Pleasant discovery ITALY’S ICONIC ZUCCHINI GROWS WELL IN COTABATO By Manny Piñol

In June of this, while in Rome to chair the International Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization, I and senator Cynthia Villar travelled to Vitterbo to visit the farm of a former OFW who is now a successful agri-preneur in Italy, Ramer Serrano.

Ramer is a cousin of Agriculture Undersecretary Segfredo Serrano, who was also with me in Rome and both hail from Pampanga.

In his 45-acre farm, Ramer showed me several varieties of vegetables which he grew but what really captured my interest was the Zucchini.

It is an iconic vegetable in Italy and Europe and it belongs to the squash family but looks like a large cucumber.

What makes Zucchini unusual is the fact that farmers prefer to harvest it while still in the flowering stage because it is the flower that is used in several delicacies.

Ramer gave me a can full of Zucchini seeds and I planted these in my farm in Paco, Kidapawan City.

I actually forgot all about it and the farm help did not know whay it was so they just allowed the fruits to mature.

When I visited my Zucchini garden last weekend, I discovered that many of the fruits were already mature.

I, however, found a few young ones with flowers and had these harvested.

Problem was I did not know of any recipe using the young Zucchini with flowers.

So what I did was to ask my farm househelps to cook for me my favorite “Law-oy” which is actually a liberated mixture of steamed vegetables flavored with dried shrimps.

The Zucchini blended well with the “Law-oy” vegetables so now I have a new recipe: “Lawcchini.”

You like to know more about Zucchini? Here’s an entry in the wikipedia:

“Zucchini (/zuːˈkiːniː/, American English) or courgette (/kʊərˈʒɛt/, British English) is a summer squash which can reach nearly a meter in length, but is usually harvested immature at 15 to 25 cm (6 to 10 in).[1] In Britain and Ireland a fully grown zucchini is referred to as a marrow.

“Along with certain other squashes and pumpkins, it belongs to the species Cucurbita pepo. Zucchini can be dark or light green. A related hybrid, the golden zucchini, is a deep yellow or orange color.[2]

“In a culinary context, zucchini is treated as a vegetable; it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. Botanically, zucchinis are fruits, a type of botanical berry called a “pepo”, being the swollen ovary of the zucchini flower.

“Zucchini, like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas. However, the varieties of squash typically called “zucchini” were developed in northern Italy in the second half of the 19th century, many generations after the introduction of cucurbits from the Americas in the early 16th century.”

#LamiManNi! #UnsaManNi!

(Photo of flowering Zucchini in my farm.)