Foreign Road Trip

Last spring we went to Frankfurt for a conference.  Because no one likes to fly 9 hours to spend 2 days standing on your feet just to turn around and head back, we decided to take some time afterward to travel around the Western German and Eastern French countrysides with a brief detour in Luxembourg.  It is absolutely beautiful there and it is certainly not a destination I would have selected if not for the conference.  

To do our touring we rented what we hoped would be a station wagon.  Jim is 6’5” which makes VW Golfs, the rental car of choice in the EU, difficult for us.  Well... the joke was on us; instead of the standard Peugot or VW they gave us a Spanish minivan, because if nothing else says ‘American overseas’ besides white tube socks and golf shirts, it’s a minivan.  It’s like wearing a giant “kick me, I’m American” sign.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a finely designed minivan (which I opened up on the autobahn as much as you can with a minivan) but with just 2 people in it you do look like an asshole, or rather, two assholes, while everyone else is quietly idling away in their eco-friendly Mercedeses.

A lot has been said about German food and most of it is not kind.  It’s the same tired joke as those about British dental hygiene.  I truly enjoyed most everything I had there.  It does not hurt that their culinary culture tends to be pig-centric. The Germans love the pig morning, noon and night.  Especially in the morning. All the hotels we stayed in had expansive buffets featuring an impressive array of cured pig products, with some eggs, cheeses and white asparagus to lighten the menu.  Needless to say, I came back noticeably heavier than I went over and it took months to reverse my week long porcine bender. 

For our road trip, our lunch of choice was the ubiquitous salami sandwich.  They could be found in coffee shops, gas stations and cafes.  The salami sandwich they serve is austere (surprise!):  it is salami and bread, sometimes salami, bread and butter and, rarer, salami, cheese and bread.  That’s it. These seemed to me to make a sensible and durable road snack:  zero refrigeration needs, filling, inexpensive, tasty.  I found eating dry salami sandwiches in a Spanish minivan while watching the postcard worthy German countryside roll by incredibly charming.

I find myself longing for those salami sandwiches, but I can’t offer a recipe for just salami and bread.  And I doubt a dry salami sandwich would taste as good in Atlanta even if I headed for our garage and eaten in our own German station wagon.  Last week I had a large head of kale seriously considering wilting, so before it could fall over I whipped it in to a pesto.  The pesto can go with anything really, pasta, crackers or just served as a dip but it goes great with salami and cheese in sandwich form.

Kale Pesto - Makes 1 cup

1 large bunch kale

4-5 cloves garlic

2 ounces parmesan

1.5 tbs. oregano chopped

6 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper

Blanch the garlic and the kale in a pot of boiling water for 3 minutes.  Run under cool water and drain.  Roughly chop kale.  Place kale, garlic, cheese, oregano, 4 tbs. of oil, s&p in food processor and process, add the additional oil as needed.  

Salami Sandwich with Kale Pesto - Serves 1

1 small ciabatta roll (or 1/4 baguette)

5 slices hard salami

2 slices provolone

3 tbs. kale pesto

Note:  You can make these for a road trip and serve them at room temperature but it’s even better if you can toast the bread in the oven face down for a few minutes, then add the meat and cheese to one side and return to the broiler and bake until the cheese is bubbly.

Jim in the Kitchen

When I first moved in with Jim he had about 50 pots and pans.  If you include the lids I promise I am not exaggerating.  His angle was that he could cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner without ever washing a single pan as he went.  Can you imagine that horror show?  I can’t.  On a regular day Jim uses a spectacular number of dishes when he cooks, so it’s best to limit his options.

Now, the oddity here is that Jim is the master of ‘Bucket Food’.  This means he likes to make an entire meal that can be served from a single pot (or bucket if you’re expecting a crowd). But in spite of that simple dining concept somehow those 49 other pots, pans and lids have some other involvement in the meal.  And you absolutely cannot clean up behind the man.  He won’t stand for it.  “I’m still using that.  Did you clean that up? Why?   Why?  Baby, can you get out of the kitchen?”

