Sometimes I feel like I’m on a game show entitled: Take These Random Ingredients And Try To Make A Meal. The show takes place on Friday nights when the star (me) arrives in her weekend house with the following:
- A few items she grabbed at the last minute as she was leaving her home in Rome
- Items her house guests brought along, so they wouldn’t go bad over the weekend
- Odds and ends she had left in the weekend house thinking ‘these will come in handy’ (a.k.a. pasta)
- Fresh cheeses she picked up at a store on the side of the highway (at least there’s that)
- Possibly something growing in the vegetable garden (this is the joker card, you just never know)
And the winning dish this week is (I always win, since I am the only person participating in this game show): Pasta with Zucchini, Ricotta and Rosemary.
Yes, I could have pretended that this was a well-thought out dish. And that I fully intended not to include any garlic or parmesan cheese. And that I wanted to devise a dish around 8 small, slightly-worse-for-the-wear-looking zucchini bought ten days ago at the Farmer’s market by my house guest.
But really? It was lunch time and that was all their was.
The dish doesn’t really sound like much, but even I have to admit it was a winner. Rather than try to saute the zucchini, hoping they wouldn’t turn into mush, I embraced their less-than-crisp-state by slicing them and adding them to the boiling pasta water at the very last minute. They added moisture to a dish that was really only going to be dressed with the small cup of fresh buffalo milk ricotta I’d picked up at the roadside store in Orte.
And since I had neither garlic nor hard cheese to add punch, I decided to add a whammy of flavor by using an extraordinary amount of just-picked rosemary. This time of year the rosemary is beginning to sprout new leaves, which are sticky with their piney sap. So strong was the rosemary flavor that it really does deserve to be named in the title of the recipe.
In addition to a tiny onion that I found in the house, I also was able to pick a huge bunch of chives in the garden. They flavored the ricotta beautifully. And the tiny purple chive blossoms that had just started to bloom? Like any cooking show winner I artfully arranged them on each plate because, you know, garnish is important too.
pasta with zucchini, ricotta and rosemary
Prep
Cook
Total
Yield 4 -5
Ingredients
- 1/2 kilo / 1 pound pasta
- 1/2 kilo / 1 pound small zucchini, but into 1/4 inch slices
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil plus more
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 1/3 cup chopped fresh rosemary
- 1 cup ricotta
- 1/2 cup chopped fresh chives
- salt, pepper
Instructions
- Chop the rosemary, using a mezzaluna or a knife. The trick is to chop the rosemary pretty finely.
- Add the chopped chives and freshly ground pepper to the ricotta, and stir well. Place in a large serving bowl that you will use to serve the pasta.
- Pour the olive oil into a large enough pan to fit in the cooked pasta later. Heat over a medium flame. Add the chopped onion, some salt, and let cook for about 8 minutes, till softened. Add the rosemary and let cook until it becomes fragrant, about 8 more minutes. But don’t let it brown, or it will become bitter. Turn off heat.
- Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.
- Add the pasta and cook until it is about 5 minutes away from being done. Add the zucchini, bring back to a boil, and finish cooking.
- Drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of the pasta water.
- Turn on the heat under the rosemary oil, and add the pasta and zucchini, stirring well to let the pasta become fully flavored with the oil.
- Add the pasta water to the ricotta, a bit at a time, stirring to mix. How much water you use will depend on how dry or wet your ricotta is. You want it to be creamy, sort of the consistency of pancake batter.
- Add the pasta to the bowl, mix well, and serve.
Notes
If you don't have fresh rosemary, please don't use dry. Better to substitute another fresh herb, like marjoram. As for the pasta shape, any short tubular pasta will do. Or even fusili or wheels, which hold the ricotta very nicely.
Sounds great will give it a try when the courgettes start to grow in my garden.
Many of my meals work on this basis. We frequently have ‘fridge’ pasta or ‘fridge’ soup!
Never boring as the ingredients are always different.
I hear ya. This wasn’t quite my mom’s ‘clean out the fridge’ pasta, but nearly.
Yum. I have an overflow of zucchini in my fridge from last week’s CSA. I will run out to Lucca’s on Chestnut street (SF) for fresh ricotta. And your lunch will be my lunch today.
Grazie
Really? you are in zucchini overload mode already? We’re not quite there yet.
Reading your blog posts is like a breath of fresh Italian floral and herb scented air that arrives at my desk in Chicago. Reading it is such a fun break for me. Thank you!
Love your comment because this is exactly what I imagine: someone sitting at a desk and deciding “hey, I’ll take a 10 minute trip to Italy via Elizabeth’s blog”!
Absolutely lovely post!! Mouthwatering!
great recipe…but the zucchine available in the US are just so water logged, and good ricotta…even harder to find.
this is inspiring but at the same time, i feel i would never be able to replicate it. keep them coming though…your blog is great
Wait until the zucchini hit their peak at the farmer’s market, and try to substitute another type of fresh cheese made locally.
These divine prize winning and oh so simple recipes, in my experience can only be produced in Italy. There is absolutely no chance of making such a heavenly dish in Hertfordshire England. The ingredients simply do not possess the flavours needed. I taste it in my head and weep!
I often play this game, too, but my results usually aren’t quite as spectacular! I love reading about the ad hoc cooking adventures of others. Thanks for keeping it real (in a good way! 🙂