Shabbat This Week: Picnic Zucchini

This week, three close friends of ours--A, J, and adorable little N--are moving away into the great beyond: New Jersey. To celebrate their awesome new house and stifle our tears, a bunch of us had a lovely pot-luck Shabbat lunch picnic in Central Park this afternoon in their honor. As the resident vegetarian, it was my job to bring a vegetable and I chose summer squash.

Zucchini and yellow squash looked amazing at the farmer's market and I was craving something on the juicy side. I also happened to purchase some purslane, a mild, sweet and almost citrusy leafy green veggie that is high in omega 3. I thought it would work nicely as a herb with the squash. In my opinion, the trickiest part of working with summer squash is that they can end up on the soggy side and I wasn't in the mood for an accidental soup. I remembered how my friend Tracy once made some excellent roasted tomatoes with garlic and breadcrumbs and I decided to use the same model with the zucchini.

The recipe worked very well--the zucchini held up in texture and only the few slices at the bottom were soggy. The garlic was nice and mild, while the purslane was sweet and simple. The best part of this dish is that is works well both warm and cool. I served it lukewarm at the picnic, which I think was just perfect. All in all, this is an excellent picnic dish and it serves a lot of hungry adults and children.


Picnic Zucchini
Parve & Vegan

7 large zucchini and/or yellow squash, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp margarine
salt and black pepper, as desired
Purslane, as a garnish

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour the olive oil, minced garlic, salt and black pepper in the bottom of a large baking dish. Add in the squash and toss to coat. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top and dot with margarine. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the squash is tender and the breadcrumbs are golden. Sprinkle with purslane and enjoy with 10 of your closest friends!

Kosher note: Check your breadcrumbs! I usually use Panko Italian, but it turned out that they were dairy. I toasted bread to make my own crumbs, but they ended up soggier than expected after reheating. After I returned home from the picnic, I transferred the dish from a parve tin to our dairy corningware and re-baked it with the panko crumbs. Store bought bread crumbs made all the difference! Maybe I'll revisit the breadcrumb issue in the near future and experiment on how I might make them better myself.