I
t may seem bizarre, almost unbelievable now, but there was a time before courgettes. At least here in Ireland. There were occasional sightings of marrows, the adult or steroidal form, but of courgettes or — let’s go Italian — zucchini, there was diddly squat.
As a child gardener, I won first prize for my marrow at the Clontarf Horticultural Society summer show of 1970; it was not a vast marrow — there were bigger ones — but it was tender and therefore, arguably, edible. And did I eat this victorious veg? Of course not. I was a ten-year-old boy and it was, well, a vegetable. A wholly flavourless one to boot.
That’s the thing about courgettes. One minute they are sitting there as tiny infants
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