If I had to pick one central food memory of my childhood, it is my grandmother’s Passover Seder, where a humble plate of fried zucchini — a culinary relic from 1920s Italy in 1980s Israel — was what everyone gravitated toward.
My grandmother came from Rome, where fried zucchini was a staple among Jews, who would cook it for their Shabbat meals, and her dish beat out the nearly-but-not-quite-as-popular matzo ball chicken soup prepared by my aunt, who consistently turned out matzo balls as light and airy as everyone wanted them to be. She followed what she told me was the traditional recipe: frying thin zucchini slices in olive oil, then marinating them in red- or white-wine vinegar for at least 24 hours, essential for the flavor to peak, she stressed. The zucchini’s magic power was in its ability to cut through a parade of rich soups, stews, roasts and slow-cooked vegetable dishes about as long as the Haggadah we were reading.
Recipe: Zucchini Pasta With Crispy Capers and Pistachios
It is up for debate whether I can call all this a reliable memory, though, as I would consistently fall asleep a third of the way into the meal and probably missed out on half the food.
One memory that can’t be disputed is of my cooking with my father, many years later and after my grandmother was long gone: I sear lamb meatballs while my dad makes the celebrated fried zucchini, insisting that “a few minutes are plenty” for marinating. The zucchini would be ready to serve as soon as the meatballs were done, he claimed with no hesitation.
My less-than-reliable recollection makes me want to say that my father broke other rules too, by adding garlic to the zucchini, and fresh basil once they cooled down, but I am not entirely sure that it wasn’t part of the original Seder dish, which simply faded away in my mind over time. An innovation that was entirely his, though, was the addition of capers.
Both my parents were caper fiends. When I was growing up, we used to pick the buds off the precariously thorny bushes that grew out of the cracks in walls all over Jerusalem. We would then soak them for three days, refreshing the water a few times, and pickle them in vinegar brine.
Adhering to tradition by playing with tradition.
Capers in our house could end up anywhere. My mother used to mix them with some soft herbs and olive oil to make a kind of rough salsa verde and spoon it over fried or roasted cauliflower. She also introduced them into German-style potato salads, with onion, mustard and broth. My father would fry the capers and serve them with asparagus, or he used them for his involtini: thin slices of veal, which he wrapped around a stuffing of bread crumbs, capers and herbs, seared and cooked in a white-wine sauce. The capers with fried zucchini were served alongside sliced meatloaf or meatballs.
I love all of these applications for capers, but it is this last combination with zucchini that I find most seductive. Sticking to our family tradition of messing around with family tradition, I often use it in pastas and pasta salads, a use that never occurred to either my grandmother or my father.
I find that fried zucchini, with the addition of earthy capers, makes a wonderful base for pasta, as long as there’s something creamy and rich to contrast with the acidity. Normally, I make my pasta very cheesy, using buffalo mozzarella or a nice pile of grated pecorino melted through a sauce, to give the lightly pickled zucchini a chance to gleam.
In my version here, though, there’s no cheese and no meat. The rich creaminess comes from the slow cooking of more zucchini, first for five minutes in olive oil, then alongside the dried pasta and water, for a wonderfully starchy sauce that coats everything in a thick gloss. The fried zucchini and capers, which are added once everything is cooked, break this up, bringing extra texture and a fresh tartness.
For me, all this makes total sense as the next stage in the evolution of my grandmother’s fried zucchini. Perhaps, through a bit of selective memory and the breaking of a few minor rules, I have managed to create a new family tradition.