A wonderful thing about French cuisine is its flights of fancy.  With a few, simple “tours de main” or tricks, the French chef transforms one thing into another, always managing to keep the integrity of the original. 

Examples

Let’s take some examples. 

• The lemon. Leave it to the French pâtissier to take a lemon and turn it into a tart that is almost more lemon-y than the original.
• The apple – oh, ho ho! The list of magical transformations is legion but leave it to a patissiere in the Loire Valley to forget an ingredient think quickly, and come up with the magical Tarte Tatin, a caramelized apple wonder and the culinary dessert Marseillaise of France.
• The fig – in France, this marvelously seductive wonder is both fruit and vegetable, as cozy in a tart encrusted with sugar as it is seasoned with pepper and herbs and set alongside a big, fat, juicy steak.
• The turnip –give this most humble of vegetables to to a French chef and she or he will poach, braise, sauté or otherwise modify it into one of the best things you ever put in your mouth, as you say “THIS is a turnip?”

Zucchini Into Flower

The list could go on but I won’t belabor it.  I will, though, bring your attention to the flower made with zucchini slices that is featured in our video today, which is a perfect example of the French “tour de main”.  After all, the zucchini is as humble as the turnip yet here, it’s dressed up for a delicious party.

Newcomer

The zucchini was a newcomer to the French vegetable lexicon at the turn of the 19^th century when, it is said, the French coopted it from the Italians.  Here is the story: squash  arrived in Europe with Christopher Columbus in the 14^th century and somehow squash seeds made it to Italy sometime later.  The seeds were dropped into the soil of a farm there and the hungry farmer couldn’t wait for the squash to mature into their hard-skinned selves so he picked one that wasn’t fully ripe and tasted it.  He found it SO delicious that from then on, he harvested the squash young and tender, reveling in their hazelnut-flavored flesh. He baptized these tender young things “zucchine”.

One thing led to another, and the zucchini came to France where chauvinism transformed it into “courgette,” in reference to baby “courge,” or squash.

International Zucchini Love

So the Portuguese had the sense to bring the seeds to Europe, the Italians had the smarts to eat this squash young, the French claimed it as their own.  Yet the true glory for its existence must go to MesoAmerica, that vast birthplace of squash, each of which comes  from the family curcubitacae.

First Course or Side Dish

We can thank them all, for the zucchini is an important part of the summer to fall repertoire. I encourage you to make this lovely dish and either serve it as a first course, or an accompaniment.

Bon Appéit!