Courgettes: The Underdog Vegetable That Deserves Your Full Attention
There is a vegetable sitting in British kitchens right now — possibly in yours — that doesn’t get nearly the respect it has earned. I’m talking about the courgette. Early summer brings them in abundance, and yet, as chef and food writer Ben Tish points out, the UK still hasn’t fully caught on to what a remarkable ingredient it is, especially given the marvellous varieties grown domestically.
Tish, who oversees the Cubitt House group of pubs in London, makes a convincing case for the courgette’s versatility. He uses them raw, shaved thin and tossed with salt and lemon. He stuffs the flowers with cheese or meat and deep-fries them. He chars them on a barbecue to coax out their natural sweetness. He even bakes them into cake. It’s hard to name another vegetable that spans that range.
Here, Tish offers two recipes that show off very different sides of the courgette: one crisp and fried, the other slow-cooked until nearly jammy. Both are straightforward enough for a weeknight and interesting enough to make you reconsider what a courgette can be.
Courgette Fritters with Brown-Butter Crème Fraîche
Prep: 10 min Salt: 10 min Cook: 25 min Serves: 4
Ingredients:
3 medium courgettes (about 600g), trimmed and grated
Sea salt and black pepper
120g crumbly cow or sheep’s cheese, drained and crumbled
2 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced
1 garlic clove, peeled and grated
Finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
1 large handful mixed picked herbs — dill, mint and parsley
2 eggs
120g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
Olive oil, for frying
For the brown-butter crème fraîche:
60g butter
Juice of ½ lemon
150g crème fraîche
The method begins with a step that matters more than it sounds: salting the grated courgettes and letting them sit in a sieve for 10 minutes. Courgettes hold a surprising amount of water, and if you don’t squeeze it out, your fritters will be soggy. Tish is emphatic here — squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
Once drained, the courgettes go into a bowl with the crumbled cheese, spring onions, garlic, lemon zest, half the herbs, and a generous amount of black pepper. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, then beat in the flour and baking powder to form a thick batter. Fold that batter into the courgette mixture until everything is well combined.
The dip is where things get interesting. Melt 60g of butter in a frying pan over medium heat and cook it for about five minutes, until it smells nutty — that’s the milk solids browning, and it’s the flavour that transforms ordinary crème fraîche into something worth talking about. Stir in the lemon juice, take it off the heat, and let it cool. Then whisk the cooled brown butter into 150g of crème fraîche and season.
To cook the fritters, heat a shallow layer of olive oil in a wide pan. Fry spoonfuls of the battered courgette mixture for a couple of minutes per side, until crisp and golden. Work in batches if needed. Lift them out with a slotted spoon, season while hot, and keep warm in a low oven while you finish the rest.
One final touch: toss the remaining herbs in the hot oil left in the pan to crisp them up, then drain. Serve the fritters scattered with those fried herbs, alongside the brown-butter crème fraîche for dipping. A drizzle of good olive oil on top wouldn’t hurt.
Slow-Cooked Courgettes on Sourdough with Ricotta
If the fritters are about crunch and immediacy, this second recipe is about patience — and the transformation that happens when you let a vegetable cook gently for half an hour.
Ingredients:
Extra-virgin olive oil
5 medium courgettes (about 850g), trimmed and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 small preserved lemon, flesh removed and discarded, rind finely chopped
Finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon
1 pinch chilli flakes, or to taste
1 handful fresh mint leaves
Sea salt and black pepper
4 thick slices sourdough
150g ricotta
Put a large, wide pan on medium-low heat with a splash of good olive oil. Stir in the sliced courgettes and garlic, then turn down the heat, cover the pan, and leave them to collapse gently for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The goal is a texture Tish describes as almost jammy, with very little liquid remaining in the pan. This is slow cooking in its simplest and most rewarding form — no technique more complicated than covering a pan and waiting.
Once the courgettes have reached that jammy state, stir through the chopped preserved lemon rind, lemon zest, chilli flakes, and half the mint. Season and take off the heat.
Toast the sourdough. Meanwhile, stir salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil into the ricotta until it’s spoonable. If it seems too firm, loosen it with a splash more olive oil or warm water.
Spread each slice of toast thickly with the ricotta, spoon the warm courgettes on top, and finish with torn mint and more olive oil.
Why This Matters
What strikes me about both recipes is how little they ask of the cook and how much they deliver. The fritters require a bit of frying and attention to heat, but the technique is accessible. The slow-cooked courgettes are almost entirely hands-off. Neither recipe calls for anything exotic — preserved lemon is the most specialised ingredient, and even that is increasingly available in supermarkets.
Tish’s broader point is worth sitting with. The courgette is not a glamorous vegetable. It doesn’t have the cachet of an artichoke or the cult following of a heirloom tomato. But it grows well in Britain, it’s affordable, it’s available through much of the summer, and it responds beautifully to nearly every cooking method you can throw at it. Raw, fried, charred, baked, slow-cooked — it adapts.
In a food culture that increasingly rewards novelty and spectacle, there’s something quietly radical about making the case for a vegetable most people walk past without a second thought. Tish makes that case not with argument but with two recipes that are worth cooking tonight.