So, what is bucket food?  It is not a derogatory term, it is shrimp etouffe, chili, stew, gumbo, jambalaya.  A lot of the recipes for Jim’s bucket food comes from something we refer to as “the meat skirt.”  This involves comments like “Have you looked in the meat skirt?”  “Did meat skirt make this?”  Meat skirt is a Paul Prudhomme cookbook from 1984.   If you have a copy of this cookbook, and everything in it is very good and fool-proof, you already know the author is wearing what appears to be a skirt made of sausage and chicken with crab accessories.  I pulled the book out to accurately document Paul’s accouterments for this blog entry and Jim walked by and excitedly asked “Oooooh are you making something from the meat skirt?”  So, I highly recommend the meat skirt; it elicits what can only be described as squeals of joy from my spouse.

I have managed to whittle down the pot collection, for which I receive a lot of teasing, because once every three years or so we “need” two mandolines. If we are missing some key cooking tool I am, of course, told that I forced him to give “insert cooking tool name here” away, as if I chucked his record collection, which I have not.

Jim has perfected what he refers to as “my world famous breakfast potatoes.”  I’m not sure where else they are famous but they are extremely popular in this house.  This recipe was born from an annual man camping trip. That’s 30 dudes in tents, drinking, fishing, drinking, doing manly manual labor, drinking, some of them shooting guns and cooking bucket food and an array of meats.  Jim came back determined to perfect his take on this staple of the trip’s annual menu.  His are really good, lots of caramelization.  But the problem we had was he couldn’t cook enough of them to satisfy our appetites for them.  Pan over crowding is the death of a crispy hash brown.  So, this year for Christmas the kids decided to get him a special new breakfast potato pan.  I believe it was a similar sentiment to when they got me an ice cream maker for my birthday.  Helping him restock his pilfered arsenal we got him a 14” diameter cast iron pan.  It is a behemoth, it takes two hands to lift and it’s so large we cannot store it in a regular kitchen cabinet.  But it gives Jim great joy and now he can make enough potatoes to satisfy us all.

Jim’s World Famous Breakfast Potatoes - Serves 4

4 tbs. unsalted butter

2 tbs. olive oil

4 medium Yukon Gold potatoes

1 yellow onion

Salt and pepper

A few dashes of cayenne

Slice the onions and potatoes thinly (about 1/8”), on a mandoline, if you have one.  Heat 1/2 of the butter and the oil in a cast iron skillet.  Saute the onions over a medium heat for about 10 minutes until they start to brown.  Add in the potatoes, salt, pepper, and cayenne and stir occasionally.  You are trying to get them copper brown and even a little burny, so you don‘t have to stir them often, about every 5 minutes.  About 1/2 way through you will need to add the additional butter.  Continue until the potatoes are al dente but with a good char, about 20-30 minutes longer.

Note: The key to this dish isn’t so much a special secret ingredient but time, patience, temperature and a very large pan.  I also very much enjoy mine with sriracha and a poached egg on top.

A Perfect Day

Most colleges have that guy, you know, the guy living the Matthew McConauhey cliche, having graduated or dropped out years before but still hanging out at the college.  At my school that man was named Matt the Hippie.   You can guess what he looked like from the moniker alone.  I suppose he needed the 'the hippie' by-line to distinguish himself from all the other Matts. Or maybe, and more likely, it was applied because unlike all the other college campuses in the early 90s Bennington, thankfully, did not have a large roving pack of nouveau hippies. By my junior year only the senior class had actually attended school with him and he was older than them.  However, Matt continued each fall to make friends with the incoming freshman and transfers.  He even had a girlfriend at the school. 

However, differing from the cliche, Matt was not predatory.  Everyone knew Matt and everyone liked him.  He made his rounds with all the cliques on campus. He had a toe in every door.  Even the elitist L.A. clique tolerated him.  

One summer I was living in an apartment North Bennington with my boyfriend and two of our friends.  North Bennington isn’t a busy town normally and certainly much less so when school is not in session.  And that summer was New Orleans hot, hot for any town and scorching for a state with maybe three AC units.

