Stanley Tucci's simple summer pasta 'tastes a lot more complex than it is', and his top tip helps you prep it in advance
With just a handful of ingredients, one of Stanley’s approved pasta recipes could be a new summer staple
If you’re always on the lookout for a new dish to add to your repertoire, Stanley Tucci’s surprisingly simple summer pasta is packed full of flavour, healthy veggies and can be prepped in advance.
The Oscar-nominated star shared his favourite summer pasta when he appeared on the debut episode of Holly Willoughby’s brand new YouTube show, Together. The duo cooked Stanley’s Pasta alla Nerano, which makes great use of the flavours of just a handful of key ingredients and some of Stanley’s Italian top tips.
All you’ll need for this flavourful dish is spaghetti, courgettes, parmesan, basil and some sunflower or olive oil.
While Holly and Stanley take the full length of the episode to whip up this summery dish, it actually doesn’t take that long at all when you get right to it. It starts with bringing a pan full of oil to the boil.
In a somewhat unexpected move, Stanley suggests not using your best olive oil here. It’s all about shallow frying the courgettes, so you need the pan or pot to be at least halfway full, therefore using a cheaper oil is fine.
It also means you can save your best oils for drizzling and added flavour later on.
As for the courgettes themselves, another tip from the master of Italian cooking and flavour is to look for ones that are are a lighter shade of green and leaner in size. Bigger isn’t better here - as the larger courgettes typically are mostly full of water, and have less flavour.
Chopping these into smaller slices, they go right in the bubbling oil until they start to brown. At the same time, chop up your basil and you can begin cooking your spaghetti - remembering to keep aside a cup of the pasta water for later.
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When the spaghetti is done, the pair drain it and pop it back into the pot, where they add a little bit of butter and throw in the cooked courgettes, the freshly chopped basil and drizzle some good quality virgin olive oil over the mixed ingredients.
Next, add a generous splash of the pasta water, all while gently mixing everything together. All that’s left is to grate parmesan to your preference.
Stanley Tucci's Pasta alla Nerano ingredients (to serve 4)
- 400g spaghetti
- 6 medium courgettes, preferably Romana
- 200g Parmigiano Reggiano
- 50g salted butter
- 500ml sunflower oil
- Extra virgin olive oil
- 30g fresh basil
While the pair made this dish in one go, Stanley shared that you can prepare the basil and cooked courgettes ahead of time, and simply cook up a bit of buttery pasta whenever you’re ready to serve.
He shared, “The cool thing about this dish, you can make this zucchini [and] basil mixture in advance and put it in the fridge. It'll be even better the next day. And then you just cook up the pasta, put the butter and cheese in, and you're done.”
When it came to the taste test, Holly said, “It's really warm and lovely and then you get this freshness of the courgette. It's like a summer pasta.
“It tastes a lot more complex than I now know it is. How many ingredients are there? There's no onion. There's no garlic. We had the courgette which we chopped into little pieces. And then we shallow fried those and then we chopped the basil and then we grated a load of Parmesan.
And then a tiny drop of butter into the pasta. Pasta water was the star of the show, maybe”.
