Thanks for starting the thread, @MunchkinRedux!
I didn’t eat zucchini until a few years ago, and my two gateway dishes were both restaurant ones:
– A simple Zucchini “Carpaccio” with olive oil, lemon juice, and parmesan – this works well with ribbons too, as a Shaved Zucchini Salad, and I like to add some nuts to that for texture (slivered almonds, crushed pistachios or hazelnuts)
– An Italian antipasto that is thinly sliced and fried zucchini that becomes caramelized – similar to this, but I can’t recall if it had mint, or just a bit of garlic and red pepper flakes (not dissimilar to the first part of the pasta prep that went viral via Stanley Tucci)
Aside from these (which I make on repeat):
– Smitten Kitchen has a nice Zucchini Galette (I double the zucchini, and roast it first – here is one I made during DOTQ)
– Mucver / Zucchini Fritters – I ate the Turkish version first, so that is the flavor profile I usually seek, just made some for COTM with nigella seeds.
I also use zucchini in many Indian preps that call for bottle gourd (dudhi) like flatbreads or savory cakes (handvo), and also as a flavor booster or hidden vegetable when I’m feeling lazy to make a separate one – for example grated zucchini melts away into dals and also makes them more delicious, disappears into meatballs, kofte, or meatloaf while tenderizing them and incorporating a veg, and so on.
I used to grate and saute down a pile of zucchini to freeze so I could spontaneously add it to random things, but haven’t done that in a while.
I’m thinking about this Zucchini Butter Pasta from Smitten (well, from Julia Child via F52 via SK) – if I can get the zucchini to caramelize a bit, but maybe starting with half moons instead of grating would work better for me (I’m not into the mush factor of squashes).
