'Baba Miskeen'

'Baba Miskeen'
Necessity is the Mother of Contention

Over the years, I have on a number of occasions heard people complain about the productivity of zucchini plants, saying that after a time they had run out of creative ideas for preparing the zucchini and had grown quite weary of the vegetable. This I cannot understand, except insofar as I suspect that these who complain in this way have not been endowed with levels of curiosity and imagination to match the productivity of this most noble squash. In short, they themselves might possibly be called with justification cucuzzë. To my mind, zucchini and zucchini flowers are delicious and sufficiently adaptable as to be amenable to an extremely broad array of preparations; some of my favourites I’ve already posted on ( see, for example, the threads on boumiano (link) and marrow blooms (link).

Now, that said, I think one key to profiting maximally from the productivity of the zucchini plant is to be rigorous in harvesting the fruits when they are small or, at most, medium in size. But occasionally, due to circumstances beyond one’s control, the harvesting is delayed for a few days with as result the creation of zucconi or even zuccuzzi, that is, over-sized, pumpkin-like behemoths, with large seeds and stringy soft centres. What can one do with these beasts that even my infamous, vegetable-eating squirrel adversary, Dikzak, spurns?

Well, two solutions I came up with yesterday worked out pretty well. The first one is, in effect, a version of baba ghanooj, but using instead of an eggplant one of the ‘Chernobylised’ zucchini. I call this dish baba miskeen and here’s how it looks:


Waarom ‘miskeen’? Omdat ge ‘t mischien ‘baba’ kunt noemen.

I peeled the big zooka, removed the uninteresting internal organs, cut it into cubes, sautéed it briefly with olive oil and garlic and then boiled it for a good while, until it was sufficiently soft to be easily mashed with my trusty Flemish stoemper. Tahini, a little raw garlic, lemon juice, and then for serving, garnishing with high quality olive oil, chopped mint and parsley, and a generous sprinkling of sumac. No smoky flavour, admittedly, but this baba miskeen was quite delicious.

Another preparation I used on one of these zucchini that got too big was to stuff it and bake it slowly. The general approach was roughly Lebanese, though I did a few things that were taken straight from my Southern Italian background and are at variance with the Lebanese approach. Here’s a picture (a bit dark; I’ll replace it with a picture of the left-over serving, if that turns out to be clearer):



I halved and cleaned the ‘zucchini’ and then boiled them a bit to soften them. The stuffing features a mixture of lamb and veal with minced onion, garlic, allspice, cinnamon, etc. Over the stuffed vegetables I poured a separately prepared tomato sauce with onion and spices. At table, we take some yoghurt alongside the stuffed vegetables. The boiling and slow-baking rendered the oversized squash quite tender and there remained a pleasant flavour that paired well with that of the combination of meat-filling and tomato sauce.

Most of my zucchini plants survived some mid-summer crises and have made a come-back, entering into what is, I believe, a third period of relatively intense productivity. All I can say is: ‘bring it on!’

Felice Festa delle Zucchine!
Antonius

JUst beautiful, both the ideas and the executions. Can't wait to try, even without necessity nipping at my heels.

Had my mother but known of this during the great zuccuzzi wars that plagued Westchester County in the warm summers of the early 70s, how differently all our lives might have turned out. Fortunately perhaps, she is old now and the storm and strife of those years -- with neighbors stealing anonymously to the backdoor in the dead of night to leave looming baskets of the unwanted behemoths -- are but a faint memory and no longer troubling to her. (Though I still remember the cries of dismay that greeted the breaking dawn, and yet another onslaught from some craven neighbor's garden; the freezer bulging with bricks of zucchini bread, the table groaning with squash soup, our dinner plates laden with steamed and sauteed cubes of the relentless vegetable. Dark days they were.)

The problem with zukes is that if you get behind on your picking, you can lose sight of the tasty small fruits, and get overly focussed on the woody, mealy louisville sluggers that appear every morning.

If you find you have a surfeit of summer squash, pick 'em all, and find an unsuspecting parked car with its doors unlocked. Resume eating pleasant-sized fruits tomorrow.

I only wish my mother had found this 'secret' out in the 70's when we were subject to almost nightly horrific squash recipes.

My favorite: thinly sliced, garlic, high heat (either sauteed, or roasted atop a pizza.

