Courgette and Lemon Pasta

I adore courgettes (or zucchini, depending on where you're from!)

I remember being a child in my Mum's kitchen while she was cooking courgettes in a pan with some butter. She turns to me, smiling, and says something along the lines of "there's nothing better."

She was, and annoyingly still is most of the time, completely right about that and many other things.

I could eat an entire bowl full... with some garlic and salt, of course. A simple but incredibly rewarding dish. However, in this recipe, I combined them with some garlic, lemon zest, and grated cheese to make an incredibly easy, but just as satisfying, courgette and lemon pasta recipe.

Please enjoy, and think of my Mum & I smiling!

Courgette Lemon Pasta Recipe

Serves 2

1 Courgette

200g dried pasta – spaghetti or linguine

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

Zest of ½ lemon

60g butter

40g grated parmesan

Salt, pepper, oil

1. You’re going to slice your courgette as finely as possible. Do it using a mandolin, if you have one. Otherwise, take your time and get those slices as thin as you can manage.

2. Get set up to fry. Have a large frying pan ready, plus a plate lined with kitchen roll to the side. Make sure your salt is easy to reach, too!

3. Use about one third of the butter, plus a generous drizzle of oil (this stops the fat from burning) in the frying pan. Get it to a medium heat. Then, add your courgette slices. Depending on how big yours is, you probably won’t want to do this in one go. It’s fine to work a bit slower and do it in batches.

4. The courgettes won’t need too long – particularly if you’ve got them very fine – so keep checking them and as soon as the underside starts to brown a little, use tongs to flip them over.

5. Once they are cooked on both sides, remove them from the pan, allowing any excess oil to drip off. Lay them on the kitchen roll to absorb any further oil. Sprinkle them generously with salt.

6. At this point, you can start prepping your pasta – cook according to pack instructions. Repeat the process for the courgettes (adding butter/oil as needed – you may want to wipe the pan out between batches as the milk solids in the butter may burn) until they are all cooked and resting on the kitchen roll.

7. In the same pan, add a little more oil if needed, and the garlic clove and cook until soft. At this point, add your cooked pasta directly from its own pot using tongs. This way, you can reserve the pasta water.

8. Add in your grated cheese and lemon zest and a good splash of the starchy water. Give it a stir to combine. Add the courgette slices back to the mix – loosen with more water if needed – and toss it all together. You can always add a little extra butter if you want a thicker, glossier sauce.

Serve and season to taste with salt & black pepper!