Zucchini pickles

"Nothing gluts quite like courgettes. One moment you're rustling among the prickly leaves of your quartet of plants, looking for the first finger-sized, orange-flowered stick of speckled green to carry triumphantly to the kitchen; the next, you're bundling armfuls of thigh-sized marrows hither and thither, wondering if they can be hollowed out to make umbrella stands." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

A zucchini glut did happen to me once in ancient history but last year when I tried to grow zucchini I got a couple of massive plants that completely took over the veggie patch and one zucchini. I got a few flowers, not many, but just one zucchini. I have no idea what I did wrong, but I swore never to try again. My super gardener friend though, yesterday presented me with a big bag of them - she has the glut problems. I managed to give two of them to another of our BBQ guests, but I was left with about five large zucchini. So I decided to make zucchini pickles. My cucumber pickles have been a great success so I thought I would try the same thing with zucchini.

I found a recipe from Beverley Sutherland Smith and that is the one I am using, but I did look elsewhere. And I have to say that initially I thought they were all pretty much the same. On closer inspection though I see, that as usual there are variations. The basic method seems to be to slice up some zucchini and onions and put them in a bowl of cold (some say iced) water with salt and leave from 1 hour to 6 hours. Beverley said two so that's what I'm doing. Then you drain them and pat them dry. You heat up your pickling mixture - vinegar, sugar, spices, pour over and bottle. Well more or less. Some of the recipes cooked the zucchini and onions briefly (I think mine does), some just poured the mixture over. Some left it all to soak before bottling.

So what were the other variations? Well the spices you use. Mine uses mustard, turmeric and chilli. Others used aniseed, fennel seed I think. Some sliced the zucchini vertically, some horizontally, some diagonally. Some just cut them in chunks. I've gone for a mix of horizontal and diagonal, depending on how thick the zucchini was. Like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall I think Monika was a victim of not noticing them growing because a couple were pretty large. I still have one large one which I shall probably just use, as I normally do use zucchini, grated with onion and added to stir fries and stews.

So there you go. Zucchini pickles. You can do lots and lots of other things with zucchini of course - it makes yummy cheeses scones, I saw a recipe for chutney, stuff them, braise them, put them on pizza. They are basically somewhat bland and so lend themselves to endless experimentation.

Hope mine looks as good as this. Though my zucchini were the pale green variety,

A quickie I know, but was feeling a bit uninspired.

Now for the traditional turkey and ham vol au vent.