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spaghettoni alla nerano

spaghettoni in a cheese sauce with zucchini

Spaghetti alla Nerano was almost completely unknown outside Italy just a couple of years ago - and then Stanley Tucci happened!


Nerano is a cheese-based sauce with fried zucchini (courgettes) which dates from the early 1950s, when it was created on a whim by the owner of a local trattoria, the Ristorante da Maria Grazia, in the village of Nerano, near Naples. Tucci featured Spaghetti alla Nerano in his Searching for Italy TV series and it's since become a rediscovered pasta phenomenon on social media!


It's worth trying to track down the smaller, paler skinned 'Romano' or 'Fiorentino' / Tuscan variety of zucchini for this recipe if you can (they're sweeter and have more flavour than the dark-skinned monsters normally found in UK supermarkets)... but you'll need to know a very specialist green grocer or shop in one of the higher end UK supermarket chains to find them.


There's a certain amount of controversy about the cheese used in the original recipe, 'provolone del monaco' was often reported to be the only one used - though most people now seem to agree that a mix of pecorino/parmesan and a caciocavallo... I used Pecorino Romano and Auricchio Provolone Caciocavallo from Fratelli Camisa.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO DO
(scroll down for the full method)

  • grate the cheese

  • slice the zucchini

  • fry the zucchini

  • boil the pasta

  • make a cheese 'paste'

  • add pasta to the paste

  • add cooking water, make a sauce

  • add the zucchini

  • toss to combine

spaghettoni in a cheese sauce with zucchini

INGREDIENTS

FOR FOUR PEOPLE

  • 150g provolone / cacciocavallo

  • 700g zucchini

  • 2 large handfuls basil leaves

  • 30-40g pecorino

  • black pepper

PASTA

400g dry spaghettoni

/ spaghetti / linguine / buccatini


MANTECATURA (?)

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METHOD

Prepare the ingredients - grate the cheese and slice the zucchini thinly, then lightly fry in olive oil. The secret is to take your time over this, shallow frying, and make sure EACH one of those little discs is as perfectly cooked as you can get them, without burning them. Turn them individually if you need to, a few at a time in a pan (or several pans!) - don’t just tip a mountain of discs into a frying pan, they’ll never cook evenly and will turn to mush.


When you've finished frying the zucchini, put them in an oven dish to keep warm in a low oven and begin to boil the pasta. When the pasta's at the 'al dente' stage, fish it out of the pasta cooking water with a pasta spoon and transfer it direct to a pasta pan for tossing, with about half of all the zucchini . Don't throw away the cooking water.

Finish cooking the pasta in the pan with the zucchini, adding small amounts of cooking water and tossing regularly, to create a light, creamy sauce.


When the pasta's just about done to your liking (I like it to have a chew, not a crunch or any hard resistance!) begin to sprinkle in most of the provolone, as you continue to toss and add cooking water if need be. Add the pecorino and continue. Then the rest of the provolone and the basil leaves, tossing and adding small amounts of cooking water as you go. You can see the result you're aiming to get in the top picture on this page. Finally, plate with lots of black pepper and pecorino to taste.

NUTRITION per serving

  • KCAL: 883

  • Fat (g): 45.1

  • Sat Fat (g): 26

  • Carb (g): 77.8

  • Sug (g): 6.3

  • Fibre(g): 4.6

  • Prot (g): 46.4

  • Salt (g): 3.13

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