Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where we’re slurping down science, silliness, and sensational sen…sory situations from simple and suspicious sources. That one almost went rough in the middle there. I’m your Near Rhyme Guide, Jon O’Guin, I’m about 30 minutes from a sugar crash, so let’s talk Tucci, and a pasta simply Gucci, made with not one but two cheese. I have no idea why I tried to make that rhyme (that’s a lie, it’s because I was watching Unknown P and having fun, MOM.) Anywho, y’all can skip what’ sure to be a hell of a wild ride and get to the recipe by clicking this link. Everyone else, let’s dig in.

The Best…well, okay, poorly laid plans of Mice and Men

Alright, let’s kick this off with an acknowledgement: if you read last Thursday’s post, you’ll know I’d intended a Korean themed month for this month. I hadn’t fully committed because some of the dishes felt rather weather-dependent, and also because we hadn’t hammered the specific down. Well, that fell apart this week, as I was actually under the weather from Thursday to Saturday, so I didn’t want to make anything in case it got the family sick. As such, this week we’ve got to break with the theme, to discuss a dish I made to hop on a culinary trend that I didn’t intend to discuss until October, when it was already probably long dead: Spaghetti Alla Nerano, and how it weirdly became a mid-weight thing in like, the last 2-3 months.

Welterweight, at least.

So, brief backstory: Nerano is a small town in Italy. We’re talking “the restaurant in California named after it comes up on Google searches first”, and “doesn’t have a Wikipedia page” levels of small. It’s named after an Emperor who liked the part of the Sorrento coast he visited, and had a town built and named after him. From all evidence, it then did nothing of note until the 1950’s or so, when, supposedly, a woman and restaurateur named Maria Garzia came up with a zucchini-based pasta recipe.

The region has quietly been popular for its bountiful seafood, and unique cuisine: a couple years back, it was covered in the Michelin guide as a favorite vacation spot for celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck, in one of their “Where Chefs Go” articles, a series that discusses the favored travel spots of famous chefs. Specifically, they covered it in November 2018, which is…a little weird. Because the dish has come into vogue over the last year or so for one main reason, but there’s an interesting side path. See, I first learned of the dish in August, when Chef John from Foodwishes.com (And yes, I say his full name, thank you), posted a video titled “That Zucchini Spaghetti Stanley Tucci Loves!” which is what led me to discover that, at the start of this year, Stanley Tucci and CNN made food/travel show called ‘Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy.”

Found it. East of Portugal, West of Bulgaria, North of Tunisia, South of Germany. Wasn’t that hard.

Anywho, in the first episode, Tucci gets a dish of Spaghetti with Zucchini that he lauds as “maybe the best thing he’s eaten in his life”. He calls it “life-changing”. He gets this dish from a hotel called Lo Scoglio in Nerano, Italy. So that episode comes out in February, and you see a couple posts and videos about it bubbling along in March and so on, but it’s not until the end of summer (you know, zucchini season) that it really kicks off. And that makes sense: people find out about this obscure recipe, try it out when the ingredients are in stock, and boom, content. Very normal.

A little LESS normal is what I was doing the week that episode came out.

Making potpourri?

I was making Furikake, out of Vivian Howard’s new cookbook…and 11 pages before the recipe for the furikake is HER riff on a fettuccine dish she had on her 40th birthday. It’s made to show off her “Herbdacious” (a portmanteau of herbaceous and bodacious, which I approve of, even if I keep saying it wrong) mix, a combination of garlic confit and green-herb pesto. And the dish she is imitating is one from a small town on the Amalfi Coast, named “Nerano”, since her 40th birthday consisted of a 3-week stay on the said coast. So it’s already a little weird that, like, 3 months before Stanley Tucci starts raving about the dish, Vivian Howard drops her own version of the recipe for it. What makes it WEIRDER is that the most obvious* explanation doesn’t make sense: Like “oh, I get it: Vivian Howard saw the same Michelin guide article, and decided to go there for her birthday that year.” That doesn’t work, because Vivian Howard is 43 right now, and her birthday is in March. Which means that her 40th birthday was 8 months BEFORE the article came out.