I worked from 6AM - 11AM which left me free to spend the rest of my day pecking out angst ridden diatribes on my Underwood while everyone else worked normal hours.  One afternoon while I was cooling off by hanging out of the window looking out at not bustling Main Street Matt the Hippie came bounding up the stairs and in to our apartment (the front door did not lock, in fact, I don't think there was even a lock).  He was, no doubt, looking for Luke, or Jean Paul, or Andy but more than likely, not me.  He was smiling as usual.  Realizing I was the only one there he declared his purpose.  “Hey, I just found this crazy blackberry bush.’ And he produced a quart of blackberries, ‘Do you want to go to the Tastee Freez and put these berries on our ice cream?’  I had never had more than pleasant but meaningless chats with Matt before and us hanging out together seemed unnatural and bizarre but he had a great idea and I had nothing better to do.  So we hopped in his (surprise) VW bus and headed to the Tastee Freez.  The Tastee Freez is (or was) basically a shack that is only open during the summer; it serves frozen custard that they curl up to ridiculous and delightful heights.  Matt and I sat there on a picnic bench across from each other with the blackberries in between us.  We threw them  on our giant mounds of ice cream as quickly as we ate them.  I remember feeling slightly envious, I would have liked to have found that blackberry bush and picked those berries.  We had a surprisingly lively conversation and after our ice cream feast Matt suggested we drive go-carts.  I had no idea Bennington even had a go-cart track.  We went for two go arounds at the track and laughed the entire time.  It was a perfect day.  Matt and I were not going to grab a beer after this adventure nor were we going to be fast friends or even attempt to have such another outing again, it was an anomaly, but it was a perfect one.

When I got home I told my roommates ‘The oddest thing happened today.’  Matt left Bennington after that summer.  I guess he realized he had reached his expiration date.  And while I never had a real friendship with Matt I cannot look at a blackberry and not remember that day.  

The weather here has been kooky and the plants seem to be about a month behind, so Jim and I were surprised to find that what we thought was an invasive thorny rose bush we have been trying to kill was actually a blackberry bush.  I had to convince Jim to quit his methods of murder since it is a food provider.  And so I have been slowly foraging and collecting over the past week. 

Blackberry Thai-Basil Muffins (Makes 16 muffins)

2 2/3rd cups AP flour

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/2 tsp. vanilla

4 tbs. unsalted butter, melted

1 tsp. lemon zest

2 cups blackberries

1/2 cup Thai basil cut in to a chiffonade 

Preheat the oven to 400.  Combine the dry ingredients together, storing with a fork.  Combine the wet ingredients together.  Add the dry into the wet, folding in with a spatula.  I add the dry ingredients in in 3 batches.  Once incorporated add in the basil and berries, give a quick stir to incorporate them.  Line a muffin pan with muffin liners (or grease the muffin pan).  Using a 1/4 cup scoop, scoop the batter in to the muffin pan.  Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in to the muffins comes out clean.  Let cool.

Getting the Shaft

College cafeterias can be a challenge, almost a sporting event, hunting for something to eat in a sea of gross.  It might even take several trips through the steam table line just to find something not worthy of being spit out.   At the first college I attended I literally made the freshman mistake of eating the green beans, the thought of them still make me gag.  Think boiled crayons.  Retch.  While I recall the food at Bennington wasn’t bad, er, let me rephrase that, it was a hell of a lot less worse the cafeteria that produced the aforementioned green beans.  The reality is college was a culinary brain eraser; I can’t really remember anything I ate there over the course of two years save for a couple.  

The first was Friday.  Friday was great.  It is is probably why I remember the college food at Bennington as ‘OK’.  Friday made up for the sins of the previous week.  Lunch on Fridays was always burger, french fry, macaroni and cheese, chocolate chip cookie day.  I thought it odd to put all the good foods on one menu, why not spread them out over the week?  And why sneak the good foods in on Friday when everyone was headed to New York or Boston anyhow?  Either way I would front load or back load, but load nonetheless to make up for existing on salad and soup the other 6 days.  Now I also remember Fridays because oddly, Bennington had one of the better veggie burgers I have ever encountered, only Houston’s makes a better one.   They were so good I usually had two.

The other meal I remember was the cafeteria’s Greek menu, which popped up at least twice a month.  It featured the usual stereotypes: moussaka, spanakopita, pastitsio, etc.  Now I never ate any of this, I learned my lesson after one serving of the spanakopita.  And I suspect these oozy casseroles would have been erased from my memory as well except somehow in college I managed to amass a coterie of Greeks. My best friend and my boyfriend were Greek, their parents directly from, yes, Greece.  This display did not inspire either of them to national pride.  Andrew would laugh and offer some mocking commentary and Myrto would seethe with anger.  While Andrew was willing to accept that the school could and most certainly would butcher these dishes, Myrto could not. 

