What Are We Going To Do With All These Cucuzze?

A cucuzza (cucuzze, pl) - in dialect, pronounced: "goo-GOOTS-ah" or just "goo-GOOTS") is a southern Italian long squash that has a special spot in our backyard garden and in our hearts.

This is a most amazing and vigorous plant with some peculiar characteristics that make it look like it could have been designed by Dr Seuss. They have long twisting vines and intricate corkscrew tendrils that reach out in every direction as you can see in the video above. The pale green squash (actually gourds) are delicious and versatile. They have a light sweet lemony taste and can grow up to 4 ft long. The big umbrella-like leaves and tender tops (tenerumi) are edible and great as sauteed greens or in soups. The plant has both male and female flowers that are short lived and bloom in the evening typically at different times. Male flowers bloom in abundance but there are much fewer female squash producing flowers. This is probably a self regulating mechanism for the plant. So in order to get a good harvest you might need to step in and pollinate them yourself by picking a lucky male flower and rubbing it onto the center of a blooming female flower to transfer the pollen.  Aside from this, they need little maintenance, just water and fertilizer. Because they are such vigorous growers, they should be trained on a trellis. 

Here are photos from our garden and some recipe ideas - 

In the beginning...

Female flower about to bloom

Male flower

A Hawk Moth on night time pollination duty!

Lisa holding one of our squash

So, what to do with all this cucuzza?  Here you go -  

Linguine with fried cucuzza and basil oil

You want to pick them this size or smaller. They are more tender and  have fewer seeds

Peeled and cut into disks

Basil

Basil, garlic and olive oil sauce

Fried in olive oil

Fried Cucuzza Sticks as Stuzzichini (finger food)

Sauteed tenerumi (leaves and tops) with pasta

Sauteed Cucuzza with onion and ground fennel, coriander and cumin seeds

Stuffed Cucuzza

Cut the cucuzza in half lengthwise and scrape out all but about 1/2 inch on the sides and reserve. 

Stuffing made of the cucuzza flesh cut from the halves, onion, garlic,chopped sweet pepper, currents, fresh parsley, hot pepper flakes sauteed in olive oil. Then mixed with coarse breadcrumbs. Salt and pepper to taste.

When cool, pack into the halves in a casserole dish

Topping is coarse breadcrumbs, pecorino cheese and olive oil

Add a little water to the casserole dish, cover with foil and bake at 375 for 20 min. Uncover and bake for another 10 minutes at 400.

Soon - Cucuzza Fritters