Courgette

Fry, then drown in vinegar and mint while still hot.

Fried slices melt into starch water and become the sauce.

Courgette gives water, tomato gives acid; the pan does the rest.

Watery squash gives the stew its body and takes all of the salt.

Courgette is a blank green canvas; basil supplies the whole aroma.

A bland vegetable borrowing glutamate it does not have.

Milk sweetness fills the gap where courgette has no flavour.

Acid stops the flesh reading as wet cardboard.

Bloom it in oil first; courgette absorbs whatever the fat carries.

Squeeze the water out, put fat back in. That is the whole recipe.

A vegetable with no aroma of its own, given citrus and resin in one leaf.

Marjoram is the Ligurian answer to a vegetable with no flavour of its own.

Two watery things. Salt hard, grill harder, drain both.

Two things that need salt and scorch, cooked side by side.

Watery flesh has no flavour. Pesto is oil, salt and aroma in one spoon.

Melted anchovy supplies the salt and umami courgette lacks entirely.

Grate, salt, drain, bind. Wet courgette ruins a frittata.

Resin and fat against a flat vegetable; texture is the argument.

Nutty milk solids find the faint nutty note already in the flesh.

Flower and fruit on the same plate, one soft, one squeaking.

Grilled courgette goes sweet; carvone stops it turning into pudding.

Hay and iodine land on blankness and take it over completely.

Oily fish needs a wet vegetable to stop it coating the mouth.

Shared pyrazines. Charred courgette and bitter cocoa read as one roast.