Nici Wickes: Creative uses for excess courgettes

The first courgettes from the garden are cause for a celebration. Not so the marrows that sneak up on you later in the season when you are heartily sick of grilled courgette and the neighbours are getting tired of you offering them as gifts!   

Here’s some surprising and delicious ways you can use them.  

  

Creamy salad or steak sauce 

Makes about ¾ cup   

Ingredients 

1 cup chopped raw courgette  

¼ cup olive oil (or use iced water)   

Handful of basil leaves or parsley or other herb you like   

Decent squeeze of lemon juice or some other acid like vinegar   

Salt & pepper  

Parmesan cheese (optional)   

 

Method 

Blend it all together to a creamy, light green sauce and pour over salads or bbq meats.   

Store in the fridge for up to a week.  

  

  

Fresh fruit ice cream

Freeze chopped courgette and use equal portions of it with a frozen fruit (berries or mango are good) to blend to a smooth gelato-like ice-cream.   

Feel free to add some sugar or other flavourings and/or some liquid (not too much!) like coconut milk or cream / cream / water to help the blender out.   

Best eaten straight away and from a cone.  

  

  

Smoothies

A lot of people load up smoothies with banana from the creaminess, but frozen courgette does the same without the sugar. Magic!   

Somebody also told me that you can make jam with them but I’ve yet to test this theory :)   

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A'd be joining me now is Nicky Wicks? Good morning,
Happy New Year.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Yeah, good morning, and happy New Year to you too,
brand new one.

Speaker 4 (00:22):
I always kind of love that always late. I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
How's the beachy garden?

Speaker 4 (00:30):
The veachy garden is fantastic.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
But you know, for our listeners this morning, and those
of you who are gardeners or have of neighbors who
are gardeners, how are you going.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
With the course yeats? With the cause heats?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yet those first few that came out of the garden
or we were celebrating all but we were not.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
So now you know, you can't give them away at
this time of the year.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
They're all turning into marrows overnight, and so, you know,
the garden's good. But I thought that our listeners might
be feeling the same as me, which is what on
earth to do with these course yas?

Speaker 4 (01:00):
And that's what I'd like to focus say.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
They might have been grilling them to them into you know,
pastor all sorts of things. But you've got some really
interesting takes on what to do with corgette this morning.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Look I have and it's because the neighbor, in fact,
did you know, see me a text and said, hey,
want some want some corjietes slash marrows, And I went
back and went aha, I said, I am drowning in
them at the moment, and so she gave me a
couple of good ideas. So I've been really experimenting this summer.
I know, on the show in previous you know years,
we've done you know, we've done cakes, we've done pickles,

(01:33):
all those sort of things that you can turn corjettes
into fritters, a grade, all of that.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
But here's a couple of great things.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
So I've made a beautiful creamy dressing that you can
use for a salad or for a steak.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
And the base of it is raw corgete, honestly, absolutely amazing.
So here I did for that a cup of chopped
raw corgette, and then about quarter of a cup of
olive oil or another good oil that you've got. You
can even get away with a little mix of oil
and water, believe it or not, because it's actually are
going to go into a handful of basil leaves or

(02:08):
maybe parsky, although parsley isn't so great at this time
of the year, or maybe another herb that you might like.
So if you were heading off, maybe you had a
piece of chicken that you were going to pair this with,
or a rice noodle salad, then maybe you could use
coriander something like that. Decent squeeze of something acidic now
I've still got some big squishy lemons off my tree,
or something like a vinegar would be fine. So you

(02:31):
probably want about say two tablespoons of whatever that is,
bit of salt and pepper. Of course, if you're feeling
a little bit luxurious, you could do parmesan cheese in there.
That's kind of a riff on that sort of pesto style,
but you're blending it all together in a decent sort
of blender or food process until it's quite a liquidy
sauce and it's beautiful. It's light green, it's got a creaminess.

(02:52):
I served this up to two people yesterday.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
And I'm like, wow, this is beautiful. It's dressing.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
It's so fresh and creamy, and really the creaminess comes
from those raw deet So this is a really great one.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
I've been knocking that out like crazy.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
The other thing I've been knocking it at is some
fresh fruit ice cream with corgiet.

