Featured Ingredient: Summer Squash

Summer squash, or Zucchini, is perhaps the most popular member of the gourd family worldwide. This versatile crop is delicious in everything from soups to stir-fries to salads, and can even be used as super speedy vehicles during our annual farmers market zucchini races, (postponed this year, but we’ll hopefully come roaring back next year!) As much as we love summer squash today, the history of its cultivation has deep roots in the Americas.

Summer squash belong to the gourd family, (Cucurbitaceae or cucurbits), which includes cucumbers, pumpkins and melons. They are not vegetables, not fruits, but a type of berry known as a pepo that is harvested before the rind hardens. In fact, members of this family are truer berries than raspberries, blackberries and strawberries!

Cucurbits have been cultivated in Central America as far back as 7,000-5,500 BCE, and are an integral part of the indigenous “three sisters” cultivation method, where corn, beans and squash are grown together and benefit from one another. Explorers from Europe brought many New World foods back with them, including summer squash, which eventually took root in Italy and replaced Lagenaria siceraria, or bottle gourds, as the most favored squash in Italian kitchens. The word “zucchini” arose in Tuscany at the beginning of the 19th century, and originally referred to containers made from dried mature bottle gourds where Italians stored tobacco. By the 1940s, the word “zucchini” was appropriated to refer to the much more delicious summer squash. Though Cristopher Columbus is often credited with introducing a number of crops to the Americas, including zucchini, it was indigenous peoples who first domesticated summer squash, making it one of the oldest crops in the Americas. 

You can find summer squash from May through August or September, at any of your local farmers markets.