This year has been our very best year ever for courgettes. For the past couple of years our courgettes would start growing then would rot before they were big enough to pick.
According to the information I could find this is like blight on tomatoes and is due to hot dry weather followed by wet weather or visa versa. Therefore I assumed this good year was down to the weather. We had a dry sunny start to the year followed by lots of showers later in the summer.
Then our neighbours opposite us and some friends of ours both said their courgettes were rotting so it can’t be just due to the weather. Our neighbours opposite said their courgette plants were long and rambling and their courgettes were rotting. We realised that our courgette plants in recent years had also been long and rambling but this year our plants were more compact and bush like. Could this be why our courgette crop has been so much better?
We will make sure that next year we look for plants that say that they are compact. Last year I picked off the rotting courgettes and dropped them on the veg plot. They must have self seeded and we have a few plants. I didn’t really think they would come to much but one has grown long and rambling. It has tiny courgettes on it but I don’t know if they will reach full size. It will be interesting to see if they rot.
This year’s courgette plant
The second of this year’s courgette plants
The self seeded, rambling, courgette plant
Picking courgettes four at a time
We have been eating courgettes several times a week and with every Sunday dinner since they started producing.
I have courgettes in the freezer as ratatouille, smokey sausage and courgette stew, spicy pork and courgette stew and cooked courgette and tomatoes to add to future dishes. I have now hit on a new, favourite way, of cooking and freezing courgettes.
I saute chopped courgettes in margarine until slightly softened, the same way as I would cook mushrooms. I divide the cooked courgette into oven proof dishes or tinfoil containers. I then top with cheese sauce. I then freeze them and when I want to use it I defrost a portion and put it in the oven for half an hour. I cover it in foil and remove the foil for the last ten minutes to colour the sauce a little.
Doing it this way it tastes exactly the same as cooking from fresh and has now become the way I like them best. I should have a supply in the freezer for Sunday dinners all the way through the winter.
Cooking the courgettes in margarine
I dish up the cooked courgettes
I top them with cheese sauce
We had one for Sunday dinner and the other two went into the freezer.
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I’ve not long since had breakfast but I’m now left hungry after reading this post. You should put a disclaimer at the beginning! The thought of smokey sausage and courgette stew did it for me!
For the smokey sausage stew I use paprika and a mix of sausages and chorizo and sometimes some crispy bacon too, other than that it has tinned tomatoes, courgettes, onion, garlic and a splash of red wine. It’s so simple and freezes really well. We usually have it with rice.
Starving now!!
Smiling!
Lovely produce – you must both be delighted. Thanks for the culinary ideas – we often get a good stock of courgettes from my sister-in-law’s allotment.
The spicy pork and courgettes is the same as the sausage but with diced pork as the meat and switch paprika for chilli. I just make it up as I go along but these dishes work well and my grown up boys like them when they come to dinner. Tonight I am doing roast courgette topped with parmesan at the end of cooking and browned. Parmesan goes really well with courgettes.
Looks very nice, We have also found that bush courgettes do so much better than trailing.
I now think that’s the secret. Make sure to get bush courgettes.