I take heart that James Dyson, the inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, developed 5,127 prototypes over 15 years before settling on the perfected product. As a chef and the creative director of my company, Fra’ Mani Handcrafted Foods, I spend much of my time on innovation and have also become used to adopting the process to certain projects in my home kitchen. Repetition is at the heart of innovation. Making a dish or a food product 3, 5, 7 times or more, banking the adjustments toward the progress that makes a difference, sometimes all the difference, is the promise of repetition and the pleasure of discovery. “Practice makes perfect”. But repetition is only good if it’s not dull. It’s valuable if what has been gained adds to what more is realized. Repetition requires persistence, patience, and the acceptance of shortfalls. It takes time. It calls into question even more important questions.
Experience tells me that if I look hard enough, I’ll find that something I am trying to do has already been done. Many years ago, before I knew about the “mother sauces” of French cuisine, I “invented” hollandaise. I had learned to make mayonnaise and rather than suspending oil in egg yolks I used hot melted butter and voila, butter mayonnaise! “Nothing new under the sun” can be a defeating proposition. Yet if it were true, the sonnet would be a dead form after Shakespeare, the record for the hundred-meter dash would have only been broken once, there would be no use in listening to the hundreds of interpretations of “Take the A Train”, and your roast chicken would never reach the summit. The forms are there—the sonnet, the race, the music, the chicken—all waiting to be broken open.
New ideas seldom come out of thin air. Discovery is an incremental process that may lead down a path to surprise. At other times, the surprise is there waiting to be pursued. I wonder, for instance, how to achieve the crisp, impenetrable, flakey pie crust I just ate that lies incongruously below a wet fruit filling. Or how to capture the essence of roasted meat in a sauce even more pure than the meat itself or a magically reciprocal match of food and wine. Achieving these heights can hardly be spelled out. Recipes are an attempt in words and measures to replicate and standardize a result by one presumed to have created something new. If a recipe works, it is a faithful record of its prescription and conveys what is wholly personal, and as such, wholly original.
For several summer seasons, I have been working to innovate on zucchini one of the more problematic vegetables to treat creatively and which is never as good as when it is a vehicle for other ingredients and flavors or as part of mixtures that otherwise compensate—Ratatouille, sweet bread or muffins, as a hollowed-out boat for savory fillings, as the sponge in a curried braise or the Italo-American “Zucchini Parmesan”, a knock-off of its cousin the in the same preparation, bland eggplant. Why I wonder is it so popular? Our local markets are full of them year-round and grown elsewhere. Varied and handsome as they are, zucchini lack the candor of a tomato, the freshness of cucumber, and the outspokenness of peppers. It’s understood that zucchini needs help.
Until recently, I planted less of it in my vegetable garden given the enormous amount a few plants can yield. But this year, I covered a small plot of land with a dozen plants of various types and surrounded them with paving stones to encourage their growth in the afternoon sun. We called it the “squash pond.” I had crops to pick every other day and began slicing, salting, and drying them to reduce the overflow. I have written about this in a previous post (See “Dry cured Zucchini”) and have (through repetition!) realized ways to improve the texture, color, and seasoning. The process below is very similar, however, rather than preserving it for later use, I decided to fashion it with a view to a ready-to-eat salad, as antipasto, or as a side dish. I have made it at least 6 times adjusting with each trial based on what I learned. Here are my notes and a few takeaways:
It goes without saying: Choose very fresh zucchini, firm and unblemished. If you grow it, pick it and use it right away. : Start with 4 pounds of zucchini. Any more is a bit too much to handle. For an attractive blend, include various types and colors. I grew Green bush Zucchini, “Bianco di Trieste”, Costata Romanesco, and yellow “Zephyr” but any combination of available varieties will do. The zucchini should be of moderate size, roughly 6-8 inches in length, firm, and as fresh as possible.
Slicing: 1/8 inch thick is ideal for delivering the best texture after the subsequent steps of salting, wringing out, and drying. For an even more crunchy bite, slice it thicker but no more than 3/16 inch.
Use a mandoline to slice the zucchini into disks or if you prefer, halve the zucchini and slice each half lengthwise into thin wide ribbons, an attractive alternative.
Salting: Use enough salt (kosher or granular table salt equal by weight), at a rate of 2.5% per weight of the raw, sliced zucchini. For 4 pounds of zucchini you’ll need 45 grams of salt (1816 grams X 2.5%). It may seem like a lot, but when the zucchini gives up water and is wrung out and the resulting brine is discarded, at least half of the salt goes with it. Zucchini is made up of about 90% water and salt has an immediate effect on its flesh. What’s going on here? Through osmosis, salt creates an environment around the cells in the flesh where the concentration of salt is higher outside of the cells than on the inside. Water naturally moves from areas of lower concentration inside the cells to a higher concentration of salt outside the cells to equalize the balance. As a result, water leaves the zucchini cells causing them to lose their so-called turgor pressure and rupture, spilling out their contents. When the water leaves, the cells become softer and go limp but luckily they don’t surrender their texture. Rather, they become pleasantly crunchy like Japanese shiozuke (salt pickles). The loss of water is key to extracting and intensifying what native flavor zucchini contains. Salt can also inhibit certain microbial growth and together with drying has potent preservation benefits.
Macerating: Allow at least 4 hours for the salt to do its work. If you leave the zucchini to macerate overnight, refrigerate it or it may begin to ferment, a pickle for another day.
Weighting. Cover the zucchini with a plate slightly smaller than the inside circumference of the bowl so that the bottom of the plate is in contact with the zucchini and weigh it down heavily. I use my granite mortar but any other weight will do. The main thing is that the slices should be compressed. Let stand for at least 4 hours or overnight in a cool spot. After two hours or so, using your two hands, lift and mix the zucchini gently so as not to break the slices. Re-cover, return the weight to the pile, and let stand another two hours.
Wringing out: Drain the zucchini in a colander and then pile it on top of a clean, large, sturdy, porous cotton kitchen towel. Bring the sides of the zucchini up and over the center of the pile and gather up the loose ends of the towel, twisting them in opposite directions between either hand Use torsion to squeeze out as much water as possible.
When the zucchini have come together in a tight ball. Wrap the end under and continue to squeeze the center to press out more water. Don’t worry about how much pressure you are applying. The slices will remain intact. Take your time and give your hands a rest as you squeeze out the water after salting. Vigorously wringing out the zucchini reduces it to 40% of its original weight and after drying in the oven you’ll end up with a little under a pound (!) Short of going to the trouble of reweighing the lot to see if you need to continue to squeeze out more water, simply handle it. It should feel damp afterward, like laundered clothes that have just completed the spin cycle in a washing machine.
Dry the zucchini in an oven rather than in the sun as previously suggested in “Dry Cured Zucchini”. Sunlight bleaches color and your pickle will look far less vivid. Lay out the slices evenly on a parchment-lined sheet pan and place in a pre-heated 300 F oven for 30 minutes then allow to cool. Transfer the zucchini to a bowl.
Seasoning: 26 grams of 7 grain (%) white wine vinegar, 56 grams extra virgin olive oil, 7 grams coarsely chopped fresh parsley or mint, three very thinly sliced garlic cloves; fresh ground pepper or minced hot pepperoncino, as you like.
Chilling before seasoning enhances the crunchy texture.