It is still early for courgettes/zucchini/zucchine, I know. That said, the new-season varieties are now starting to appear, cautiously, in shops and gardens. But don’t be fooled: soon we will be surrounded and, before we know it, there will be gluts and people will start suggesting chutney. For now, though, we are safe.
The small cylindrical courgettes we know today are relatively modern, developed in the early 19th century, but their ancestors are gourds domesticated in the Andes and Mesoamerica more than 7,000 years ago. While they are classed as vegetables, courgettes are in fact a fruit, specifically pepos, which, botanically speaking, are swollen ovaries, making some sense of the fact that they can have a flaming flower attached (although the flowers that shoot from the sides on stems are male). I suppose it is transportation that makes it hard to preserve the flowers. If you have them, they could be added to, but are not needed in this week’s recipe, which is zuppa di zucchine, a Neapolitan speciality from the Campania chapter of Anna Gosetti della Salda’s huge and wonderful compendium, Le Ricette Regionali Italiane.
