Zucchini

Let me tell you about zucchini, because this is a vegetable people cook without ever looking at it first.

Zucchini is almost entirely water. That is why it behaves the way it does in a pan: it does not fry, it steams in its own juice, and only after that juice boils away does the surface finally catch some color. Rush it on high heat in a crowded pan and you get a gray, limp mess instead of a golden one. Give it space and a little time, and the water leaves, the sugars concentrate, and you get sweetness and color together.

How do you choose a good one? Take it in your hand. It should feel heavy for its size and firm from end to end, with skin that is smooth and tight, no soft spots, no wrinkles near the stem. Smell it — a fresh zucchini smells faintly green and clean, nothing sour.

Some people say zucchini has no taste of its own, so you can drown it in spices. No! It has a delicate, slightly sweet taste, and that is exactly what gets lost under too much garlic and too much oil. That misconception leads straight to the kitchen mistake of oversauced, overcooked zucchini — soft outside, watery inside, with no character left at all.