Summer abundance is in full force, and the number of zucchini in my parents’ backyard is the proof. You can serve them dozens of different ways, but we decided to try to turn them into the main course.

It seems you can take just about any lasagna-like recipe you love and subsitute the zucchini for the pasta for a lighter dish more suited to the hot weather.

The trick to avoiding tons of water coming from the zucchini is to slice and salt the zucchini, lay them on a greased cookie sheet and pop them under a high broiler for about 5 minutes before starting to layer them. Be careful when opening the oven door, the amount of steam is kinda crazy.

Two medium-sized zucchini (like the ones in the photo) made a 9″x13″ three-layer lasagna that served six generously. We made a traditional Italian lasagna/parmigiana-type recipe, layering the zucchini with meat sauce, shredded mozzarella, grated parmesan cheese, one beaten raw egg and diced pre-sliced mortadella. It needed about 45 minutes at 375F.

I’m definitely going to try some other layered dishes this way, and we’ll just have to see what happens!