Easy and Delicious Ways to Enjoy Your Courgettes

Posted on 12 Aug 2016 by Anna Scott
Oh hello courgette season! They’re one of those vegetables that is relatively easy to grow in our back gardens and allotments, and seeing as we’re in August (peak courgette season just in case you hadn’t realised), you might find yourself with an abundance if you have particularly green fingers and can cultivate a vegetable or two. Rather unfairly, courgettes seem to have a reputation for being a bit bland, but for us, they represent the favour of summer, even more so when they’re as fresh can be. Here are our favourite ways to use up those courgettes as well as maximise their flavour and many of them are as easy as pie. Although unfortunately there is no courgette pie on this list.

 

With Pasta


CourgettesThere are a few great ways you can serve up your courgette harvest with pasta, all of them incredibly delicious. If you want to make a sauce, there’s nothing wrong with frying up your diced courgettes in some olive oil with a few crushed garlic cloves (approximately 1 kg of courgette needs about 4 cloves) and a bit of salt and pepper, then toss through the pasta. Simple but effective. And the great thing about courgettes is that there’s no such thing as too much - if you have a particularly large bounty, then just use it all up, and in this case you’ll just end up having more pasta sauce which is no bad thing.

Secondly, you can add a little more dairy to the mix. Once you’ve cooked down your courgettes, add about 250ml of double cream (more if you like) and a couple of handfuls of grated parmesan then combine. Stir through the pasta and top with more parmesan before serving.

Using the same method, you can also create an alternative vegetarian filling for a lasagne. Increase the amount of courgette (either by half or double depending on how many people you’re cooking for) and then upscale the rest of the ingredients accordingly. Cook your lasagne sheets according to the packet instructions and then layer with the sauce. Top with béchamel sauce (or not if you don’t have the time or inclination) then pop in the oven until cooked through.

 

On Pizza


Courgette on pizzaIf you’re never tried courgette on a pizza then you’re missing a trick. Either add it to a shop-bought one or as a topping on your own creation, but make sure it’s very finely sliced, either lengthways or in rounds. Combine with intense flavours, such as onion, anchovies and crushed garlic, and it will add another dimension to your pizza experience.

 




In Ratatouille


Fish with ratatouilleMany people steer clear of this because they think it’s either going to be complicated or not very tasty but neither could be further from the truth. The trick to making yourself a great ratatouille is to have a lot of the pans on the go at once, because if you chuck everything in together, you’re not going to get the best flavours from all your components. So you need to fry up separate pans of finely chopped onion, diced courgette and diced aubergine, all in olive oil and all well-seasoned and all in its own pan. When it comes to tomatoes you can either choose to use tinned ones, or about 300g of whole cherry tomatoes – if opting for the latter, fry them up whole with some olive oil and salt and pepper until they start to go soft and burst their skins. Once all your veg is soft, you can them combine in one pan and stir together for 5-10 minutes. Serve as a side dish or on its own with some crusty bread.

 

Courgettes are delicious when seasoned properly and cooked well, so please don’t despair when faced with a particularly large courgette harvest. And if you need any help finding the rest of your ingredients (unfortunately aubergines are so easy to grow in the UK), then use the latest Ocado promo codes, Waitrose discount codes and Morrisons promotional codes to source the best prices on your chilled and store cupboard essentials.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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