Courgettes Italiennes
4-5 lb Italian zucchini--long, thin and green
(If larger squash are used, peel and remove seeds.)
4 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
4 large tomates, cubed
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp ground sage (or more to taste)
Put oil in a large pot. (Cast iron works best.) Add onion under medium heat until they become translucent. Add tomatoes, and slice zucchini thinly into the pot. Add salt, pepper, and sage as the vegetables cook.
Cook for 3-4 hours, stirring often, until the melange almost takes on the consistency of a paste.
Serve hot as a separate dish or cold as an hors d'oeuvre.
Let me offer a few editorial comments: First, when courgettes are made properly, you are unable to tell that the main ingredient was zucchini by looking at it. People are sometimes leery about eating this undifferentiated green mush the first time they encounter courgettes, but they really do taste good. Second, my own preferred way to eat courgettes is with polenta and Parmesian cheese, or better yet, Asiago.
So, what's the significance of this recipe? Make the jump to find out...
Courgettes was a dish that could always be found on our dinner table in our family during the summer, for both ordinary dinners and large family gatherings. It's been in the family for a long time, at least a hundred years, and possibly longer than that. I've tried to make it several times, but frankly, it never turned out as well as when my mother made it.
My mother passed away at the end of July. She was 81. She lived a life that was far from typical, and I'd like to share elements of that life.
My mother was born in 1926 in a small town in France. The family moved to the city of Lyon, where my mother grew up. My grandmother was Italian. She had moved to France with several of her brothers and sisters (there were 9 surviving siblings) and their mother. They were in search of work, as there was very little in Italy at that time. My grandmother met the French machinist who would become her husband in the factory where she found work.
One of the legacies of my great-grandmother is the recipe for courgettes. It is at least as old as she was, and probably older than that.
As my mother grew up and came of age, there came the Depression (which had its effect in France), and, more dramatically, World War II and the Nazi occupation of France. My mother had many vivid stories about life during the occupation. For years, every day, the main meal of her family consisted of a stew made of rutabagas and an occasional turnip. The best food in France was all sent to Germany, and the ordinary citizens of France faced severe rationing over the course of the war. My mother's family listened to the BBC's French broadcast at night, but very discretely in case they might be reported. She puzzled over the messages to the Resistance given in code. (Les carrotes sont cuit!) My grandfather was shot in an SS raid on a cafe. (He was an innocent bystander.) And my mother herself witnessed the execution of a man in front of his family, while his business was set on fire by the SS.
After Lyon was liberated by Allied forces, and the curfew was lifted, nightlife returned. My mother, who was 19 at the time, went with her friends to one of the dances sponsored by the U. S. Army. My mother had studied English at school, and she was quite adept at speaking. She ended up spending a lot of the evening translating conversation between her friends and the GIs. There was one particular man at the dance who was harrassing her, and who she wanted to get rid of. What she did was to link her arm with the arm of the GI she was sitting next to, and tell her harrasser "This is my fiance." As it happened, that GI she linked arms with became her fiance, her husband, and my father. At least, that was the story she told. There is no longer anyone around who could dispute it. The marriage lasted until my father passed away, 35 years later. My mother spent her last 25 years living alone, never showing any interest in finding another companion.
Two years after the war ended, my mother came to the U. S., married my father, and became a citizen. They bought a brand new house that year in what was at the time suburban Baltimore. That house is the house my sister and I grew up in, and in which my mother lived for 60 years.
Except for brief periods when her children were very young, my mother always had a job. She worked in a factory making leather goods in France. In the U. S. she worked at a book bindery, as a salesgirl in a department store, and as a bank teller. She retired as head teller at her branch of the bank when she turned 60. After retirement, she became involved in a local chapter of AARP, and she volunteered at the Maryland School for the Blind. She also served as principal baby-sitter for my sister's children when they were small.
She knitted like a dervish. I could more or less expect to get a hand-made sweater almost every Christmas, and I looked forward to these. Every newborn baby in the family got a freshly knitted matching set of baby sweater, cap and booties from her. I knew that she accepted my partner as a member of the family when she knitted a sweater for him too. In addition to sweaters, she knitted thousands upon thousands of caps to be issued to newborn babies at hospitals, as well as many lap robes, scarves and dish cloths in her volunteer work through AARP. After she passed away, I found her stash of yarn under the eaves of the attic. When we dragged it out, it filled the available floor space in the living room of her house about a foot deep.
To my mother, food was the physical manifestation of love. She was a volcano of food. She could be counted on to bring large amounts of food with her to any family gathering even if she was told not to bring anything. It was reflexive for her to do so. After I left home for graduate school, she would regularly mail me cookies, and a full 25 years later she was still doing this. If I had actually eaten them all (as she no doubt intended for me to do) I suspect I would be spherical.
She was very independent, even to the end of her life. After my father passed away, she did almost all of the maintenence to her house and lawn by herself, only rarely asking for help. Indeed, just this past April, she decided that there were two trees in the back yard that had to go. So this 81 year old woman got out her chain saw (it's electric, so it's light) and cut them down.
On Memorial Day weekend, she had a crisis that sent her to the hospital. She had not been able to eat a decent meal for weeks, and had avoided going to the doctor to investigate the problem. It turned out to be a tumor blocking her digestive tract. The cancer had spread, and we were told that she was terminal. She had the blocking tumor removed as a palliative measure to make it possible for her to eat, but the doctors gave her six months to a year. Ultimately, it turned out to be two months. She improved in the weeks after her surgery, but by mid-July, she had stopped eating again.
All during this period, she was on pain medications, but they did nothing to allay her confusion or her loss of autonomy. My aunt (her sister), who is a registered nurse, took my mother into her home at the end so that she could take care of her sister. (My mother had mixed feelings about this arrangment; she still wanted to be in her own house.) I was with my mother during her last week of life, all the way to the end. While much of what she tried to say did not make much sense, she was still capable of communicating her desires, and she was still very much herself. Sometime during that last week, my aunt heard her say "C'est le fin des haricot." Translation: "It's the end of the beans." I'd never heard this expression before, but it's meaning was pretty clear. Despite her confusion, she understood what was happening to her.
She continued to cling to life for days longer than we expected. Partly it was because, except for the cancer, her body was in good shape. However, it was also because she was never any good at letting go. And she was incredibly stubborn (see the story of the chain saw above).
Her remains now rest with those of her mother and her husband. Dors bien, Maman.
And now I have to make my own courgettes.
Because this is a political blog, I should state that my mother was a Kennnedy Democrat, and for the past several decades she never even considered voting for a Republican. She certainly voted for Tommy D'Alessandro, Jr. as candidate for Mayor of Baltimore back in the '50s and '60s, who also happened to be Nancy Pelosi's father.
The title of this diary promises a second recipe, so here it is. This one I discovered after my mother's funeral, and has nothing to do with her; it was an independent discovery, completely accidental.
Burnt, Fused Mass of Pasta and Cheese with Blackened Marinara
Frozen ravioli
Jar of marinara sauce
Place frozen ravioli in a bowl and pour some marinara sauce on it. Put the bowl in the microwave oven, and cook at twice the recommended intennsity for twice the recommended amount of time.
I like it with extra Parmesian. Be sure to have a jackhammer on hand so that you can break up the mass into bite-sized pieces. On the other hand, I suspect you'd prefer the results of the first recipe to those of the second.