Recipes
A friend once said
I love Italian food because is honest. The recipes contain a few ingredients, so only ingredients of very good quality can give you a delicious dish.
Trofie al limone con zucchine e pomodorini
Pasta Trofie with lemon juice prepared with courgette and small tomatoes
200 g of Trofie al limone
(or another kind of pasta)
1 tablespoon of coarse salt
a bit of extra virgin olive oil
1 clove of garlic
1 courgette
some small tomatoes
a couple of pinches of fine salt
some parsley
Wash the courgette and the small tomatoes. Cut the courgette into pieces having a half-moon shape, few mm thick. Wash the parsley, dry it with a kitchen cloth and chop it into fine pieces.
Pour a bit of extra virgin olive oil in a pan and warm it up with medium heat. When the oil is warm, cut the clove of garlic into two pieces and add them in the oil. Make them sizzle for a few seconds while stirring with a spoon. Then take the heat down, add the pieces of courgette, a couple of pinches of salt and the whole tomatoes. Stir gently and let cook for a few min, with low heat and a lid, until the pieces of courgette release a bit of water and the tomatoes start to crack.
Boil 2 L of water (1 L for every 100 g of pasta), add a tablespoon of coarse salt and mix with a spoon. Place the Trofie in the boiling water and stir gently with a spoon. Take aside a glass of the water in which the pasta is boiling, you might need it later. Taste the pasta and regulate the cooking time accordingly! Italians sieve pasta after tasting and feeling that it has the right texture, the so called scolare a sentimento. When the texture is right, i.e. al dente, sieve the water, put the Trofie back inside the pot, add a bit of extra virgin olive oil and mix gently. Now you can pour the tomatoes, the pieces of courgette and eventually a bit of the water from the boiling pasta: the mixing needs to feel smooth and the pasta needs to sound "smoochy".
Serve on the plates, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with abundant parsley.