Now, if college had decided to attempt my national dish of steamed crabs, corn and cucumber salad, I’d be horrified too.  In fact I become equally righteously indignant when restaurants outside of the state of Maryland (falsely) advertise ‘Maryland crab cakes’. But it happens.  And it happened that the college cafeteria was hell bent to personally offend Myrto with their Greek repertoire.  

In addition to the slanderous dinner menu, lentil soup was constantly in one of the two double boilers.  After a trip around the steam table where the ‘regular’ lunch or dinner proved inedible, Myrto would begrudgingly head to the lentil soup pot.  Being Greek, the lentil soup was:  Not. O. K. She’d deliver it to our table.  Put it down in front of her.  Sigh.  Stir it.  Begin to cuss at it.  Under her breath.  In Greek.  And truly crafty cussing; creative stuff.  Stuff that should make any Greek trucker feel inferior.  Still irritated, she’d get up from the table and return with 7-10 lemon wedges from the iced tea station and proceed to squeeze them into her soup, cursing in Greek; perhaps grabbing anything else she could to doctor it.   Then she would call on God, Grandma and the island of Paros (where her family is from) to deliver her from this bowl of soup.  With disgust in her eye she’d begin to eat it, cursing the whole way through.  This show happened several times a week.  This was quite simply lunch or dinner.  To give you a better idea of the irony, go grab a J.Crew catalog, reach in there and rip out a page, any page:  that’s what Myrto looks like.  She’ll help any old lady across the street with a genuine smile but, Dear God, do not give her an inferior bowl of soup that mocks her heritage.

So I submit this.  I’m fairly certain I do it well because many (seriously, a lot) people request this dish from me, and it’s ridiculously cheap, easy, filling and tasty.  I’ll let Myrto look it over and give me her thoughts, hopefully not in Greek and under her breath.

Lentil Soup - Serves 4 - Adapted from Memories of a Lost Egypt

1.5 cups lentils

4 cups vegetable stock 

1 medium - large yellow onion, peeled and cut in half across the equator

12 cloves

1 bay leaf

3 teaspoons cumin

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/2 stick of cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon sea or kosher salt

3 cups spinach loosely chopped

1 cup water

1 lemon

Greek yogurt

Parsley, chopped

Take the cloves and stab them in the flesh of the onion.  Place the onion with cloves, lentils, vegetable stock, bay leaf, cumin, cinnamon and salt in a large pot.  Bring to a boil, let simmer for 10 minutes, then remove the cinnamon stick.  Continue to simmer for 25 more minutes.  The lentils want to be firm but not hard.  Add more water if needed.  Sprinkle with parsley.  Serve with lemon wedges and a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Your Childhood is Calling

Jim and I really have very traditional roles around the house.  I’m not joking when I say I call him when he’s had a long day to ask which cocktail I can make him before he gets home.  And when he gets home I greet him with his drink and, yes, I am usually wearing an apron.  I clean the house.  He does the yard work. I pack lunches.  He takes out the trash.  We both cook.

Continuing our tradition of taking it straight back to the 1950s our road trips involve stopping at rest stops.  This started as a 'we'reself-employedandthisrecessioniskillingushowtomakeanickelscream' tactic. But it has become something Jim truly enjoys, for the break and the quaintness.  We pull over, get the cooler out of the trunk and while the kids are blowing off some steam we set up lunch at the picnic tables.  To make it even more Mayberry I wrap the sandwiches in wax paper, Jim loves that gesture.  I don’t know why, but I’ll keep doing it.  Our picnics usually consist of egg salad sandwiches, crab chips and cookies for everyone but me.  It’s always an egg salad sandwich.  I poll everyone the night before, I offer alternatives, none are accepted. 

Before I started to write this blog I had no idea I felt so strongly about egg salad.  But it turns out I have strong convictions on the matter.  Much like our kids, it was my favorite sandwich to find in my lunchbox.  And much like our kids, I didn’t care if it smelled like a toot, it tasted like perfection.  I remember one time some mean little girl at school teased me about it in the truly evicerating way that only little kids can.  She shamed me by telling me how awful it smelled and how gross it was; how could I eat that?  Obviously I would be booger eating level gross and a playground leper if I ate it, duh.  Now, I’m extremely sensitive, and I was certainly even more so as a kid.  I looked at my sandwich, I really wanted to eat it.  But this 8 year old future hen-pecker  continuing her rant stood between me and lunchbox (Happy Days lunchbox to be exact) bliss.  Luckily someone stood up for me, I wish I could remember who, telling little miss maladjusted third grader to shove it, therefore making it socially acceptable for me to go back to enjoying my lunch.  

