An experiment yesterday with a recipe I cooked all last summer from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s book Three Good Things.
.

He slow cooks courgettes in olive oil and garlic, then mixes them with mozzarella and pasta, tops them with parmesan and bakes them in the oven. I used the slow cooked garlicky courgettes as a veg lots and lots of times as I grow them in the garden, and once they get going they throw off courgettes at a rate of knots.

So as an experiment, I tried just the garlicky courgettes on their own with pasta, no cheese, to see what it would be like – and it was pretty good. So here is what I did

I needed 500g of courgettes for 2 servings, but only had 400g ready, so added 2 medium onions

• 400g courgettes £1.62/kg, 65p
• 200g onions, peeled and chopped, 98p/2kg, 10p
• 2 cloves garlic or a tsp of garlic paste, 72p/90g, 4p
• 15ml veg oil, £1.25/litre 2p
• 180g pasta, 30p/500g, 11p

slice the courgettes into £1 coin thick slices and add them, the garlic and the onions to a pan and cook them slowly for at least half an hour. They should be soft and going mushy, but not disintegrating.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in lots of salted water until al dente.

Drain the pasta and combine the two. Serve straightaway.

Yum 🙂

Variations. You can of course add mozzarella and a hard grated cheese as Hugh does. A few snipped sun dried tomatoes would be good. I had a couple of olives in the fridge, so they went in. The ubiquitous crispy bacon would be fab. A few soft, snipped herbs would also taste good. Have a look in the fridge, see what’s spare

Today, for lunch, I had the leftovers from the Courgette Pasta made yesterday. I had it cold, and I much preferred it that way! So the recipe I keep in my notebook will say that this is a cold pasta salad, not a hot dish – interesting