All hail the zuke

Side Dish columnist Chris Stevens is taking a well-deserved vacation. Substituting this week is The Daily Item’s managing editor, Victor DeRubeis.One of my first encounters with a buffet was on my first trip to New York City. It was 1962, and the vacation included Freedomland, a short-lived attempt to replicate Disneyland; a visit with Zia Pasqua and Zio Ferminio (OK, we called them Auntie Esther and Uncle Eddie); and a few days with the usual tourist suspects in Manhattan.I don’t remember any of the places we ate except for the multi-course Sunday dinner cooked by my Uncle Eddie and a trip to Zucca’s restaurant on West 48th Street in Midtown. It was my first glorious encounter with the restaurant concept in which you got to choose anything you wanted from a counter groaning with antipasti, pastas, meatballs, meats, cold cuts, soups and, I suppose, zucchini, which I wouldn’t have touched.Which brings us to today’s topic. “Zucca” is Italian for squash, and some research of the word shows that it is the root of “zucchini,” literally “little squash.”While the squash may be little compared to its relative, the pumpkin, the presence of the vegetable at this time of year is anything but. Gardens all over are bursting with ripe zucchini, and if you don’t know what to do with the “abbondanza” of little squash, you can always write a joke about them. After all, zucchini (pronounced ZOO-KEE-NEE) is a funny word, and it works well in quips both corny and unprintable.This one’s from jokes4us.com, which has its own Zucchini Jokes page:”After a minor mathematical error on a routine report, a worker’s boss tried to belittle him in front of his peers.”Angrily she asked, “If you had 4 zucchinis and I asked for one, how many would you have left?”Quickly he replied, ?If it was you who asked, I’d still have 4 zucchinis.'”If this doesn’t inspire you, perhaps one of these easy recipes will. Truth be told, I like to disguise the stuff, and I definitely like to scoop out the seeds before I cook with it. Same goes for zucchini’s bright yellow brother, the summer squash. Lest you feel guilty about waste, use the seeds in a vegetable broth or add them to a compost heap.