On the Table: Spaghetti Carbonara with Zucchini

I was uber-excited to find some fantastic zucchini at the farmers' market this week.  Zucchini tastes great with minimal preparation (simply roasting or sauteeing it is all you need to do for a fantastic dish), which is something I really value in the summer.  I had been thinking about making pasta carbonara, so I decided to incorporate the zucchini into that dish.  It was absolutely delicious, and it was incredibly easy to prepare.  Here's how to do it:

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.  Get out the zucchini.

This zucchini was HUGE!  I ended up cutting it all up and cooking it, but I pulled about half out before I added the pasta, to save for later.  A medium-sized zucchini should be plenty to go with half a pound of pasta.  Cut the zucchini up into sticks.  Since I used spaghetti, I wanted the zucchini to mimic the long thin shape.  You could definitely use another shape of pasta, and then you could cut the zucchini to mimic that shape.

The zucchini will cook in about the time it takes to make the pasta, so put a large skillet over medium heat, and when you put the spaghetti (half a pound) in to cook, go ahead and start the zucchini.  Thinly coat the bottom of the pan with canola oil and once it gets hot, add in the zucchini.  Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Cook, stirring often, for about ten minutes.  When the spaghetti is ready, add it right into the pan.  Try to get some of that lovely pasta water into the pan as well!

At this point, I turned off the heat.  Crack an egg into the pan.  The residual heat in the pan should be enough to just cook the egg, without overcooking it (no scrambled eggs, please!).  If you think you need a little extra heat to cook the egg, be sure to turn the heat down really low.

Toss the pasta and zucchini with the egg, so the egg coats all the other ingredients and sets just enough to bind everything together.  Then, add in a handful of shredded parmesan cheese.

Toss everything to combine.

Serve topped with more parmesan cheese.

If you have some bacon on hand, you could start the whole process by cooking the bacon, then cooking the zucchini in the rendered bacon fat, and crumbling the cooked bacon back into the pan at the same time you add in the cheese.  I think that would be fantastic as well.

Enjoy!