So seemingly out of nowhere, three years ago, both Vivian Howard AND the Michelin Guide decided to highlight Nerano, and then nothing really happened for THREE YEARS, until suddenly it became a big deal. Seems pretty fishy, no?

“I will thank you to not drag my people’s good name into this, sirrah”

No. It doesn’t. Because of one simple detail: Wolfgang Puck.  Wolfgang Puck first started going to the region in 2007. He’d been doing it for TEN YEARS before either Vivian Howard went, or Michelin asked him about it. : Wolfgang probably just TELLS people about his favorite vacation spot. Tucci and Puck have both hosted the James Beard Awards, with Puck receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award a year or two before Vivian’s shows and restaurants started getting nominated. They move in, if not “the same” circles, overlapping ones. Thus, It’s very likely that Puck simply TOLD both of them about the dish and the region at some point. Hell, he told US about it: in the 2018 Michelin article, he specifically calls out that the hotel he prefers to stay at, Lo Scoglio, has “an amazing zucchini pasta dish”. And if that name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly where Stanley Tucci gets the dish made for him in the show. So the ACTUAL most obvious conclusion (wrapping up an asterisk from two eternities ago) isn’t that there’s some kind of zucchini conspiracy, but rather that at least 3 people have talked to Wolfgang Puck about his vacations, and two of them decided to go check it out for themselves.

It’s only weird that the two people following up happened to become publicly available at about the same time, leading to this new surge in interest... But that’s probably just because of the fame of the two people involved: you can find recipes from 2019, mid 2020, etc. But enough about how it got big, let’s talk about how it gets MADE.

Italy is Often Irritating In Terms of Imitation

A big claim, perhaps, but one I think is justified. I am FAR from the first person to note Italy’s trend for being rather vague about some cooking steps/times/ingredients, and simultaneously being uncompromising about others, which surprise, surprise, tend to be hyper-regional and difficult to get. For this recipe, the star Pain in the Pasta is Provolone del Monaco, or “Monk’s Provolone”, a variety of aged provolone supposedly named because the aging sacks used would look like little Monk’s robes. This stuff is…well, the cheapest I could find it was $24 a pound…if I was willing to pay $60 in shipping. More local sellers had, of course, built that shipping cost in, so I was looking at $35-45 a pound. Which drove me to make a call that might have cocked up the recipe a bit.

See, a lot of suggestions for replacing the Provolone jumped to another Italian cheese, Caciocavallo, which I could not find in my local shops. I found Scamorza, a similarly SHAPED cheese, but I didn’t know exactly how close the two were. Barring that, many recipes suggested using Parmigiano Reggiano, or a mixture of Parmigiano and Pecorino Romano. I decided to take another path. Provolone del Monaco is, after all, an aged Provolone. So…why not used aged Provolone?

It’s one of those “this feels so simple, but no one is saying it, so I worry it’s a trap” situations.

This MIGHT have been part of the reason that (spoilers) my results were not like they were supposed to be, but I honestly believe the problems started a while before the cheese got involved.

Anywho, I’ll mostly be following Chef John from Foodwishes.com’s recipe, so I should warn you: this is a two day affair. Specifically, it’s around 40 minutes of cooking, then 12+ hours of waiting, and then about 20 minutes the next day.

Why? Fry. Specifically, a core component of this dish is the fried/deep-fried zucchini. Yes, you read that right. The idea is that by frying zucchini, you get it to break down, and make a more complicated flavor profile. Then, you re-heat and re-hydrate it, causing it to form the sauce. As such, you’ve gotta fry a lot of zucchini. Like, does this seem like an excessive amount to you?

Fun fact about this shot: upside down. For some reason, I really dislike having the light on the left or bottom of the pictures…and when cutting food in the evening, that’s where the kitchen light IS.

