Cosecha Calabasas: Zucchini Abundance & the Gluten-free Chicano

Zucchini Abundance: Recipes For Gluten-free Dining

Michael Sedano, The Gluten-free Chicano

Healing comes on its own schedule. This year, after three years disability, I had functional shoulders. I operated a steering wheel painlessly, I played piano without tiring, and I wielded a shovel like a campesino arando la tierra.

On Super Sunday, I began turning my earth and finished in two weeks. When planting time arrived I exercised the wisdom of a lifetime's vegetable gardening and planted two, count 'em, two summer squash plants.

Zucchini have to be a gardener's most immediately satisfying big plant. Those big, green, vigorous plants stand out handsomely as they grow and spread. Then, the first yellow flowers arrive on elongated stems. A week after, miniature zucchini-shaped nubbins topped with yellow flowerbuds grow from the tough main stem. 

When a flower dies it's time to pick her fruit, no matter the size of the zuke. Fingerling zukes are tenderly edible and often the first crop of an extended season. 

Gardens produce increasingly larger squash. Plants need harvesting of fruit to be spied in the foliage, separated by hand amid spiny branches, cut or twist-off every ripe squash. When you get five-pounders you'll vow next year, fewer plants or more recipes.

The Gluten-free Chicano's Zucchini Harvest Recipes

Harvest season is well underway in Southern California. The Gluten-free Chicano has enjoyed Green&Gold's first iteration. The recipe has infinite variability.

Next week, the household will be past the "let's make tortillas" stage of harvest abundance. Perhaps we'll be in new horizons.

Desperation will never set in. Hope, like new zucchini, springs eternal in a resourceful kitchen. The world is filled with zucchini growers and zucchini recipes. 

Universal strategy for Zucchini Abundance: Give freshly-harvested cosecha to friends with a recipe card. Other than the Universal, the Gluten-free Chicano begins a harvest season with a four-step recipe plan:

First Harvest: Elemental summer squash.

Traditional Calabacitas con queso.

Green&Gold Casserole.

Tortilla de Calabasa.

First Harvest: Elemental summer squash.

Cut into bite-size pieces. Steam five minutes until just fork-tender. Drain. Dab with butter. Whisper 'salt' across them, and serve. Squeeze fresh limón if available.

We eat this in quiet ritual acknowledgement of the essence of the thing; that the simplest way makes the best beginning.

Traditional Calabacitas con queso.

A naturally* Gluten-free food

*Naturally gluten-free designates food that in no way, shape, nor form, has ever in culinary history been prepared with wheat, barley, or rye ingredients. Nor should. I mean, why would anyone put wheat in tamales? Or champurrado? But it happens. So caveat celiac, always make sure of ingredients and when there’s doubt, don’t eat.

Ingredients 

Garden-fresh summer squash.

Garlic.

Onion.

Fresh tomato.

Cilantro.

Gebhardt’s Chile powder

Tomato sauce.

Sharp yellow Cheddar cheese, or Longhorn Cheddar cheese.

 To slice or dice? Preparing the squash gives eye appeal. Cooked squash holds its shape. Cylindrical squash you either make rounds or make half-moons. Patty-pan squash either slice or make pie slices.

 

Slice your onion or dice your onion, or both. Rough chop or slice 3 or 4 dientes of your ajo. 

Chop a small tomato, peel if you wish. Some grocery store Roma tomatoes have been engineered with tough skins that cause distress to digestive tracts.

 

Some like it hot, some not. If so, thin slice a Jalapeño or Chile Huero. Let diners pick out the chile if they’re on the don’t-like-it-hot list.

 

Wilt the vegetables in good olive oil barely coating the bottom of a frying pan. 

 

When translucent and limp, add the Calabacitas and shake that sartén vigorously to get everything mixed together over high heat, then turn down the flames to medium. 

 

Add some chile powder. This is not a “hot” dish but kid-friendly, so go easy and serve a hot salsa with dinner.

 

Gebhardt’s chile powder contains salt and comino and garlic in a flavorful mix. Instead, use California and New Mexico ground chile powders with a good pinch of cumin, salt if you want. 

 

Add a few branches, or a pinch of chopped, cilantro.

Pour a small can, or a generous amount, of tomato sauce into the squash. Add the same amount of water. During tomato season, the el Gluten-free Chicano uses garden-fresh sauce and no water.

 

Lay thick slices of cheese atop the liquid and cover. 

 

Simmer covered five or ten minutes. When the cheese has melted, stir it into the tomato sauce, simmer another five minutes and turn off the heat. Let this vegetable ambrosia rest five minutes or more while you prepare other courses.

Executive summary:

• Plant good seed.
• Harvest when the flowers die.
• Slice and chop.
• Fry.
• Add liquid and simmer.
• Add cheese, stir, and simmer. 
• Serve.

Bonus Recipe: My Grandmother's Recipe for Homemade Tamales, Part One

Step One: Plant corn.

Step Two: Buy a pig.

Step Three: to be continued.