Dreamy courgette pasta
I can’t even describe how much more beautiful this is than it seems.
Put it this way, my boy doesn’t even like courgettes but I gave him a bowl of this and he asked for seconds!
The key is seasoning and herb’ing it well and adding enough wine to infuse the courgettes with a delicate zing. Normally I like courgettes with a bit of crunch but you need quite the opposite here, cook them well, let them absorb the flavours until they’re soft and will melt gorgeously into the pasta.
The pasta shape here is important too, this casarecce pasta holds the sauce and juices so you get dreamy flavour with every mouthful.
- Prep: 10 mins
- Cook: 15 mins
- Servings: 2-3
Ingredients
- Casarecce pasta – standard Nuush portions are 60-70g for females and 100g for males.
- 1 yellow onion finely chopped, or use large spring onions
- 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped – optional
- 2 cloves of garlic crushed or chopped
- 5 medium to large fresh courgettes cut in half lengthways then sliced into pound coin thickness pieces.
- about a teacup of dry white wine
- 2 heaped dessert spoons of full fat creme fraiche
- extra virgin olive oil
- knob of butter for frying
- sea salt and cracked black pepper
- fresh herbs such as basil and parsley, even a touch of fresh tarragon
- grated fresh Parmesan
Nuush clients: Please apply the portion sizes stated in your account and divide the recipe so that you make only as much you need.
Instructions
Boil a large pan of salted water and start cooking the pasta
Fry the onion (and chilli if using) and garlic in a good amount of olive oil and a bit of butter until the onion is translucent.
Add the courgettes and cook for a few minutes on a high heat to give them a slight nuttiness. Then add the wine and sizzle it off. Throw in the salt and pepper – use plenty, this is no dish to skimp on seasoning. Continue to cook until the courgettes are a little bit pulpy but still definable then stir in the creme fraiche, a handful of grated Parmesan and the fresh herbs and let it all bubble and reduce for another 3-4 mins.
When the pasta is al dente drain it (but not fully) and throw it into the pan with the courgettes, give it all a stir over a high heat for a minute or two before turning into bowls and adding an obscene amount of Parmesan, some more coarse ground black pepper and a sprinkle of finely chopped fresh herbs.
Nutrition Info
Courgettes
You might not put courgettes at the top of the ‘superfoods’ list but that would be a tragedy as they have a really broad range of nutrients even if not as massively stuffed with one or the other as something like broccoli.
Their top one is copper; copper is needed to make collagen, that vital thing that holds lots of bits of us together! It also helps to convert carbohydrates into energy, as well as incorporating iron into red blood cells. Copper is a co-factor for an enzyme called superoxide dismutase, which is one of the major antioxidant enzymes in your body – a co-factor means a kind of helper.
Courgettes are also an excellent source of manganese, which is great for bones and skin and again is a co-factor for that superoxide thing I mentioned above 🙂
And let’s not overlook their brilliant amount of fibre, essential if you want happy gut flora!
Find your new natural
Put a colander on your head and become a Pastafarian.
Portion Guidelines
Instead of living with the bore of weighing food, counting points or calories and tapping everything you eat into a phone you can use nature’s custom-designed tool – your hands!
