Zucchini with Tomato and Ricotta Salata

This is the time of year when gardeners starting bitching about zucchini. Newspapers and online media everywhere are publishing tranches of recipes devoted to using up the glut.

Not zucchini. Tiny squash from the farmer’s market.

Being but a humble serf on the Internet’s massive estate, I have no special insight into the publishing schedules of media behemoths. Rather, I had a few tomatoes rapidly reaching their past due date, and the zucchini was handy.

As for the ricotta salata, it was an afterthought. Much as I adore cheese, it rarely appears on the table when meat or poultry are being served. This comes from growing up in a Jewish household: we didn’t keep kosher, but milk and meat were never served together. In this case, though, I had the ricotta salata in the house. So…why not?

Ricotta salata is harder and drier than ricotta, with a crumbly texture that stands up to heat. Like its softer cousin, ricotta salata is mildly flavored and pairs well with summer vegetables… like tomatoes and zucchini.

To peel or not to peel? The second most asked question of summer 2021. The answer to both these questions is the same: it depends.* If your zucchini are organic or of otherwise reputable sources, just wash n’ cook. If they look like they were rolled in gravel before reaching your kitchen, well, peel ’em. Common sense. I once thought we had it.

Do take care squeezing your tomatoes into the pan, lest you end up wearing them. Not that I would know a thing about that.

I didn’t take a photo of the shirt. More farmer’s market pix.

Many summer veg dishes are barely cooked. Not so with our zucchini and tomatoes. You want a nice jammy consistency here. Once the zucchini and tomatoes are cooked down, toss in the ricotta salata, taste for seasoning, adding fresh lemon juice liberally. Salt and pepper, of course, and the tiniest bit of hot pepper, when nobody is looking.

I’m the first to admit there’s nothing earth shattering about food like this, which is the best thing about it. Zucchini with tomatoes and ricotta salata is easy to make, it tastes good, and it keeps well. The dish requires neither fancy ingredients nor unusual kitchen equipment. There are no surprises here, which is a relief, given there are surprises everywhere else these days, the majority appalling. This is not a time for novel or difficult food. It is a time to be annoyed by comfortingly prosaic problems: too much zucchini, mushy tomatoes. Unlike the majority of problems facing us today, zucchini gluts and deliquescent tomatoes are humanely scaled, managable. We face these problems yearly, complain half-heartedly, and solve them by cooking. A lot. Because gluts and needing to cook a lot, at bottom, aren’t really problems: they are signs of a bountiful harvest, something most Westerners have little real understanding of, any more than we truly understand not having enough.

*the first question: to mask or not to mask.