A cool and refreshing side dish perfect for warm, sunny days

Now this week we're gonna make something nice light and summery using courgette or zucchini and let me tell you if you're not a fan of these because I know when you cook them they can get soft and watery and it stops a lot of people me included but this is different it is a salad where the courgettes are marinated and just par-cooked so you're gonna keep that crunchiness okay the color and everything that you like about it is going to be laid on the dish and then drizzle with specific marinade mainly made of lemon and coriander there's some other additional secret ingredients I will show you in a bit let's get started now this special marinated courgette salad is great it's simple first off you don't need to peel your zucchinis or courgettes and the cooking time is two minutes in water so it's next to nothing okay the rest is just ingredients for the marinade and it's based on lemon juice lemon zest coriander seeds and then a gastric which is a mixture of vinegar and sugar almost like a caramel we're gonna drizzle on top with some pine nuts with some extra herbs and maybe a hint of olive oil so really as you can see very very interesting even though it's simple for the tools I'm gonna have a grater for the zesting I'm using also a mandolin for an even slicing and then a large dish and to accommodate your slices of zucchini or courgette and that's it let's begin so we need to make our mise en place and as part of the mise en place we need to blanch the zucchini slices that means to par cook them in boiling water so we start with the water so I've got the cold water on here I'm gonna put like a tablespoon of salt high heat and while we're making the mise en place we're going to leave this and to come to a boil use a lid to save some energy once the water is on we can start with the lemon I've got a beautiful lemon from the neighbor's tree and they're on holiday good timing and we're just gonna zest this and then press the juices so I've got my plate on here I've got a zester and what we're gonna do is try to zest the equivalent of the whole lemon once you're done with the zesting you're gonna take your lemon and you're gonna squeeze the juice or press the juice you can use a machine I'm using just a manual thing so I'm all done let's see what we have so from my lemon I've got the juice that I filtered and I removed the pulp so it's only the juice and it has to be a fresh lemon juice do not buy this kind of plastic bottles from the shop you want a fresh lemon then we have the zest and you will not have used a very very fine grating plate here because when you do a marinade you want these pieces of lemon to almost melt on your slices of zucchinis here you don't want something like really too big otherwise you're just going to feel like you're eating pieces of lemon and the coriander seed is a teaspoon worth and what I've done I've taken like a spoon I guess and kind of slightly crushed them bruised them you know just to release the flavors and that's about it so next on the line is to slice the zucchini slash courgette so you can use a knife okay and we want really thin slices okay this is the size I've already adjusted my mind you can use a knife the mandoline is kind of easy especially with a courgette something and you're gonna go effortlessly and go through you can do three or four of these okay if you go on the side and if you can see it's going to be looking something like this so I'm finished this is three courgettes or zucchini you see it's quite a lot already and if you go to four or five it's going to be for other people because let's face it you're not going to have like a bucket full of zucchinis as a starter now little things about the zucchini you have to wash them very well forget to mention that okay because we're going to eat them with the skin on and the reason we're using these very small ones because the skin is very thin so again it's all about the gustative experience when you're biting into this thing and for the instant marinade you know when it's very thin like this it's all tender it's going to be perfect but now what we need to do of course is to par-cook these slices look at that what a timing I'm just done with the slicing and look who's ready the water so timing here maximum two minutes you use a timer on here to time everything and when you're plunging the slices the water is going to stop boiling it doesn't matter you still count maximum two minutes I may even do one minute because my slices are quite thin as you can see this is how thin they are I wanted to have this you can have them a little bit thicker but not too much of a problem so I'm going to put everything and as soon as it's in timer on and two minutes maximum so once they are done here we're not going to rinse them in under cold water anything like that we're just going to put them through here very quickly and then pat them dry and immediately lay down all the slices on our serving dish that's going to be the serving dish that you're going to be using so you see what I've done here as soon as there's been you know the water has been drained I put them all flat like this on a tea towel and immediately while they're still hot I'm going to do this kind of rosas in my serving dish I'm going to keep on going so do this while it's hot yes I am finished what a bit of a raise but it's actually kind of nice looks a bit like fish scales kind of thing so you start from the exterior and you