I actually looked up the difference between sauté and fry for this recipe.
It’s such a complicated concept I decided I should at least be accurate in my terminology.
Fry is small pieces of food cooked in oil in a skillet over relatively high heat. One should be able to flip the food about in the skillet to turn it.
Sauté is large pieces of food cooked in oil in a skillet over moderate heat. Because the food is larger the time will be longer and a utensil is needed to turn the food.
The squash in this recipe is in rather large slices that need a tongs or fork to turn but they are cooked quickly over relatively high heat.
Call it what you will – it’s quick and easy hot weather cooking.
And one can never have too many easy zucchini recipes….
Feel free to sprinkle with paprika, hot sauce, cheese, or whatever tickles your fancy.
Sautéed Zucchini Slices
Total time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 yellow or green summer squash (zucchini, courgette), 8 inches (20cm) long
- 1 tbs olive oil
- salt, pepper for finishing
Instructions:
- Slice the blossom end off of the zucchini, then slice it into 1/3 inch (1 cm) rounds.
- Don’t bother with the thin, stem end. Slice as much as you’ll want to eat; I did about 12 slices.
- Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. The skillet needs to be large enough to hold all of the slices flat.
- Add zucchini slices and sauté 6 – 8 minutes.
- Check after 8 by lifting up with tongs and looking at the bottom; it should be getting brown spots on it. If not, sauté some more; if yes turn and sauté the other side.
- The other side won’t take quite as long.
- When they are done the slices will have nice, browned patches on both sides and be tender.
- Sprinkle with salt and pepper, serve.
I’m at the point now where I will take the center out of 2 or 3 squashes to get the size slices I want. I have so many and my freezer is almost full. I toss a few in the compost every day.
Normally I would pull out one or two of the plants now (I have 4, all different) but I decided if I did that the remaining two would die in the heat wave.
If I don’t, all 4 will thrive until Christmas.
One cannot control summer squashes….
As to the heat wave….
Naturally, I spent the morning making soup.
What else would one do when the temps are climbing into the triple digits (Fahrenheit)?
Actually, what else would one do when the counter is full to overflowing with tomatoes?
I think this will be the last batch of tomato soup I make this summer (so much better than the stuff in the red & white cans). It’s not that I’m running out of tomatoes, but I am running out of containers and the freezer really is almost full.
After this last batch I’ll tuck in a few more plastic bags of chopped tomatoes to fill the gaps, then the door will be closed until November when we start eating the soup and using the tomatoes and jams.
With all the blazing sunshine and high temperatures I can almost watch the tomatoes ripen.
I went out about 10 and picked everything that was ready.
When I went out 3 hours later to toss the peels in the compost there were lots of red and yellow tomatoes again. It looked as if I hadn’t picked in days!
Guess I can start having them for breakfast, too
I finally picked my first two tomatoes yesterday. I haven’t the foggiest why they’re not getting ripe, it’s been so hot and sunny here. But I have an overabundance of green ones and I’m guessing they’re all going to ripen at once O_o I think I need to buy another freezer…
Bummer that they are taking forever. Mine actually slowed down a bit when it was really hot, I checked my garden notes and last year mine were really late starting to – middle of August, Gardening is always a mystery!