hot inside. Remove and season with salt & fennel pollen. Use the remaining crab leg meat pieces to garnish the plates.
An original recipe by Chef Vincent Nattress, The Orchard Kitchen
Looks delish. We don’t have space to grow squash here, but I’ll check out Laddie’s at the Farmer’s Market.
Have a great summer.
Matthew, Remember the time you delivered live crabs to me at Sinskey and one of them got a hold of my thumb? Ouch! And so I never feel bad boiling them up!
Hi Vincent,
Join the club! I remember doing an oyster bar there, and by request I shucked some Eastern Cherrystone clams, yum. Dr. Sinskey requested them especially. I found that you don’t get a second chance to open them. Ice them to begin with, then one chance to get your clam knife in and then shuck. I’ve since found out about the technique of steaming them slightly.
Last April, I got invited by Brian Streeter to help out at the Cakebread lunch (40th anniversary) at Pebble Beach, Food and Wine Magazine event. What an amazing location, and great event. I got to give a few pointers about shucking and presentation.