I once cooked these almost-candied courgettes/zucchinis to a room of children who “did not eat vegetables”, and they had a second helping. It requires time and olive oil, quite a lot of each. The slices of courgette are cooked in a very very (therein lies the secret) generous amount of olive oil on the lowest fire preferably in a cast iron pan, uncovered, for the longest time, shaken around gently now and then. I like to leave the great number of garlic cloves that I use whole (but I obviously sliced them discreetly for the aforementioned children). Once cooked, they melt in the mouth and taste almost sweet and sit alongside some rice, quinoa, al dente pasta or even a lamb chop very happily. Add parsley, mint or coriander/cilantro on top. As you will have noticed, leftovers were delicious cold on sourdough toast under a few sprigs of coriander for breakfast the next day.

Courgette flowers—reproductive organs removed—eaten raw in a salad, added to a frittata, tempuraed as I mentioned here and here or stuffed and shallow fried as I mentioned here. The thing to remember is that it is perfectly all right to remove the female flowers to eat while the fruit is growing and also the male flowers that grow on a thin stem that will not turn into a fruit. Leaving them around for pollinating purposes is only required if you are looking to save seeds.

This is a good time for flowers, here dill heads heading for the compost.
This is indeed a great time for liking courgettes, and I do indeed, and am indeed happy. I’ve had a bowl of courgette soup everyday this week, courgette and Moroccan mint soup until wednesday, courgette chicken soup since yesterday. I cut up courgette in slices and sweat them out in butter with onion and garlic (optional rib of celery) and then add water and mint or broth, cook and whizzz.