Peak of Summer: Grilled & Marinated Zucchini

Or peppers, or eggplants. And a series of ideas on how to use them.

This is one of my favorite summer recipes.
You can make a big batch of it, keeps for a long time as you can cover the zucchini with olive oil, tastes even better the longer it stays in the fridge, reaching their peak after about 2-3 days. You can put it on and in literally everything, and it’s cheap (at least if you live in the Mediterranean area where people don’t know how to use the immense wave of zucchini we get every summer - neighboring farmers show up at our door with bags full of them, as every year they somehow miscalculate the quantity needed for a family, and not for an army.
The only downside is that the most efficient way to make them is in the oven, so if you live in a climate where you have plenty of zucchini, you probably also live in a climate where the last thing you want to do is turn on the oven, but that still remains the fastest way to do it. In alternative, you can grill them on a barbebcue or pan-fry them.

CHOOSING & BUYING ZUCCHINI FOR THIS RECIPE

Choose firm, preferably smaller zucchini. Bigger ones have too many seeds, and older zucchini might turn bitter.
In Italy, I prefer the brighter green variety. Here in Languedoc where I am, that variety seems inexistent, but the dark green zucchini are very very good. The yellow ones, par contre, are a bit too soft for this recipe.
The ones I photographed here were already a tad too large, but they will still work should you not have small, fresh zucchini from a farmer’s market. Once you douse it all in olive oil it will taste great anyway.

HOW TO EAT THEM

• Make bruschetta: grill some bread, add a drizzle of olive oil on each slice, if you’re Italian or French or courageous rub a garlic clove on top of it, and add a good heap of zucchini. If you like, add some pecorino shavings;

• Add on top of pizza, even a regular margherita you bought somewhere (best if taken to the beach!);

• Add to a cold pasta salad, or to a cold grain salad (orzo, quinoa, etc);

• Eat as is with a fresh piece of pecorino, or chèvre, or mozzarella, then use a piece of bread to mop up the juices;

• Add to any panino or sadwich: try mozzarella + zucchini + pesto, or mozzarella + zucchini + prosciutto crudo, or pecorino + zucchini;

• Perfect as a simple side to any seafood.