Spaghetti alla Nerano (Spaghetti With Fried Zucchini)

Past Positano, past Sorrento, past all the other darlings of the Amalfi Coast of Italy is Nerano, a little fishing village. While the cuisine is known to celebrate local seafood, its namesake dish, spaghetti alla Nerano, is a land-loving simple combination of pasta and zucchini. Its unique sauce is made from zucchini that’s deep-fried, cooled, then mashed into a silky sauce that coats each pasta strand. And in case you're wondering—it is indeed that creamy zucchini spaghetti that Stanley Tucci famously loves.

The textures in this pasta dish are unforgettable and relatively easy to achieve: It starts with choosing the best summer squash—the kind that's fresh enough that it beads with water droplets as you slice into its firm flesh. It's then sliced and deep-fried until it softens, browns, and crisps slightly on the exterior. After its time in the deep fryer, it goes into a frying pan—when it hits the skillet and meets the wooden spoon, it mashes down into a paste that turns into a creamy sauce as it emulsifies with cheese—Caciocavallo or Pecorino Romano in this recipe—and some of the starchy pasta cooking water. It’s simple, seasonal Italian cooking at its best. In my recipe below, I use my years of professional pasta-making experience, coupled with my time living and cooking in Italy, to create the best version possible.

Perfecting the Fried Zucchini Texture

Often when deep-frying, we try to maximize crispiness on the exterior of whatever it is we’re frying (think crunchy fried chicken or lightly crisp french fries). So when I began testing frying the zucchini, I followed this logic. I started out by slicing the zucchini on a mandoline as thinly as possible and fried the ultra-thin coins up until they had a beautiful golden brown color with a snappy crisp texture. They were great to snack on, but they were too crispy, and lacked the creamy interior that's vital for making the sauce in this particular dish. Cutting the zucchini thicker—about a quarter-inch thick—allowed the outside of the vegetable slices to turn a light camel brown—not a dark caramel brown—while maintaining a soft, buttery interior that mashed down to a creamy paste for the sauce. 

I recommend using smaller zucchini here (no more than two inches in diameter) as the smaller zucchini tend to have tinier and fewer seeds, and more flesh throughout than larger ones. This will help ensure a smoother, less seedy sauce. But, any fresh zucchini will work here, so if you have abundant fresh-from-the-garden zucchini you need to use up (I know I often do!), this is the perfect recipe. Just be prepared for a slightly less smooth (though still delicious) sauce.

The Best Combination of Fats to Use in Spaghetti alla Nerano

In my research of spaghetti alla Nerano, I came across many published recipes that used three different cooking fats: a neutral oil with a high smoke point for deep-frying, extra-virgin olive oil for the flavorful base of the sauce, and a nob of butter to mount the dish at the end, adding richness to the final sauce. But I questioned whether this dish really needed three fats. So I put it to the test.

I started with the oil since it’s a main ingredient in this dish. I first tested with just canola oil, but zucchini is a thirsty sponge that sucks up any flavor you cook it with. When I fried it in straight canola oil, it tasted like...canola oil. Not a huge surprise there, but also not delicious. 

So I tried adding a little olive oil, just to boost the flavor of the frying oil since it would be detected in the delicate fried zucchini. I found that using one cup of olive oil (no, it doesn’t have to be extra-virgin—just a good quality, flavorful olive oil you like) with three cups of neutral oil (I use canola oil) for deep-frying imparted a rich, lightly fruity flavor to the zucchini. Plus, I didn’t feel like I was wasting cups of pricy, high quality olive oil. (As Serious Eats Editorial Director Daniel Gritzer has written, it's perfectly safe and fine to fry in olive oil, so if you don't mind the cost, go ahead and use all olive oil if you want.)

When it came to finishing the dish with butter, I also strayed from most published recipes I found. I’m all for generosity when adding fat into an otherwise lean dish like zucchini and spaghetti, but I found that when I tried versions mounted with butter on top of the already oil-laden zucchini and the added cheese, the result was bordering on oleaginous. So I ditched the butter.

Seasoning Spaghetti alla Nerano

As for seasonings, I stay true to spaghetti alla Nerano’s simple, classic flavor profile and use a hint of garlic, salt, and pepper—and that’s it. This dish is a celebration of simplicity and in order for the mild, earthy flavor of the zucchini to shine, the rest of the sauce needs to be restrained. You might be tempted to finish the dish with a hit of acid such as lemon juice or good white wine vinegar, but that would compete with the mild zucchini. (You certainly can finish with a squeeze of lemon if you really want to, but I encourage you to at least try the pasta before doing so.)

While you need salt to bring out the demure flavor of the zucchini, you actually need less than you think. Use a heavy hand with seasoning and the zucchini will just taste salty—its delicate nutty, floral, leafy notes are beckoned but also quickly hidden with salt. So, after transferring each batch of fried zucchini rounds to a paper towel–lined tray, sprinkle them evenly, but sparingly, with salt. Remember, you can always season to taste at the end.

Selecting the Right Cheese

If you were making Spaghetti alla Nerano in Nerano, you would use Provolone del Monaco, a DOP cheese from the Sorrento peninsula to finish the dish. However, that’s really hard to source in the United States, where I live. To replicate the tangy, nutty flavor profile of Provolone del Monaco, I tried a few other cheeses in this dish, including Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pecorino Romano, and Caciocavallo. While the latter was my favorite substitute for Provolone del Monaco, Pecorino Romano also tasted pretty darn good and is far easier to find. Nutty and robust Parmigiano-Reggiano, though delicious, just didn’t have the tangy flavor I wanted in this recipe. 

Once the cheese is added, the key to making this sauce silky and well combined lies in the rapid tossing and stirring of everything together while adding the starchy pasta cooking water into the zucchini base. Make sure to add the cooking water to the skillet over heat while constantly stirring the sauce so that it emulsifies well. A garnish of delicate basil leaves is not only a pretty echo of the green zucchini, it also creates an enticing garden-fresh aroma.