Shaved Zucchini Salad With Ricotta Salata and Gremolata
There are lots of factors that influence and inspire me when I cook and develop a recipe, but it’s rarely a name. Maybe I enjoyed a dish in a restaurant that I want to re-create at home. Or perhaps I saw a picture in a magazine or on social media, and the recipe is something I’d like to tackle. It could be that I’ve got a specific ingredient in the refrigerator, pantry, or garden that needs to be used up before it spoils. The other day I was inspired by some of these elements, and by a name that happened to pop into my head.
I was flipping through a magazine and saw a picture of a shaved zucchini salad. It looked beautiful. This time of year I have lots of summer squash growing out of hand in the garden and I am always looking for new ways to use some up. So shaved zucchini salad it would be. However, I didn’t like the other ingredients in the recipe, so I’d have to change it. My thought process went something like this…I like cheese in a salad; it adds a salty bite and makes it more substantial. But what cheese to use? And a salad always needs some sort of dressing to add flavor and influence mouth feel. For some reason ricotta salata and gremolata popped into my head. Catchy. Shaved Zucchini Salad with Ricotta Salata and Gremolata. With a name like that, it had to be good. So I set about creating the recipe, based pretty much on a name, a picture, and an ingredient I’ve got plenty of at the moment.
Shaving the zucchini would be easy; I would use a potato peeler. Since I grow both green and yellow varieties of summer squash, ribbons of both curling and intermingling on the plate would add visual appeal. Thin slices of ricotta salata, a dry, crumbly cheese would do the trick, perhaps with a little extra crumbled into the gremolata. The gremolata itself, an Italian green sauce combining finely minced parsley, lemon zest, and garlic, often used to top meat, would act as the dressing. But it wasn’t quite right. The gremolata needed to be thinned out a bit, and the whole salad needed something more. I then thought back to a recipe I cooked several time this spring, Melissa Clark’s Lemony Asparagus Salad with Shaved Cheese and Nuts. Adding a little olive oil and a bit of lemon juice would thin out the gremolata making it more of a dressing, and chopped, toasted nuts would add needed texture to the salad.
I prepped the ingredients, assembled the salad, and served it as one course in a small plates meal. It worked beautifully, with visual appeal, great texture, a wonderful flavor, and a worthy name that played a big part in its inspiration.
Shaved Zucchini Salad with Ricotta Salata and Gremolata
20 minutes, serves 4
½ bunch Italian, flat-leaf parsley, thicker stems removed and discarded
1 large or 2 small cloves garlic
1 lemon, zest and juice
3 Tbsp. olive oil
¼ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. fresh ground pepper
4 oz. ricotta salata, sliced into thin wedges, one or two wedges crumbled
1 small green zucchini
1 small yellow summer squash
3 Tbsp. shelled pistachios (or other nuts), toasted and chopped
- Make the gremolata. Finely mince the parsley and put it in a small bowl. Grate the garlic into the bowl using a rasp-style (microplane) grater. Use the same rasp-style grater to zest the lemon directly into the bowl. There is no need to clean the grater in between. Juice the lemon and add 1½ tablespoons of lemon juice, and the olive oil, salt, and pepper, as well as one or two wedges of crumbled ricotta salata. Whisk to combine. Taste and correct seasonings and texture, adding more lemon juice, olive oil, salt, or pepper as needed to make the gremolata into a salad dressing.
- Make the salad. Use a potato peeler to create thin ribbons by pulling it lengthwise along the squash. Alternatively, use a mandolin. Arrange alternating yellow and green squash ribbons by piling and curling them on four salad plates. Top with wedges of cheese, a tablespoon or so of gremolata, and toasted, chopped nuts.
