How to Cook Courgettes with Garlic and Mint

Why the courgette deserves more credit

By late July, most British kitchen gardens are drowning in courgettes. They arrive faster than we can eat them, and the temptation is to treat them as a filler vegetable — something to bulk out a ratatouille or hide in a cake. That is a shame, because a courgette picked small, cooked hot and finished with good olive oil is one of the quiet pleasures of the summer kitchen. This dish takes about fifteen minutes from fridge to table, and while it is a side dish, I have eaten it for lunch with bread and a lump of feta more times than I can count.

Choosing and prepping your courgettes

Size matters more than anything else here. A courgette roughly 10–15cm long, with glossy skin and a firm, heavy feel, will be sweet and fine-textured. Anything much bigger turns watery and seedy, and needs salting and longer cooking to be worth eating.

• Small (10–15cm): slice into 1.5cm rounds or thick batons, no salting needed.
• Medium (15–20cm): halve lengthwise first, then cut into half-moons and salt for 10 minutes.
• Marrows and monsters: scoop out the spongy, seedy centre, cut into chunks, salt for 20 minutes, then drain and pat dry.

To salt, toss the cut courgette with a generous teaspoon of fine salt in a colander, leave for ten minutes, then squeeze gently and blot on a tea towel. You are removing water that would otherwise steam the courgette in the pan. Do not rinse — just use a little less salt later.

The method: fast, hot and uncluttered

You need the widest frying pan you own, or a griddle pan, or a barbecue. Courgettes release a lot of water, and if they are piled up they will boil rather than fry.

Warm three tablespoons of olive oil in the pan over a high heat. Add the courgettes in a single layer — cook in two batches if necessary — and leave them alone for two minutes so they take on real colour. Turn and cook for another two minutes. They should be tender at the centre with dark, blistered edges.

Turn the heat down to medium, push the courgettes to one side, and add three sliced garlic cloves to the clear patch of oil. Let them sizzle for thirty seconds only, until fragrant but not coloured — burnt garlic will ruin the whole pan. Toss everything together, season with black pepper and a little more salt, then take the pan off the heat.

Mint, lemon and the finishing touches

Off the heat, add a generous handful of mint — about 20g of leaves, roughly torn or shredded. Use spearmint rather than peppermint, whose flavour is too fierce here. Then the juice of half a lemon and the zest of the whole thing. The lemon must go in at the end: cooked lemon juice turns flat and slightly bitter.

A final glug of your best, peppery olive oil — two tablespoons, stirred through rather than cooked — is what turns this from a plain vegetable into something you would happily eat straight from the pan. Taste, adjust, and serve warm or at room temperature. It is better after ten minutes' rest.

Grow your own for a summer's worth of suppers

Courgettes are the most generous plants in the garden, and one or two will feed a household all summer. Sow two or three seeds per pot indoors in late April, harden them off, and plant out once the risk of frost has passed, spacing them 90cm apart in a mound enriched with plenty of compost. They are hungry and thirsty, so a mulch of grass clippings or compost keeps moisture in and the fruit clean.

Water at the base rather than over the leaves, which helps to avoid powdery mildew as the season wears on. Pick when the fruits are 10–15cm — every two days in warm weather — and the plants will keep producing. Leave one to grow into a marrow if you like, but be aware the plant will slow down. Round varieties are lovely stuffed; pale Romanesco types are sweeter and firmer. Keep mint in a pot, unless you want it running through the whole bed.

What to serve with it, and how to use up the glut

This dish sits happily beside roast chicken, grilled lamb or a whole baked fish. Stirred through hot pasta with a spoonful of the cooking water, it becomes dinner. Piled on toast rubbed with garlic and topped with a poached egg, it becomes breakfast.

If the glut is winning, the same method scales up. Cooked this way, courgettes keep in the fridge for three days and freeze reasonably well for soups and sauces, though the texture softens. Any leftovers are excellent folded into an omelette or stirred through a grain salad with extra lemon. And if you are faced with a true marrow, grate it, salt it, squeeze it dry, and freeze in 250g bags for winter baking.