Italian Squash Cucuzza (Bottle Gourd)

Cucuzza is an elongated Sicilian bottle gourd that predates Zucchini in Italy. Bottle gourds are an African species eaten in southern Italy since at least the first century.

Zucchini is an American species that is said to have arrived from south Italy shortly after the beginning of the European occupation of the so-called Americas in 1492, that was the plural, diminutive version of Zucca, first used to describe Cucuzza in the  Cucuzza is a southern Italian interpretation of Cucurbita, the Roman Latin word for bottle gourds. (Courgette has a similar word lineage). This is a complete plant in that you can eat the young shoots, leaves, and tender fruits. Our Sicilian friend and Cucuzza advisor calls it both a delicacy and a poor people’s food, and adds that it makes a wonderf

You prepare cucuzza as you would zucchini or any other squash. So if you don’t have a source of cucuzza don’t fret, zucchini will work just as well. You can make a vegetable stew out of it, add it to macaroni, fry it, stuff it, steam it. It goes as well with pasta as it does with meat.

My mother and grandmother usually made cucuzza with macaroni. It was basically a fresh tomato sauce with garlic and onion and fresh basil with the cucuzza cooked in the sauce and then served over the pasta. (see my post of “Pasta con Zucchini”) Another way they made it was in a vegetable stew with potatoes, carrots and onions. This way is best eaten as a side dish with some meat or fish. If you leave out the potatoes you can add this version to macaroni as well.