This particular egg salad sandwich was made by my main care giver, Ms. Mooney.  Ms. Mooney was in her 70s, a former nurse and fairly strict.  She lived across the street from me in a senior citizen apartment building.  She made my lunches (and my dinners) and she made the world’s best egg salad.  Now, I’ve screwed around in the past putting different things in my egg salad like Old Bay, dill or celery but the reality is I am a purist and I like my egg salad like Ms. Mooney used to make it for me.  It should simply be: eggs, mayo, mustard, salt and pepper mashed up with a fork to a nice chunky consistency.  I also feel adamant that egg salad should be served on white bread with crispy lettuce and ripe tomato, no onion, no pickle.  And I feel very strongly about this.  Another little trick I use when assembling any type ‘salad’ sandwich is to spread the salad, in this case the egg salad, on both pieces of bread, place the lettuce and tomato in the center, this way the egg salad acts like glue firmly holding the vegetables in place.  

Egg salad feels as retro your grandparents living room.  Why is that?  I don't know, but when I eat it I can taste the 1940s.  So that’s right, I’m giving you a sandwich recipe.  But haven’t you missed it?  

Egg Salad - Serves 2

5 extra large eggs

5 tablespoons of mayonnaise

5 teaspoons of Dijon mustard

1/8 teaspoon of sea salt

freshly ground pepper

Place the eggs in a pot and fill with water until they are covered by an inch.  Heat the eggs to a boil.  Boil for 1 minute.  Then turn off the heat and leave the eggs in the hot water, covered for 13 minutes.  Remove and plunge the eggs in to an ice bath for 5 minutes.  Peel the eggs.  Place them in a bowl with the remaining ingredients and using a dinner fork, mash and mix to a chunky consistency.  Serve on white bread with lettuce and tomato.  

The Stats

Somehow I’ve managed to hit 5,000 views on this thing.  I’m not sure who reads this besides Jim and a few friends but I guess someone does.  Maybe 5,000 doesn't sound like a lot, but it does to me.  Apparently it has been viewed in 10 different countries with Google being the number 1 referring site, followed by Facebook.  I’m not bragging, I’m just baffled.  I can tell you my most popular recipes are the eggplant meatballs followed by the Vietnamese chicken and, bizarrely, rutabaga ribbons.  Don’t get me wrong, I love rutabaga ribbons, which is why they are here, but it seems like an odd recipe for the top 3.  My least popular posts:  my very first one, which is for mashed sweet potatoes with smoked paprika (it’s delicious), my butterscotch cookie recipe, and my salad dressing recipe.  I am forever making salad dressing.

So, like that rutabaga recipe I’m going to celebrate with something simple.  Jim suggested we have a party with dishes from this blog, but I informed him if we did, we’d have to blog about it, and it’s way too hot outside for a party.  The best part of summer is how simple it is to make a great dinner.  The grill, the produce and all the herbs make summer the most delicious time of the year.  Like most recipes, this salad came in to existence because it’s what we had in the house.

Tomato Salad with Dill, Capers and Lemon Vinaigrette  - Serves 6-8

1 pint grape tomatoes, cut in half

2 tablespoons dill, chopped

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon capers, drained

sea salt, such as Maldon

Vinaigrette

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons honey

2 teaspoons dijon mustard

Place the tomatoes in a bowl, toss with the dressing.  Add in the dill and capers, lightly toss, sprinkle with salt and serve.

The Sauce

It used to not be on the menu, it was just a very well known secret.  My friend Sheryl introduced me to it.  We started by dipping our chips in to it but eventually ended up dousing everything on our plates with it. It was a good secret to know.  The ‘it’ is Chuy’s creamy jalapeno dip and if you’ve had it, you know exactly what I am talking about.  The stuff is as legendary as Kraft macaroni and cheese or a good batch of Ronald’s fries.  

