Spaghetti alla Nerano Recipe: Fried Zucchini, Provolone and No Cream

Every so often somebody at the counter of our kitchen at Piazza Margana 22 asks what the trick is, and the honest answer is that there is no trick, only a temperature. The zucchini are fried until the edges go gold. The provolone goes into the pan after the pan has left the flame. That is the whole spaghetti alla Nerano recipe, and it's the one dish in our aperitivo class that people photograph before they taste, because nobody expects a plate this green and this glossy to come out of a pan with no cream in it.

It's also the dish guests most often tell us went wrong at home, nearly always the same way: the cheese went stringy. It does that for one reason, and it's easy to fix once you've watched it happen. So here is the dish as we teach it: the doses for four, why the fried zucchini matter most, which cheese to buy, and where the cream comes from when there is no cream.

Four plates, 35 minutes from the first slice to the table: 15 of preparation and 20 of cooking, frying included.

• 320 g of dried spaghetti (80 g each), bronze-cut if the shop has them, for the rough surface
• 700 g of zucchini (175 g each), medium, firm, dark green
• 150 g of provolone del Monaco (37.5 g each), grated on the coarse holes
• 30 g of parmigiano reggiano (7.5 g each), about a tablespoon a head
• 1 clove of garlic, whole, fished out as soon as it colors
• 30 g of extra virgin olive oil for the pan, and about 500 ml more for frying
• 20 basil leaves (5 each), torn by hand, never chopped
• Salt for the water and the fried zucchini, less than you think, and black pepper from the mill

The zucchini are where the quality question lives. A medium zucchino, no thicker than a broom handle, is mostly flesh; a big pale one is mostly water, and water turns a fry into a boil. If the market only has big ones, slice them, salt them lightly and leave them in a colander for twenty minutes before you dry them. The frying oil is olive in every Neapolitan kitchen we know; a neutral seed oil does the job too.

The dish comes from Marina del Cantone, the beach below Nerano on the Sorrento peninsula, where in the fifties the trattoria Maria Grazia, which already served fried zucchini as its house side, first melted the local cheese over them with spaghetti. Many kitchens in that bay share one habit that changes the dish more than anything else: the zucchini are fried the day before and left overnight with salt and torn basil.

Rested like that, the slices lose their fried edge and drink the basil. The next day they taste of zucchini rather than of the fryer, sweet and a little herbal, and in the pan they fall apart into something close to a purée. That is why a Nerano eaten in Nerano is greener and softer than most copies, and it explains what guests find odd the first time, fried slices going into a pan of water. They're not there for crunch. They're there to melt.

We don't count the rest in the recipe time because the dish works without it, and in a two-and-a-half-hour class nobody waits until tomorrow. At home, an hour under the basil already gets you halfway.

Provolone del Monaco is a protected cheese from the Lattari mountains behind Sorrento: pulled curd, milk that comes at least in part from Agerolese cows, aged a minimum of six months. Young it is buttery and mild; at the age this dish wants it is sharp, faintly peppery, with a nutty finish that comes through the zucchini. The consortium that protects it is blunt about substitutes: made with another cheese, this is spaghetti with zucchini and cheese, not spaghetti alla Nerano. We agree, and most of our guests will never see a wheel of it at home.

Caciocavallo is the closest thing: same pulled-curd family, and an aged one behaves the same way in the pan, same 150 g, same 30 g of parmigiano. A well-aged provolone piccante from a deli counter comes next. If neither is in reach, make it with parmigiano alone, all 150 g of it, and expect a thinner, saltier cream: less water at the end and no salt on the zucchini.

One thing about the grater. Coarse holes, not the fine side, not a microplane. Coarse shreds melt one after another as you toss, while fine powder off a cold block packs into a rubber ball the second it meets hot pasta. Grate it half an hour ahead and leave it on the counter.

The cream is three things meeting at the right temperature: the starch the spaghetti shed into the water, the fat and casein of the provolone, and the fried zucchini breaking down into the liquid. None of them is dairy cream, which would only cover the cheese.

