Making the switch: zucchini in balsamic vinegar glaze

When you cook, you have to learn to deal with substitutions. You plan a recipe, you go out to shop.... and the stuff you THOUGHT was there, ain't there. OR, it's there, but it doesn't look good enough to cook and serve. OR... you see something better. OR... you have the recipe in front of you, but you forgot to get the ingredient in question, and you have a big back of something else.

Can you guess which one confronted Annalena ? It was sort of a combination of all of them.

I had found a recipe, on one of my food sites which called for "fairy tale" eggplant. Now, if you've never seen this type of eggplant, you should. They are all of about 2 inches long, and white (DONT GO THERE). When eggplant are this tiny, they cook very quickly. Frequently, however, they are bitter, and the only way you can really do something with them is with a pickling technique or an escabeche, something that draws out the bitterness. When you "meet" a vegetable that has a white variant - like these fairy tales - you can almost always count on it to be LESS bitter than the more colorful variety (incidentally, white color is why eggplants are called EGGplants. The first ones were round, and white. Purple came later). So, you can do other things with these guys, like pan fry them.

Unless you forgot to buy them. Or you have a huge bag of yellow and green zucchini that will begin to return to the earth in a day or two. And then you begin thinking "Hmmm. you CAN make a pretty good zucchini parmagiano, and the texture is right, and...." So, there you have it. A variant on a dish was born. This was really, truly very good. An excellent side dish for the lasagna I served last night. Easy as can be. Here we go.

You need about a pound of small zucchini. As those who followed my rant on zucchini bread will know, I really have trouble saying "SMALL" zucchini because, by definition, zucchini should be small. Get the smallest ones you can, and cut them into coin slices, about a third of an inch thick. Mix up the colors if you like, there won't be much color to look at when you're finished.

You also need EITHER a TABLESPOON (that much) of dried oregano or THREE of fresh. That's the ratio, boys and girls. For dried herbs, you need three times as much fresh to equal the intensity. (And, as an aside - yet another one - it is a reluctance to kick up herbs and spices that is one of the reasons why when you copy a restaurant dish at home, it doesn't taste as good. Watch restaurant cooks add herbs and spices sometimes. Or, do something that will really open your eyes: when a recipe calls for "1 teaspoon" or "1 tablespoon" of something, even salt, don't eyeball it. Measure it. OR, eyeball it first, put it aside and then measure the quantity. I will bet you you underseasoned when you eyeballed.

Going back to the oregano, this is one case where I prefer the dried form. Just about every herb is better fresh. Dried basil, chives, and whatnot are just green dust . But oregano picks up flavor when it's dried, like no other herb does. So use the dried one. You also need one tablespoon of fresh parsley (this is another one where the dried stuff is green dust). You also need 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar - the cheap stuff - and a couple of tablespoons of oil. Have your salt handy too.

Put the oil in a pan that is big enough so that the zucchini will be in one layer. Get it hot, and add the zucchini. Leave em alone, for two minutes or so, maybe three. You're looking for some color on the bottom of the guys, and when you have it, then stir it, and get some color on the other side. Shouldn't take you more than two minutes the second time around.

Now, pour in the balsamic vinegar. With the heat, it will reduce immediately. Stir the vegetables through it, and stir in the herbs. The heat will release the perfume of the oregano, the parsley adds its "green" note to the mix, and then all you do is salt , and pepper it , to taste.

From start to finish, this will take you all of about ten minutes to make. The zucchini will shrink down, so know that. If you're a big vegetable eater, you will be able to serve two amply, three if you put another vegetable out (like pan fried cauliflower with capers, which is what we had).

Being able to "roll with the punches" in the kitchen is something we all need to learn to do. No reason not to cook a recipe because a particular ingredient isn't at hand. If you learn what can substitute for what, you will feel quite liberated in the kitchen, and you may very well develop a prize winning recipe. But remember: I told you first...