Time to shock everyone, I’m writing a post about a vegetable. I don’t generally like vegetables but I recently tried to help my diabetic dad try to find a healthy replacement for the potato. I bought a bag of three courgettes (zucchini for my American readers) from the supermarket and when I got back he told me he hated courgette. Him hating courgette was a problem as I didn’t want them or know how to cook them. I did end up cooking the weird green things which gave me a pleasant surprise.

Raw – The first thing I did was chopped one of the three courgettes into disks like I would a cucumber as the two foods look similar. I bit into one of the disks. We draw on memories for comparisons and the memory of raw potato which I’d eaten in the past came as the only way to describe the flavour. Raw courgette tastes like raw potato, surely by my intention this was a good thing.

Frying – Using the remaining disks I put some oil into a frying pan and placed a few of the disks in it on a medium-high heat for around four minutes as the BBC website advised. Then I turned the disks over in the pan and waited another four minutes until they were a brown colour in the centre on both sides. I tried one of these fried disks which straight out of the pan tasted like chips (fries). When the disks cooled down they weren’t as nice but neither are chips so that meant that fried the vegetable was similar to a potato.

Roasted – How else could I cook my courgettes? In the oven covered in oil with some pepper ground onto it for flavour. The heat around 180 degrees for about 25 minutes which was also a suggestion of the BBC website which was slightly edited by what I had to hand. After my wait I found that roast courgettes somehow tasted exactly the same as roast potatoes. I was doing well at finding a replacement for potatoes.

Mashed – The other way that I’ve often eaten potatoes is by boiling, then mashing them. I followed the same idea with a courgette. I boiled it on a high heat with a little salt for around 20 minutes, emptied out the water and mashed the courgette which resulted in a white/green watery slush. The texture was nothing near mashed potato and neither was the flavour, I wasn’t a fan of this version of courgette. So, not wanting to waste my small pile of mush I looked in my spice cupboard and found garlic salt. I added a sprinkle of garlic salt and mashed it in, obviously giving it a garlic flavour but it was much nicer than before.

 

This vegetable, this weird looking green thing known as the courgette can in some ways replace a potato but not in all ways as my above experiments have shown. Courgettes are also more expensive at my local supermarket which is a bad mark against them compared to potatoes. As a person that generally doesn’t eat vegetables this one has impressed me and I’m willing to eat them again. So, If you want an alternative to the roast potato or just to add another vegetable to your meals I will recommend the courgette.