In Good Taste #97: Courgette & basil pickles

Ideas for your inevitable courgette glut; a book recommendation if you like mad scientists; Stereophonic

Well, hello there! How are you?

Good I hope.

(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.

Today’s recipe is one for anyone who’s growing courgettes and fears the inevitable glut. This is the first year I’ve planted any and my current mood is expectant delight: every day I check my two plants and note the progress of their tiny green gourds. But I know from more experienced gardeners that, at some point before the summer is out, this will flip to panicked surfeit.

I have one friend whose partner begged her to plant fewer than the five courgettes that (over)fed the two of them for months last year. Yet, unable to stop herself, she’s gone for eight. Eight! A single plant can produce three or four vegetables per week! Marie, this one’s for you…

As well as the pickle recipe here are a few more courgette ideas:

Pick them small with the flower still attached then stuff the blossom with goats cheese or ricotta and bake or (better but more faff) batter and deep fry. Serve drizzled with honey.

Boiled small courgettes until just tender and serve them simply, Greek style, with olive oil and lemon. I had some greens in Corfu last year that I loved and recreated and cooked on repeat all summer. Just the sort of thing to eat when it’s hot.

Grate larger courgettes, mix with pesto (maybe some preserved lemon too?) and use as the filling for a tart using shop-bought puff pastry. Good with a tomato salad alongside or nice in slices on a picnic.

Make into ribbons with a veg peeler and toss with shavings of parmesan and some olive oil and lemon juice. Maybe some toasted nuts too? I like walnuts here.

Char on a BBQ or under a grill until the skin is blackened and the flesh is soft. Then peel (you’ll still have a nice smoky flavour once you get rid of the charred skin) and put the chopped flesh in a colander, weighted down with a saucer, to drain off some of the water. Smush with garlic, lemon and tahini into a sort of courgette baba ghanoush.

My favourite BBQ side is courgettes sliced lengthways into approx 0.5cm slices, brushed with oil and cooked on a hot grill until soft and with nice char lines. Mix up generous amount of dressing (olive oil, lemon juice and zest, minced garlic and finely chopped mint, some chilli too if you like) and put each slice in as they’re ready. Do this before grilling any meats or mains and the courgette will absorb the dressing as it cools.

Spiralised or julienne-peeled into something noodle-adjacent, courgettes are lovely tossed with an equal amount of cooked spaghetti in a simple butter sauce. Or, if you feel fancy, some potted shrimps or crab and a hint of chilli.

Claire Ruston, aka Aunty Bulgaria (whose newsletter I highly recommend) had a great round up last year. It also includes the phrase “green truncheons of my nightmares” which made me laugh a lot:

What to do with all those courgettes (a recipe roundup)

And of course there is this week’s recipe. Simple pickles that go well with a can’t-be-bothered-to-cook summer spread of bread, cheese, salady bits, pork pie etc. Nice in a tomato salad too. If nothing else, it will push some of the glut down the road and you can deal with it later…

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Supper club

Carrot kraut and kimchi are underway, ready to be transformed into snacks for my Lizzy’s On The Green supper club. They will become crunchy little fritters - served with a coriander mayo and fried curry leaves - and everyone’s favourite: kimchi devilled eggs.

sycamoresmyth

A post shared by @sycamoresmyth

Tickets are £45 and include a welcome cocktail. I’m really looking forward to it and would love it if you could join me.

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Recipe: Courgette & basil pickles

This makes enough for a 750ml jar but obviously scale it up as needed to deal with your glut. It’s an easy ferment that uses the same method as these cucumbers. This archive piece also includes a basic introduction to brine pickling:

Ingredients

• 4 cloves garlic, peeled

• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns

• 2 bay leaves

• 1 small bunch fresh basil

• 2 courgettes

• 4% brine (400ml water with 16g salt should be enough for a 750ml jar)

Method

1. Put the flavourings in the jar. Add the garlic, peppercorns and bay leaves to a scrupulously clean jar. Add the basil too. If presentation is important to you try and get the sprigs to gently loop around the inside of the sides of the jar.

2. Prepare the courgette. Top and tail the courgette and halve it lengthways. Use a teaspoon to scrape out the seeds. Cut in to 1cm slices. Do this on the diagonal for a slightly fancier look.

3. Add the courgettes to the jar and pour over the brine. Pack everything tightly and pour over the brine. If you heated the water to help dissolve the salt, it’s important that you let it cool to room temperature before it goes anywhere near the veg or it will kill our lovely lactic acid bacteria. Add a glass or ceramic pickle weight if you have one or something else that will keep the slices submerged: half an onion, a sandwich bag filled with brine or a little raft of bay leaves.

4. Wait. Leave, burping regularly and tasting occasionally, until the courgettes have achieved a degree of tanginess that you enjoy. In warm weather this is unlikely to take more than a week. Then move to the fridge.

Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)

• Vary the herbs and spices to suit your taste. Any soft herbs would work instead of or as well as the basil. I’m a fan of the slightly aniseedy notes that dill, tarragon or chervil bring. But parsley or mint (go easy on the mint) would work too. Strips of lemon zest would be a good addition too. Coriander and mustard seeds alongside the peppercorns would give a more traditional pickling spice finish.

• Whatever you do though don’t leave out the bay leaves. The tannins they contain are absolutely crucial for keeping the pickles from turning mushy. Vine leaves or tea will do instead.

• Add some other things in there for a summer medley. I did one batch with cherry tomatoes which was really nice - a kind of fermented ratatouille.

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Cultural Fun

I have been reading Benjamin Labatut recently. Starting with When We Cease to Understand the World and moving on to The MANIAC. The works have been described as “nonfiction novels” and I don’t really know what that means but I thought they were both incredible.

Both books deal with great 20th century minds and the fine line between genius and madness. WWCTUTW tells the story of some of the most terrible and destructive inventions (Zyklon B, the atom bomb) and the schism in the world of physics caused by quantum mechanics. The MANIAC focuses on John von Neumann, the Hungarian mathematician and scientist who (amongst countless other things) contributed to the Manhattan Project and pioneered the idea of AI.

I was entranced by them.

We saw the much-hyped play Stereophonic this week. It comes from Broadway, garlanded by a record-breaking number of Tony Awards and it’s hard for anything to live up to that. So it didn’t completely blow me away but I did think it was great.

The story of a 70s Fleetwood Mac-esque band recording an album amidst marital tension and substance abuse, Sterophonic isn’t a musical but a “play with songs”: we get to hear the tracks (written by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler) as the band lays them down. It’s the most naturalistic play I’ve seen in a long time: the set a convincing replication of a period studio, the dialogue full of overlap and interruptions. The cast is wholly convincing and the idea of a band’s creative sum being greater than its personal parts is compelling. But it wouldn’t have worked if the songs didn’t bear that out but they really do. There were a few goosebump moments as we got to hear the moments when it all comes together.

The next night saw the play Outside Voice at Soho Poly, very much at the other end of the spectrum, budget-wise, but also great. A ethical philosopher married to a disgraced doctor who has reinvented himself as a conspiracy-spouting podcaster, plus their former colleague and his cancer-sick daughter. It was cleverly done with all the characters believable and no-one becoming a straw man to make a point. Only on for two more days but recommended.

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