Braised Cucumbers with Tomato: Calabacin y Tomate

No foto. But… it can't get much easier than this…

Ingredients:

• olive oil
  
• 1 kg (2,2#) zucchini
  
• 125 g (4,5 oz) tomato sauce (just crushed [strained?] tomato)
  
• 1 t salt (approx)
  
• ½ t pepper
• ¼ t cumin, ground (surprise)
  

Procedure:

1. Oil in a frying pan
2. ¼ zucchini the long way and dice them large (chunky, 1,5 cm [3/4"])
3. Braise the zucchini (which amounts to doing the following)
   
• Fry in the oil (not too hot) first (maye they'll brown slightly {mine didn't}')
  
• Then cook them, covered, in their own fluids
• medium low heat
• they'll release a fair bit of liquid after a while
• maybe 10 minutes, slowly, to soften
  
• stir about twice in that time
  
• Remove lid, increase heat, and reduce the liquid until it's almost all gone
  
4. Add the tomato
   
5. Reduce some more; until the salsa [sauce] coats the zucchini & the back of a spoon
6. Add pepper - stir
7. Add cumin (comino)
   
8. Add salt - stir. Check the salt
9. You're done

Notes:

1. Bringing out the juices of the veggies and then reducing the liquid will give yo the true flavour of these things
2. Don't be afraid of adding salt to enhance the flavour.
• If you skip one bag of commercial potato chips each month you will reduce your salt intake enough to add as much as you want to real food.
3. I've been using salt, pepper & cumin a lot in recipes lately. A slight touch of cumin in recipes give a subtle edge to the dish that people seem to enjoy. Never adding so much that they actually notice that there's cumin in it though.
   

I've been trying to make things really super simple this week - because I have a cold and a perpetual headache. This is a really dead-simple recipe and is cheap to boot.

Update: I just figured out that this technique is called braising in English and have updated the post accordingly. I'd also forgotten to mention putting the lid on the pan.