I hope not, because that’s HALF of the zucchini you fry for a TWO person portion.

Anywho, this is long, and a little nerve-wracking (my fear of deep-frying is well-recorded), but it’s not a lot of work, and the results are pretty damn impressive.

In as much as “cooked vegetables” can be visually impressive.

You’re just frying thin slices of zucchini in 350 degree oil for like, 4 minutes, until browned. The problem is that you need like, 3 batches per serving. Combine with getting the oil to temp, and letting the oil get back to temp between batches, and you’ve got 40+ minutes of “slice zucchini, fry zucchini, dry zucchini”

Chef John asserts that NOTHING makes the zucchini as good as full-on deep-frying does, and that they taste better if allowed to cool overnight. Other recipes skip the overnight step, and are a little unclear on whether they’re going for a full deep fry, or just a pan-fry, so if you want to save time, feel free. I will attest, though, that holy crap, deep-fried zucchini tastes WAY better than I thought it would. Like, I was CONSTANTLY snatching 4 or 5 slices per batch and just eating them as the frying went on, because they are delicious. Hell, you could just sprinkle on some salt and call it a day with a fantastic “vegan zucchini chip” recipe. I do quibble with one point that Chef John brings up, which is that “this’ll be the cheapest sauce you’ve ever made”…which I think is nonsense, because he ALSO specifies that you should use specifically sunflower oil to fry the zucchini, and the Sunflower Oil I can find at my local stores is like, $12+ for a quart of oil. Unless he’s getting sunflower oil on the cheap, I could afford to make a normal meat sauce for less than $12.

This bottle is like, $7, and it’s HALF of the oil I need.

 Anywho, fried and dried, you tuck the zucchini in a bowl and cover it overnight. The next day, it’s time to cook, and this is where things go VERY wrong for me.

If I could tell you HOW they went wrong for me, I would. But alas, I can only offer my best guess: I think my zucchini overcooked. Maybe my mandolin sliced them a little too thin, or I cooked them 30-45 seconds too long to get the nice brown spots I saw in the video, but rather than break down into a mush on reheating, as they were supposed to, my zucchini shriveled in the pan. I’ve seen at least one recipe (from 2019, so before the craze started) that suggests bathing or ‘creaming’ 1/3rd of your zucchini, dipping them into the boiling water for your pasta for a couple seconds to reabsorb some liquid. And that makes sense, and I even considered adding more water to the pan, but there was a direct admonition from Chef John to “not overdo it” with adding water. As such, my zucchini did not leak out pale green liquid and mash into a puree: they darkened, and twisted on themselves.

This…does not look like success.

Or maybe I cooked them just fine, but I didn’t add enough salt to cause them to break down, or maybe my fridge dried them out (it’s been freezing stuff over the last month or so). Whatever the reason, my efforts to pound them into paste just skidded them around the pan, making me more and more frustrated, and blurring the lines between “continued failed attempts to mash” and “just beating the pan to let out my frustrations”, which is a classic cooking crossover. Like the old rhyme I just made up says: “Mash things when you’re mad, cut onions when you’re sad”. Eventually I gave up, and tossed in the various additional ingredients: a fat knob of butter, some torn basil, and, a little afterwards, the freshly cooked noodles. I stirred them together as best I could, and then added in the grated cheese, which instantly adhered to the shriveled masses of zucchini, knotting them further into weird veggie ribbons. Which actually didn’t look too bad on the plate.

Surprisingly normal looking pasta, in fact.

The results were…honestly, pretty good. They weren’t life-changing, or the best thing I ever ate, but they were a solid little dish. As noted, the cheese and zucchini formed kind of ribbons, so you just had to tear/cut the ribbons to get the flavor. Everyone liked it, no one loved it. I honestly felt like it squandered the potential of the fried zucchini of the night before. (Which I feel reinforces my belief: I bet those complicated flavors are SUPPOSED to blossom in the second fry.) To mock my suffering, in the serving bowl, the zucchini leaked out the pale green fluid it was SUPPOSED to in the pan.

