The New Complete Book of Food

 The New Complete Book of Food

The Most Nutritious Way to Serve This Food

Steamed quickly in very little water, to preserve the vitamin C.

Diets That May Restrict or Exclude This Food

Low-fiber diet

Buying This Food

Look for: Dark green slender zucchini with pale yellow or white striping. Yellow crookneck

squash should be brightly colored with lightly pebbled skin. Yellow straightneck squash may

have either smooth or pebbled skin.

Choose smaller (and therefore more tender) squash. The best zucchini are four to nine

inches long; the best crooknecks and straightnecks are four to six inches long.

Avoid: Limp squash. They have lost moisture and vitamins. Avoid squash whose skin is

bruised or cut; handle squash gently to avoid bruising them yourself. Bruising tears cells, acti-

vating ascorbic acid oxidase, an enzyme that destroys vitamin C. Avoid squash with a hard

rind; the harder the rind, the older the squash and the larger and harder the seeds inside.

Storing This Food

Refrigerate summer squash, which are perishable and should be used within a few days.

Preparing This Food

Scrub the squash with a vegetable brush and cut off each round end. Peel older, larger squash,

then slice them in half and remove the hard seeds. Younger, more tender squash can be

cooked with the peel and seeds.

What Happens When You Cook This Food

As the squash cooks, its cells absorb water, the pectins in the cell walls dissolve, and the veg-

etable gets softer. The seeds, stiffened with insoluble cellulose and lignin, will remain firm.

Chlorophyll, the pigment that makes green vegetables green, is sensitive to acids.

When you heat zucchini, its chlorophyll reacts with acids in the vegetable or in the cooking

water to form pheophytin, which is brown. The pheophytin makes cooked zucchini look

olive-drab. To keep the cooked zucchini green, you have to keep the chlorophyll from react-

ing with the acids. One way to do this is to cook the zucchini in a large quantity of water

(which will dilute the acids), but this increases the loss of vitamin C. A second alternative