Skip to footer

Marinated summer squash salad

Use a mandolin slicer to make paper thin rounds of squash that will soak up a simple dressing.

|
The Runaway Spoon
A fresh and simple salad of summer squash with the added crunch of celery and onion with a light vinaigrette dressing.

Squash season is starting, and everyone I know is always looking for new ways to use the bounty. Everything old is new again though, so I pulled out this recipe. In recent years, I have seen an explosion of fancy squash salads on restaurant menus and on Pinterest. The trend seems to be thinly slicing the squash lengthwise to create long ribbons.

It does make for a pretty salad. But in the back of my mind, I knew I had made a squash salad from an old community cookbook in my collection. I’ve been combing through the volumes for a couple of squash seasons now looking for the recipe, and I finally found it. The book is from a small town in Mississippi and was published in the 1990s, putting it slightly ahead of the trend. I jazzed it up with a little marjoram in the dressing

I like to slice everything on a mandolin slicer to create whisper thin strands that soak up the simple dressing. Slicing the squash paper thin is essential, but if you don’t have a mandolin, you can use a vegetable peeler to make thin slices, and you can dice the other vegetables into small pieces. And I suppose you can create those photogenic long squash ribbons, but to be honest, I think it’s easier to eat this as round slices.

This makes for a wonderful summer cook-out dish. You can make it up to a day ahead, and the tangy pickled bite of the fresh squash is a real taste of summer.

Marinated Summer Squash Salad
Serves 6

1 pound yellow summer squash
1/2 of a yellow onion
3 stalks of celery
1 green bell pepper
2/3 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon chopped marjoram
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/3 cup olive oil

1. Thinly slice the squash on a mandolin and place in a large, wide bowl. Cut the onion half in half again, and slice each piece on the mandolin and add to the bowl. Carefully slice the celery on the mandolin and add to the mix. Cut out the seeds from the pepper and cut it into quarters. Slice the pieces on the mandolin and add to the bowl. Use your hands to toss the ingredients together, separating the squash slices.

2. Put the vinegar, sugar, marjoram, salt, and pepper in a large jar with a tight lid and shake to combine. Add the oil, screw on the lid and shake until well combined. You can also whisk everything together in a bowl. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and toss to combine. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 12 hours or up to 24. Give everything a good stir when you think about it.

3. Drain the salad through a colander, then spread the vegetables on a serving platter. Taste and add a little salt if you like. Serve chilled.

Related post on The Runaway Spoon: Summer squash casserole

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Marinated summer squash salad
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2016/0613/Marinated-summer-squash-salad
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe