Baked zucchini with feta

Salt the zucchini or accept a puddle

Zucchini is about 95% water. Roasted straight from the board it releases all of that into the dish and you get boiled zucchini in a hot oven, which is a genuinely disappointing thing to eat. Twenty minutes under salt in a colander draws out a surprising amount of liquid before it can ruin the bake.

Pat the slices properly dry afterwards. Surface moisture prevents browning for the same reason it does with meat — the water has to evaporate before the surface can get hot enough to caramelise.

One layer, and a hot oven

425°F, spread in a single layer, with space between the pieces. Overlapping slices trap steam against each other and the bits underneath never colour. If the tray is crowded, use two trays — this is the most common reason roasted vegetables come out pale and limp.

The feta goes in late

Feta added at the start dries into hard, salty pellets. Added for the last eight minutes it softens and browns lightly at the edges while staying creamy in the middle. The lemon zest goes on at the same time for the same reason: zest scorches quickly and turns bitter, and its oils are volatile enough that long heat drives them off.

Variations

• With tomatoes, halved cherry tomatoes added at the start, which burst and make a light sauce.
• With chickpeas, a drained tin tossed in with the zucchini, which takes the protein to around 16 g and makes it a main course.
• With mint instead of oregano, which pushes it toward the eastern Mediterranean.

Keeping it

Three days refrigerated, and honestly better at room temperature the next day than reheated. Reheating in an oven rather than a microwave preserves what texture survived the fridge.

What it is worth nutritionally

260 kcal with 11 g of protein, most of it from the feta, which is also most of the 19 g of fat and nearly all of the sodium. Halving the feta and adding chickpeas keeps the protein and cuts both.