Purplettes and Zukes!
The first onions of the year are always confirmation that it's really, truly summer. These little purplette onions are a lovely teaser of what's to come for the rest of the season: pretty little purple onions give way to big, fat, sweet Walla Wallas, then torpedo-shaped Red Long of Tropea, more Walla Wallas (while the gettin' is good and onion ring season is high!), and then we'll rock steady with yellow and red storage onions and hifalutin shallots - deep into wintertime (in fact, we're still eating last year's shallots!). The purplettes are relatively mild - great eaten raw or cooked - and very pretty to boot. Store them in the fridge since they aren't a cured onion that will hold up on the counter.
Zucchini! It always starts so benignly - one or two glossy fruits proffered forth on a tame, orderly plant. And then...
But we aren't to the "and then..." part yet (the part, usually in August, when people are locking their car doors to keep neighbors from dumping overabundant zucchini-blimps into the backseat). No, we're still in that beautiful moment of anticipation - like the early days of a romance - when everything about zucchini is AMAZING! So enjoy it, any way you like it. Zucchini made my 8-year old's list of Top Five Favorite vegetables recently (especially when cooked in lots of butter). Let it be amongst your top five this week, too.
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