Summer Squash and Sweet Potatoes

Remember in Prince Caspian (umm... I think not the movie, but I've only seen it once-- but definitely it is in the book) when it says that Trumpkin has "marvelous ideas about cookery," and they take their apples and wrap bear meat around them and spear them on sticks and then roast the whole kebab over the fire? Right. I just knew you did.

So, I told a couple of different people about how I cooked the summer squash we were getting from our produce co-op, and both of them immediately said, "I should do that!" This is when I thought that perhaps I should blog the recipe-- if it could even be called a recipe. It's a little too simple to feel like a proper recipe to me. It is, you could say, an idea.

• summer squash
• oil (I always use olive oil)
• salt

Slice the summer squash thin. Mix it with, like, half a cup of oil for every summer squash? And then spread it out over a large, heavy pan (I used the large pyrex pan we still have left after I exploded that one last summer), sprinkle it with salt, and put it in the oven for, like, an hour, at 350 degrees F.

Notes:
A lighter-weight pan will produce more uneven results (found this out by testing it). I find that it doesn't take that long to arrange my slices in a sort of French-looking way-- you know, all overlapping and even-- and that this helps it to bake more evenly. Of course, you CAN use less oil, but of course that will make it harder for the natural sugars of the squash to come out and caramelize and get all delicious-like. Also, the slices reduce in size considerably while they're cooking, so it's OK to really pack them in there, side-to-side-wise.

Also. This can be done with sweet potatoes, which we did last night and they really are pretty good. I must admit that our household is having a bit of a craze for thin-sliced vegetables at the moment, since Mom got a food processor for me herself for Mother's day; if you don't have one available, the sweet potatoes are still pretty good when they are more thickly sliced.