Too little, too late, you green gooey bastard.  

So, in honor of failing my theme month for the…month, I present to you this failure of a dish that turned out better than it should have. Honestly, despite my screw-up, I still recommend it: it’s not complicated, just a little long, and while zucchini season is wrapping up, you can maybe grab the last couple from a farmer’s market or some such. And if you can get it to work, I bet it’s amazing. And if not, at least try to fail the same way I did, and try those spectacular fried zucchini.  Also, I’d like to thank you all for appreciating the added thematic failure of this post being a day late because I pulled the classic comedy dumb-dumb move: I was wrapping up Monday night, due to some other delays, and realized I had to make a quick run to the store. This was especially notable because I recently had to replace my worn-down card, and I hadn’t activated or used the new one, which I had left upstairs after getting the letter containing it on Friday. Planning to take out the recycling and trash on the way, I grabbed (but did not put on) my jeans, figuring I’d toss them on once I’d activated the card…but discovered the envelope that had held it empty on the mail pile, no sign of card or letter. Thus, I proceeded to spend an hour searching the mail pile, the surrounding floor, and both the recycling and trash (and organizing all three), before finally giving up, grabbing a twenty, and throwing on my jeans to take out the recycling …to discover that I had NOT left the letter upstairs, but had instead folded it in half and tucked it in the back pocket of my jeans when I got it, meaning it had been sitting literal inches from me for the duration of the entire search. A story I hope was funny enough to make up for the post, which I felt was a little drier than usual, probably because I overcooked IT too.  

THURSDAY: WE’RE GOING TO TALK MORE ABOUT THE VIVIAN HOWARD BOOKS, IF ONLY TO DOUBLE CHECK THAT THE NEW ONE ISN’T SOME KIND OF CONSPIRACY/WITCHCRAFT. UNLESS SOMETHING ELSE COMES UP.

MONDAY: PIMENTO CHEESE, I THINK. BUT WHO KNOWS? I AM EMOTIONALLY DRAINED FROM THE DEBIT CARD THING. I ENDED UP NOT EVEN USING THE DAMN THING! I ACCIDENTALLY GRABBED THE OLD ONE FROM MY POCKET AT THE REGISTER, LEADING ME TO DISCOVER THAT IT HAS *NOT* BEEN DEACTIVATED WHILE WAITING FOR THE REPLACEMENT, AS I THOUGHT IT HAD, SO I COULD’VE BEEN RUNNING THESE ERRANDS ALL LAST WEEK!  

Recipe

Spaghetti alla Nerano

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

                Frying (the night before)

1 quart sunflower oil, or as needed

6 medium green zucchini

                Pasta (the day of)

4-6 ounces spaghetti

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large pinch salt

2 basil leaves, torn into small pieces

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

¼ cup grated aged provolone, caciocavallo, or a mixture of Parmigiano and Pecorino

Preparation

• The night before: Bring the oil up to 350 degrees. Thinly slice the zucchini, and fry in batches for 4-5 minutes. Move to dry on paper towels. Chill overnight.

The day of:

1. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil. Salt, and add spaghetti, cooking for 9ish minutes.

2. While spaghetti cooks, add the olive oil to a pan, turn to medium heat, and add the zucchini and the pinch of salt, stirring to draw liquid from the zucchini, and causing it to break down. If too dry, add additional water from the boiling spaghetti pot. Try to aim for “everything is nice and wet”, not “why is there nothing here” or “this is soup”.

3. While stirring, you can choose to break down the zucchini more or less, either leaving chunks of the vegetable, or mashing/chopping with the spoon into something closer to a puree. Add the butter and basil when you’ve reached your desired consistency, and turn the heat to low.

4. Add the spaghetti, straight from the pot, and don’t be afraid of having too much pasta water come with it: you want that starch to help the cheese bind. Stir to combine, and then add cheese, stiring to incorporate. Serve warm, with additional cheese grated over the top.