My plants aren’t doing so well. I have four patty pan plants, but I’m thinking that’s just too many plants for my space, and as a result they’re all competing for nutrients. It seems to take forever for a patty pan to develop, and I’ve actually only had one fruit up enough to use. There’s one more out there today, and many babies, but it seems to be taking them a really long time to develop. I planted patty pan this year because last year too much zucchini got to me. I really got sick of it- big time. Yet I still wanted to do a few things with zucchini, and patty pan seemed like the perfect solution because they are tiny. I’ve never had them though, and I wasn’t sure what to do with the first one, nor how to cut into it. So I thought I’d share what I did for anyone contemplating these little yellow flying saucers.
The first thing I did was slice off the stem, and then the bottom end so that I had two flat surfaces to work with. Then I simply sliced it into little wedges. I was going to use them in that size, but decided in the end to cut them even smaller.
I used my patty pan for a small dish of a sort-of ratatouille. I had some mushrooms, eggplant, and grape tomatoes to use up, so that’s what I did with them. I really liked the patty pan. It was sweet, not bitter at all, and that one small squash was plenty. It also stayed together. You know how when you cook zucchini sometimes the pieces just kind of melt away? This didn’t do that, the pieces maintained their integrity. I just wish my plants would put out more of them so that I could use them or share them.