kind of make your way in as you go and I've got some leftover if you look at it I made another plate on there but we're going to concentrate with the large one so this is your serving dish right so what we're going to do here is just do that or is that sprinkle so this is going to be for the flavor this why I bruise you see because we are bruising that stuff I want the flavors to go in here we're going to have then some of that grated zest sorry if I don't get the whole plate in focus here but from here salt and pepper so fine salt and this is going the thing is going to be helping cook the whole the whole thing a bit of pepper so too you can use white pepper as well and then we're going to start drizzling the lemon juice don't pour the whole thing it has to be nicely spread everywhere and make sure every slice has got a little bit of the lemon the worst case you can do this last minute and press the lemon over but I like to go by hand once you're done with the lemon we're going to put this in the fridge and we're going to prepare that last element which is the gastric which is a caramel based on vinegar now this last part is really one thing that got me very interested we're using a gastric in a marinade so sugar 30 grams I'm going to put this on medium to high heat and to facilitate the making of a caramel I'm going to add one but one tablespoon of water so we're not making here a true caramel because it says as soon as it starts to become a caramel it's a little bit of color you don't want something super dark then we're going to add the vinegar all right so it says as soon as it starts to caramelize you can see there's a little bit of color and immediately vinegar in all right so now it's good I had to let it cook for a minute or something to melt the rest of the sugar but I think we're I'm going to turn the heat off and it says to pour this hot as it is on the zucchinis or courgettes so you want it hot because I think otherwise it's going to solidify almost like a caramel and that has to go now in the fridge for at least two hours if there's not enough lemon juice you can add a little bit it's been two hours I've taken the zucchinis or the courgettes out and I've used just a small portion because the other plate was absolutely gigantic I'm going to keep this for later and the one thing that's important to know this is not a starter okay it's not something going to be serving on its own like this it's a salad so it's a side it's something you take a little bit off on the side of lettuce and you can be serving alongside some maybe cold meats a piece of fish or something like this so we need to take this really at face value I've got some little extra thing that I want to try but first let me just going through the basics so this is it it's been marinated I've got some extra bits of the marinade that I'm going to put on there and I want to try this as is okay so let me like I said I'm not a super mega fan of you know zucchinis but okay so first off it's still crunchy that's a massive bonus it's actually enjoyable it's crunchy till the end definitely feel the lemon and that little caramel slash vinegar really brings a nice contrast to the to the acidity to the whole thing so that is already very very interesting so now let me add for instance someone that's going to say I'm going to add a little bit of salt a bit of pepper maybe a hint more now maybe you could do some extra lemon but what I wanted to try is a hint of oil because there was no oil see if that's going to change anything okay it's very quick I'm going to grab one or two of those mix with the whole thing okay I'm not sure if the olive oil will add something you're falling you're falling back into the classic kind of dressing type of sound don't think that's the intention on here and the last thing I want to try is just I want to add some little nuts and something like some mint to add some extra flavor or to the mix just to finish to see that if you want to customize this and you know make it your own and add like maybe basil and stuff and things you see how it's gonna it's you know it's holding up it's holding up to be honest it's a bit like gherkins like this kind of marinated gherkins sweet and sour gherkins but with zucchinis no no no and now the mint um I don't think it's necessary but what I've just had here is a coriander seed and when you bite into it that has actually brought a really nice welcome boost of flavor now the final verdict a surprising entry with this marinated zucchini what I love about it is that they feel really marinated and cooked and they are crunchy which is the weakest point of all zucchini they're always soft and mushy this is like a gherkin except that the sweet and sour sauce is kind of softer with a lemon a lemon intonation in there and the coriander I would crush the coriander maybe a bit more pairing you will pair this with fish with cold meat a side of lettuce but it has to be fridge cold okay so absolutely necessary to have these two to three hours marinating time now if you don't finish the whole thing put the leftover of this zucchinis in an airtight container and that can keep up to 48 hours and the longer you wait the better it gets there's plenty of good things in this recipe that really kind of surprised me so if you're like me you know the final zucchini give it a shot okay let me know what you thought in the comment section and as for me I will see you next time on the french cooking academy for another video take care bye