Speaker 4 (03:10):
So this is this is not what.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
I would not go corgiyet ice cream. Yeah awesome, I.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Know this looks again. My neighbor said to me, look,
you can also tune them into eye. She said, I've
been doing it into ice creams for the kids. And
she's a fabulous chef, so I trust her impressently. So
I've been freezing chopped corget. So again, somebody drops me
off a marrow, I'll go, oh, goody, goody, thanks so much,
and I chop it all up into little pieces, throw
it in the freezer, and then when I feel like it,

(03:38):
I take equal portions of that corget and any sort
of frozen fruit. And I've done this with raspberries last night,
mango earlier on in the week, and then you blend
it up and it just comes out like a smooth gelato.
It's amazing. What people would normally do with the fresh
fruit ice creams in a blender is they'll throw a
banana in there. It's fine, a little bit of extra

(03:58):
sugar in there, but it's okay. You know, I'm not
against sugar in that sense, but this is just fantastic
if you feel like something different in getting some more
fiber and vechies into you. So again, serve this to
two people yes today because we had a little bit
of a photo shoot actually and they were like, oh
my god, this is amazing, And I said, that has
got you know, only half of that is the fruit.

(04:19):
The other half is courgette because surprisingly, Francesca, it doesn't
really have much flavor, and which is kind of what
you want in this sense, you know, but it has
a beautiful creaminess once it's been frozen. You could add
into that to help you blender out, I often say
to people, because it doesn't need a bit of a
help with a stick or something in there.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
To get it all moving around.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
You could add a little bit of coconut milk or
cream or water or something like that, or even fruit
juice if you wanted, and any other flavorings that you
want to go for.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
But it comes out.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Literally like the like the texture and that sort of
thing and the flavor of a really good gelato.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
So that's a good ee.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Then the last thing I've been doing is I've been
just loading it up into my smoothies.

Speaker 4 (05:02):
And again that is something that I wouldn't normally do.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
I'd usually use a banana or an add cardo for
that sort of creaminess, but not now. I have got
enough frozen corgiette to get me almost to next summer.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
I reckon, that's a.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Really nice It's a really nice way to add the
green to the smoothie as well, isn't it. Because we
talk about, you know, having our green smoothies and getting
the green into the smoothi and things. It's and it's
just that it doesn't have a strong taste. And the
key thing too is don't just get your corges, as
you said, You've got to chop them before you freeze up.
Don't just grab them from the from the garden.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
And yeah, that's a disaster, isn't it, Because you know
that's that's a rookie mistake, that one.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Is freezing the blender.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Yeah, yeah, but small it's yeah, yeah, exactly me too,
to be honest, When I first started doing this, I
was chopping them lazily, quite big, and then I realized
that was kind of tougher for my blender or food
processor at the other ends. So yeah, I think these,
you know, these are my favorite things to do. Now
with the corgiet, you know, as opposed to as I say,

(06:02):
I've usually grated it in into cakes or frishes, nothing
wrong with but these were yeah, just new of using
them up.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
So there you go, just very quickly, NICKI, I noticed
as you were reading out those recipes. One minute you
call corget, the next to marrow. These really good. No, no,
these if you have got the marrow, I imagine that
they are fine to freeze and using smoothies and things
like that. The fact that it's turned into a marrow
won't matter.

Speaker 3 (06:26):
To be honest, that's a really great question, because I
am really using the marrows for this cool Most of
mine are really far too big. They're probably the size.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Of my forearm.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Maybe some without the hand, but mostly they're from the
elbow to the finger tip. That's the ones that people
are giving me. And so absolutely these are the ones
I'm using. And as I say, I'm.

Speaker 4 (06:49):
You know, I am previous years.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
I feel terrible when I've you know, wasted time or
not waste of time, but when I've made pickles out
of them, said, I've even seen a couple of those
to the bloody compost. But how embarrassing not anymore. Now,
I'm just like, great, there's another marrow. Fantastic, chop that
up and it's in the freezer. So no, pretty much
marows is. But you could use your couseettes as well.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Thank you so much, Nikki really appreciate it for those recipes.
All you have to do is head to NEWSTALKZIB dot
co dot nz. We've got your cardiet and your marrows
all sorted. We'll talk next week for more.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
From Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live to Newstalks
EDB from nine am Saturday, or follow the podcast on
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