I would describe Chuy’s as Tex-Mex Elvis-a-fied TGIFriday’s.  It has lots of tacky junk tacked to the walls and you can dine in a Cadillac but unlike TGIFriday’s it’s actually cool to go to Chuy’s in spite of the cheese factor.  It’s the kind of place where you can openly drink a frozen margarita and not feel like a dick because everyone else is happily having one too.  Specifically the ridiculous ‘dot’ or ‘double dot’ which is a frozen margarita served in a bathtub of a glass with a dot or a double dot of strawberry margarita in the center. It’s Disneyland level dining for adults.  

I don’t know what they put in that sauce to make it so awesome.  I’ve been trying to replicate it for years.  When I lived in Texas some of my friends speculated that the backbone of the sauce was ranch dressing.  At home I mainly use the creamy jalapeno for fish tacos but I also use it as a crudite dip served with jicama and peppers.  Apparently I now have the chance to compare mine to the real deal, Chuy’s just went national and opened an Atlanta location.

Creamy Jalapeno Dip - Makes about 1 cup

1 - 4.5 ounce can green chiles

4 ounces sour cream

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 bunch cilantro

Juice of 1 lime

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1/3 of a jalapeno, minced or 5 pickled jalapeno slices

1 tablespoon pickled jalapeno water from the jar

Place everything in a food processor and process until blended.

Going Green

Our friends Jessica and George like the things we do, which are mainly eating, drinking, and traveling.  When we see them several times a year it’s a time for epic food marathons.  George is a chef with 2 restaurants under his belt, training in Boston and a pedigree of growing up English and Spanish in Venezuela.  So he’s got a big set of crayons in the kitchen.

I can honestly say some of my favorite meals have been with them.  The day before they got married Jessica picked me up at the airport in with a pea coat in hand.  I had just moved to Atlanta from Texas and was not equipped for a February wedding in Boston.  From the airport we went to their home in Dorchester.  George made us lunch.  I remember it exactly, but I doubt he does.  George:  you made a porcini mushroom risotto with parsley; we drank a Sam Adams seasonal ale, it was you, me, Jess and your mom and it was great, perfect even.  A warm meal and a heavy beer on a snowy day.  I believe it’s the best risotto I’ve ever had based on that memory alone.  And it snowed and snowed all night and we have the wedding pictures to prove it.

George has continued to feed me and Jim over the years and introduce us to things we didn’t know we couldn’t live without, like smoked paprika and chimichurri sauce.  I’ll put those two things on almost anything.  The first time I had chimichurri was at their house in the ‘burbs.  They had just had their son and had left Dorchester for Main St. USA in the Boston suburbs.  It looked very much like the town in Vermont where I had attended college.  They lived on the actual Main St. and it had, stereotypically, one traffic light and a post office.  The house was white clapboard, as you would expect, with matching labrador retrievers in the yard.  

On that trip Jessica made her famous sangria with the very special addition of Southern Comfort (don’t knock it till you try it).  George made dinner, of course.  I don’t know what else the meal consisted of but I know for certain it was the first time I had ever had yucca and chimichurri.  Out of that dinner I have parlayed that chimichurri sauce onto most everything besides steak.  I use it as dip for shrimp cocktail, I marinade swordfish in it and I most famously make zucchini ribbons with it.  

This recipe is my own and I do things differently than George so don’t blame him because my recipe is not traditional.  These zucchini ribbons go well with a cedar planked fish.

Zucchini Ribbons with Chimichurri Sauce 

Chimichurri sauce - Makes 1 cup

1 bunch parsely

1 bunch cilantro

1/2 a cup of olive oil

Juice of 1 lime or lemon

2-3 garlic cloves, blanched

1 teaspoon cumin, toasted

1 teaspoon honey

large pinch red pepper flakes

sea salt to taste

Combine ingredients in a food processor and process until combined.

Zucchini Ribbons

With a peeling knife remove the outer green layer, then peel in to strips, creating 4 sides to the zucchini, stopping when you get to the seed layer, this should take about +/- 8 swipes of the knife.  Plan for 1 zucchini per person.  Bring a pot of water to a boil.  Meanwhile prepare and ice bath.  When the water boils turn it off and plunge the zucchini ribbons in for 30 seconds, remove and plunge in the ice bath.  When they have cooled drain and dry them well on paper towels or a dish towel.  The sauce and the blanching of the ribbons can be done a day ahead.  Do not dress them until you are ready to serve them.  Toss the zucchini with 2 teaspoons of sauce per zucchini.