Slow-Cooked Summer Squash

August. The heat is serious now—the kind that means business, that makes the air itself feel cooked, that turns Birmingham into an oven from ten in the morning until seven in the evening. I have always cooked in this heat. Bernice cooked in this heat for sixty years. You adapt: the oven goes on early, before the day heats up, and again late, after the worst is past, and midday you do the cold things—the salads, the pickles, the sweet tea that lives in the refrigerator in a two-gallon pitcher and gets refilled twice a day. The sweet tea is its own August project, the ongoing project of keeping the household cold and sweet and hydrated through the Alabama summer.

I have been making refrigerator pickles this week—cucumber and onion, with vinegar and dill and a little sugar, the kind that are done in two hours and keep for weeks and are bright and cold and exactly right alongside any hot food. Bernice made these every August. She had a canning shelf in the basement in Bessemer that went from floor to ceiling with her summer preserving: pickles, preserves, tomatoes, relish, the whole labor of capturing August to eat through the winter. I don't can at that scale—I don't have the time and the basement of this Forestdale house was not built with a canning shelf—but I do the refrigerator pickles and the strawberry preserves and a batch or two of tomatoes when the garden is producing, which it is, because Calvin planted tomatoes in May the way Calvin plants tomatoes every May, with ambition and without a plan, and now there are more tomatoes than two people can eat without intervention.

Calvin is preaching a summer series on the Song of Songs. The whole congregation is slightly scandalized and entirely delighted. He is sixty-two years old and he is preaching about love and desire with the passion of a man who has been married for twenty-seven years and has found new things to say about it. I sit in the front pew every Sunday and I think: the food and the Scripture are the same thing. They are both about abundance. They are both about love taking a physical form. They are both better shared. They are both right.

Calvin’s tomatoes are not the only thing the garden is producing without a plan. The squash always comes the same way — nothing, nothing, nothing, and then all at once, more than two people can manage in a week. The refrigerator pickles take care of the cucumbers, but for the squash, especially on a midday when I am doing the cold things and saving the oven for early morning, the slow cooker is the answer Bernice would have recognized: low heat, patience, and the faith that what seems like too much will become exactly enough.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 2 hrs 30 min | Total Time: 2 hrs 45 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

6 medium yellow summer squash, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 medium sweet onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Instructions

Layer the vegetables. Arrange half the sliced squash in the bottom of a 4-quart slow cooker. Top with half the sliced onion. Repeat with the remaining squash and onion.
Season and dot with butter. Scatter the butter pieces evenly over the top. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and smoked paprika.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until the squash is tender and the onions have softened and turned translucent. Do not stir during cooking.
Finish with cheese. Sprinkle the Parmesan evenly over the top, replace the lid, and cook for an additional 10 minutes until the cheese is melted.
Garnish and serve. Transfer carefully to a serving dish, top with fresh parsley, and serve warm alongside grilled meats, tomatoes, or whatever the garden has given you today.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked Summer Squash — When the Garden Gives You More Than You Bargained For