Spaghetti alla Nerano

so begins our Zucchini Saga...

We’re in it folks, peak Zucchini season. We love planting them because they are relatively easy to grow and typically pretty prolific. But what do you do once they start popping off? My mom used to just boil them as a last resort, which as a kid, and even now, is the saddest preparation (she unconvincingly argues it’s her favorite). For the remainder of August, Olivia and I will be rolling out all the creative and most tasty ways you can prepare that zucc! No need to boil it into a mush.

Photos by the amazing Tessa Trozzolillo Foltz @tessa__tf

Below is Olivia’s Spaghetti alla Nerano, which we cooked for a private dinner party in Atwater Village in Los Angeles. We fried 20 pounds of it for dinner service! But beyond it feeling oh-so-right for the season, this is a really easy dish to pull off for a crowd, and a particularly delicious one at that.

In case you are one of the rare few who haven’t seen Stanley Tucci losing his mind over the dish on the Amalfi Coast in Searching for Italy, let’s give it a little intro…

In the town of Nerano on the Sorrento peninsula in Campania sits Maria Grazia, the restaurant that has been proudly repping Spaghetti alla Nerano as their culinary brainchild since the 1950’s. Now, you can find the dish in restaurants all over Nerano from Taverna del Capitano to Lo Scoglio da Tommaso (the restaurant Tucci shot into the foodie zeitgeist with his pilot episode). In each variation, Spaghetti alla Nerano takes zucchini and few other ingredients and transforms them into something far more delish than the sum of its parts. The zucchini are cut into thin rounds and fried,* and then combined with basil, pecorino, butter, and a touch of garlic for a truly hedonistic experience. Now let’s make it, shall we?

*if frying in your home freaks you out, Emilia has a little work around at the end of the recipe.