I like my vegetables and I especially like going to get them at the farmers’ market. Zucchini wasn’t something my family really ate at all when I was growing up. During this past summer, I started to notice the long green veggies show up in the farmers’ markets and wanted to find a way to use them. After seeing an episode of Good Eats that focused on the use of summer squash, I found the recipe, Zucchini Ribbon Salad, that would serve as my first foray into summer squash.

The recipe, just like many others that I choose to try and present on this website, originates from Alton Brown’s Good Eats and can be found here. The episode’s premise, that Alton is looking for new and different ways to work through a glut of various summer squash (to the point of his yard being overgrown with them), is entertaining and rooted in fact, at least with my experience. Zucchini and other summer squash are prolific at the height of the Iowa summer, and it is amusing to see the variety of quality and sizes that appear in the local farmers’ markets, as some grow to seemingly colossal proportions.

I really liked this salad. The dressing is a simple combination of olive oil, vinegar, and mustard. The zucchini (at least what I used) had a nice toothsome bite to it after its salty purge. The radish added just a hint of spiciness and additional texture to the dish. I could continue, but suffice it to say, this is now one of my favorite summer salads. As I type out this post in September, I’m actually kind of bummed out that zucchini season is all but over right now in Iowa. Something to look forward to next summer, I guess.