Marinated Zucchini Salad

Isn’t that a lovely photo? I try not to style my photos too much. Usually what you see is what it looks like on its way to the table. But I just had to add a pop of color to that plate of yellow zucchini.

This dish was a real surprise winner. I had low expectations. Honestly, I was only trying it because I had some zucchini to use up and needed a Nourishing Traditions post for the week. I’m so glad we tried it. With great flavor and with such easy preparation, it will definitely be returning to our table soon.

I think it needs to be renamed though, so I’m taking the liberty of doing that. Once it was ready to eat, it struck me that it really wasn’t so much of a “salad” in the raw (which is what I’d expected) but is more of a marinated vegetable, like an artichoke or olive or mushroom. I don’t know about you, but that’s a game-changer for me.

Zucchini Salad (Nourishing Traditions, page 196)

Ingredients

• 4 small zucchini
• ³⁄₄ cup lemon pepper dressing (p 134)
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 8 organic Boston lettuce leaves (optional)

1. Wash zucchini and trim ends. Cut lengthwise into quarters and slice thinly.

Be careful with your slicing–too thick and you will end up with a “salad in the raw”, too thin and you won’t be able to keep it on your fork. I sliced mine about 1/8″ thick.

2. Mix with dressing and oregano and marinate several hour at room temperature. Serve on Boston lettuce leaves.

This dressing was really tasty. We’ll be using it again for our fall salads. I opted to not use the lettuce leaves and just serve the zucchini, which worked fine for us. As an alternative, you could marinate the zucchini, then toss the whole batch with a bowl of greens for a quick salad. We got into a nice cycle of cutting up more zucchini to add to the bowl when it was getting low. After about a week the dressing lost its brightness and we tossed it into a salad before mixing up a new batch.