I think of zucchini as the peasant of all vegetables. It's inexpensive and far from unusual. But I like to treat it royally by creating delicate dishes and dramatic presentations.
Zucchini grows like crazy in the summertime. Look in your garden and one day they're small, the next day, they're enormous.
For me, the imagination and creativity a cook applies to commonly available foods such as zucchini define a great cook versus a merely good one. On the show, Barney Welsh, one of the partners of Forni-Brown-Welsh Organic Gardens, and I talk about different sizes of zucchini and the different dishes to make with "small ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones", plus the flowers.
I do new twists on old themes: a Southern Italian Ratatouille, a saltimbocca made with zucchini and, one of my favorites: a fritto misto or "mixed fry." Fritto misto can be made with almost anything — rock shrimp, mushrooms. I cut zucchini into matchsticks, coat them with arborio rice coating and deep-fry them. I stack them in a newspaper cone like the English and French do with fries and serve a tomato-vinegar sauce for dipping. With a negroni, or Italian martini, fritto misto is a great way to start off a summer evening.
