Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Squash Salad

In the summer here in Texas there is an abundance of squash - zucchini, yellow squash, crook-neck, 8-ball and a host of others. Our trip to the farmers' market on Saturday yielded some nice, firm zucchini - about 6" long each. Zucchini can be annoying to cook - all that water has to be driven off before they will brown - and then all of a sudden they are black. If you don't drive the water off, they are all limp and mushy - almost able to be sucked through a straw. Am I making them sound appetizing yet? I thought not.

Then I saw this thing advertised. It is a spiralizer. Once you get past the "gluten free" hype and stop trying to pretend that strands of zucchini are pasta, the idea is quite handy. The tool is unnecessary - at least for this dish. A good old-fashioned vegetable peeler is all you need. But the spiralizer did spark some thinking.

The secret to this dish is your choice of olive oil. It would be revolting with a neutral tasting oil. We used a California Koroneiki oil, an oil with lots of peppery notes and a silky, buttery mouth feel.

Ingredients (2 Servings)

4 medium sized zucchini
16 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 T capers, rinsed and drained
A few sprigs lemon thyme, leaves only chopped finely
A few glugs of high quality, peppery extra virgin olive oil. Probably 1/4 cup
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Kosher salt to taste
Coarsely ground black pepper to taste
1 avocado diced into 1/4" pieces
Crunchy sea salt for finishing

Method

Peel the zucchini, and then slice into ribbons length wise using the vegetable peeler. Discard the core where the seeds are.
Add the tomatoes, capers, lemon thyme, olive oil and lemon juice to the zucchini slices in a bowl and toss to coat. Add the seasoning salt and pepper to taste, and toss again.
Place 1/2 the avocado onto each plate. Mound the squash salad over the avocado. Sprinkle  some coarse salt on the surfaceof the salad. Frind some pepper onto the plate to make it look interesting, serve immediately


2 comments:

Chris Lope said...

My wife and I have been doing something similar with english cucumbers. Cucumbers, grape tomatoes, a little red onion, juice from half a lemon, olive oil, chopped kalamata olives, feta, and fresh mint. I've been making zucchini noodles for lower carb pad thai too. Spiralizers are the bomb, haha.

Chris Lope said...

My wife and I have been doing something similar with english cucumbers. Cucumbers, grape tomatoes, a little red onion, juice from half a lemon, olive oil, chopped kalamata olives, feta, and fresh mint. I've been making zucchini noodles for lower carb pad thai too. Spiralizers are the bomb, haha.