mediterranean diet: healthy menu meal plan #74
the summer vegetable your garden can’t stop giving
It’s mid-June and the markets here in Alicante are practically collapsing under the weight of summertime zucchini. Come back tomorrow and there are more. Ask around the neighborhood and everyone has the same story: the garden went completely sideways and now there’s zucchini on every surface in the kitchen.
When we had backyard gardens in California and Spain, I had to get creative. Adding zucchini to our breakfast smoothie (I promise you won’t even know it’s there), making oodles of mini-loaves for George to snack on, and making oodles of “zoodles” to pile raw in salads or barely sauté as a spaghetti alternative.
Every year, my kitchen creativity strains under the weight of “too much of a good thing”. But, eventually, I always find a new way to enjoy summer squash.
Which made this the obvious week to give zucchini its proper moment. Not as a filler. Not as the thing you sneak into a pasta sauce hoping nobody notices. As the actual point.
What makes it work
Zucchini has an image problem.
It gets treated as the background vegetable — the one that stretches a dish, absorbs whatever flavors are around it, and simply disappears into the meal. Which is exactly why most people are surprised to learn how much nutritional work it’s actually doing.
It’s low in calories and high in water content, without adding weight to a meal. It’s a solid source of vitamin C, potassium, and B vitamins. And it contains lutein and zeaxanthin — two antioxidants that are particularly valuable for eye health and that almost nobody talks about.
And at the height of summer heat, with its high water content, zucchini is an easy defense against dehydration. Strawberries and watermelon aren’t the only ones to tackle that problem.
Summer squash more broadly — yellow squash, pattypan, and zucchini — all share this profile. Different shapes, same solid nutritional story.
In the Mediterranean diet, vegetables aren’t a side note. They’re the foundation. The base of the pyramid that everything else is built on — recommended daily, in abundance, as the main event rather than the supporting cast. Zucchini fits that role perfectly, in abundance. It just does the work.
And at this time of year, it costs almost nothing.
What to do with it
Most people default to one of two moves with zucchini: slice and sauté, or grate and hide. Both are fine. But neither makes for a particularly show-stopping side.
The technique in the featured recipe in this week’s Healthy Menu Meal Plan does just that.
A very hot griddle pan. Zucchini cut into half-inch rounds. The goal isn’t to cook it through gently — the goal is proper char marks before it softens. That high heat is what unlocks the sweetness that’s been sitting there all along.
Then balsamic vinegar goes on while the slices are still warm enough to absorb it. Fresh basil from my countertop garden or yours. Toasted hazelnuts. A generous drizzle of good olive oil. Parmesan shaved over the top.
This is what I call flavor layering — building complexity from simple ingredients by giving each one its moment. The zucchini is the base. The balsamic lifts it. The hazelnuts add crunch and a toasty richness. The basil keeps it fresh. The Parmesan ties it all together.
And my thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi for the inspiration — and if you haven’t spent time over on his Substack, consider this your nudge.
How it fits in today’s menu
The charred zucchini is tonight’s dinner side — alongside herb-roasted chicken thighs with preserved lemon and a bowl of freekeh (or any other whole grain in the pantry). It does most of the flavor work at the table, which means the chicken can stay simple.
The rest of the day is very June. A poached egg toast with roasted pepper and goat cheese to start. Fresh peaches and almonds mid-morning. White bean tuna salad at lunch — one of those combinations that sounds like a weeknight shortcut and tastes like you planned it. Sweet pea guacamole in the afternoon, because June deserves a good dip. Watermelon to close.
To give you a few more ideas about zucchini, you’ll find a few extra recipes from my archives in the menu PDF besides the meal plan.
If you’re already a paid subscriber, this is just one of the small extras that show up almost every week — my way of saying thank you for being part of this community.
And if you’ve been on the fence about joining, this is a good week to see what you’d be getting.
But right now for all you paid subscriber folks, it’s time to pull up a chair, grab a glass of something cold or a cup of something hot, and join me in my Mediterranean kitchen while we work our way from one flavor-packed meal to another.