Consider the compost pile for overly large summer squash and cukes. Chop roughly before mixing in. We missed a pickling cucumber until it had a nine-inch circumference. Definitely not fit to eat, but no nutrients wasted.

Antonius,

Wonderful preparations, both of them. I am often guilty of squash fatigue even though I don't grow them myself (yet). I buy them when they look good, and then figure out what I want to do with them. One of my favorites, like JoelF, is thinly sliced on a pizza made from lavosh.

The baba recipe is something I never would have thought of. I wonder how it would be if you added a short trip to a smoker before mashing. I intend on finding out.

The roughly-Lebanese stuffed zucchini you describe was commonly found on the specials menu at Semiramis this summer. They used excellent baby zucchini and covered them in a very good tomato sauce. Although I'm not sure their stuffing was seasoned as well as yours (based on description).

Best,
Michael

Antonius wrote:Necessity is the Mother of Contention

Or, "I came, I saw, I conjured."

I was served an unexpected, but interesting pasta dish at the Castello dell'Oscano near Perugia some years ago. The flavor was mild, yet subtle, vegetal, but still rich, with a distinct, yet muted lemon overtone. I asked for the recipe, and was told, "questo è facile:" shred or finely grate two or three young zucchini, combine with the zest of one lemon, three or so Tbs of Umbrian or Tuscan olive oil, a few Tbs of grated Parmigiano Reggiano, some salt, and let the mixture sit while heating salted water for pasta. Use a pasta with ample of surface area, like fusilli, radiatori, ruote, or the ineffably lovely quadrefiore. Strain the pasta, but leave it fairly wet and immediately toss with the raw zucchini mixture. Top with a little grated Parmigiano. I don't recall a name for this dish, but let's call it Pasta coi zucchini e la scorza grattugiata di un limone del Castello dell'Oscano for short.

Choey wrote:I don't recall a name for this dish, but let's call it Pasta coi zucchini e la scorza grattugiata di un limone del Castello dell'Oscano for short.

Choey,

If that's for short, then what's for 'long'?

Enjoy,
Gary

How about Pasta coi zucchini e la scorza grattugiata di un limone e olio d'oliva e Parmigiano Reggiano, il Re indiscusso di formaggi, beh, e del sale, anche, del Castello dell'Oscano? Piu o meno.

Congrats to Antonius for thinking outside the zuke.

And it occurred thence immediately to me how one might use one of these monstercinis in some of our favorite Sichuan eggplant recipes... certainly worth a try.

In grad school I lived alongside an Egyptian couple who did wonderful things with monstercinis: she'd scoop out the unwanted stringy mass, slice out the rest, chop fine with rice, lots of fresh tomatoes, garlic and mystery spices, and then bake it. This was very very good stuff.

We were all there in Davis together. Given the climate, the half-life growth period between lovely little tender guys and monstercinis was about the interval it took to down a cold Lucky Lager. So my neighbors had no dearth of fodder for the dish.

Me 'n the other neighbors were never reluctant to share in the riches.

Geo

If you find you have a surfeit of summer squash, pick 'em all, and find an unsuspecting parked car with its doors unlocked. Resume eating pleasant-sized fruits tomorrow.

Definitely not fit to eat.

JoelF, ekreider:

Well, clearly we disagree on this point. While we all know that zucchini are best harvested and eaten while they are small, the point of the above was to show that even when they grow large, one can still make good culinary use of them and, in fact, I believe the two dishes described and shown above were quite delicious.

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mrbarolo, eatchicago:

Many thanks. The baba miskeen ended up with a really nice flavour of zucchini, which are, like most modern eggplant varieties, rather mild in taste. But as happens with the eggplant in baba ghanooj, I think the combination of flavours added (sesame, olive oil, lemon) manages somehow not to overwhelm but to complement the mild flavour of the vegetable itself.

I failed to mention in the original post that some of the good flesh (i.e., not the soft, stringy stuff) from the hollowed out zucchini-shells I added to the meat mixture for the stuffing. This addition helps to keep the stuffing very moist and light through the relatively long and slow baking.

***

Geo:

The substitution in the Sichuan eggplant recipe sounds like a good possibility. I also like the sound of the Egyptian dish, which I’ll give a try one of these days.

Antonius