That is why the pasta comes out of the water at 6 minutes, about half of what the packet says, and finishes in the pan for another 3. Cooking it there, like a risotto, keeps the starch in the pan, and by the time the spaghetti are al dente the liquid around them is thick and slightly sticky. That liquid is what the cheese melts into.

Then the flame goes off. Provolone is a pulled-curd cheese, the mozzarella family, and above roughly 70 °C its proteins pull back into strings and squeeze the fat out. Below that, with starchy water around it, it dissolves and holds. The bottom of a pan that just left the burner is hotter than that, so we set it on the counter, count a breath, and only then start adding cheese, a handful at a time. Thirty seconds of tossing and the water turns pale green and opaque. That is the moment. Everything after it is plating.

Slice and dry first. 700 g of zucchini into rounds 3 to 4 mm thick, on a mandolin if there is one, so every slice cooks at the same pace. Then onto a towel and patted dry: a wet slice takes the oil temperature down and boils instead of frying.

Fry in batches at 150 °C. About 500 ml of olive oil in a deep pan. A test slice should sizzle at once with no smoke off the oil. A handful at a time, 5 to 6 minutes a batch, one turn, out when the edges are gold and the middle still gives. Seven hundred grams is three or four rounds. Onto paper, salt while hot, tear a few basil leaves over the top.

Six minutes for the spaghetti. 320 g into the boil. Bite one at six: white and chalky at the core is right. Before you drain, two ladles of the cloudy water go into a cup by the stove.

Wake the zucchini. In a wide pan, 30 g of extra virgin oil and the whole garlic clove over medium heat. A minute, until the garlic is pale gold, then out with it. In go the fried slices and a ladle of pasta water; one minute of stewing and the liquid goes milky as some of the slices collapse.

Three minutes in the pan. Spaghetti drained straight into the zucchini, tossed over medium heat, half a ladle of water each time the bottom dries. Taste at three: al dente, no chalk, the liquid thick and glossy. If it looks dry, water now, not after the cheese.

Off the burner, then the cheese. Pan on the counter. Provolone in three or four handfuls, a toss between each, then the parmigiano, the rest of the basil, one more ladle of water. Thirty seconds of movement, black pepper, warm plates, and out. The cream tightens within two minutes of the pan stopping.

The cheese goes in over the flame. Nine times out of ten this is the failure in front of us: a rope of provolone in the middle of the pan and dry spaghetti around it. Somebody wanted to keep things hot, and that is the one thing not to want. If the cream is only tight, a spoon of water and a hard toss brings it back. Long strings that hold their shape won't come back, and the flame turns them into rubber. Plate it anyway. It still tastes of Nerano.

Too much in the fryer at once. The whole 700 g in one go, or thick slices, or wet ones. The oil temperature collapses, the zucchini sit and drink it, and what comes out is gray and heavy where it should be gold and sweet. No version of this dish survives that.

The pasta water goes down the sink. Out of habit. Then there is nothing to turn melted cheese into a sauce, and people reach for more cheese, which makes it worse. Water is the fix. Never cheese, never heat.

Salt from three directions. The zucchini after frying, the water, the finished plate. The provolone is already salty and the parmigiano more so. Salt the water less than usual and taste before you touch the plate.

The only part that likes waiting is the zucchini. Leftovers set into something closer to a frittata than a pasta. Pressed into a pan with a beaten egg they're worth eating, but they're not the same dish.

Fresh spaghetti change two numbers. In class everyone rolls their own, and if you do the same at home, cook them 2 to 3 minutes instead of 6 and go easier with the water at the end, because fresh pasta sheds starch faster. The dough itself is in our fresh egg pasta article, and if you roll more than you need, the same strands carry our spaghetti and meatballs just as well the next day.

In our kitchen at Piazza Margana 22, in the center of Rome, it's one of the two recipes of the Spritz and Spaghetti class: about two and a half hours in the evening, an Aperol spritz and Italian wines poured while you work, fresh spaghetti made from scratch and shaped by hand, then the shared table and an espresso to close. The Nerano is where the room goes quiet, because everybody wants to see the cream appear.

Groups who want the kitchen to themselves book the private version of the same class. The rest of what we run is on the cooking classes page.

Bring an appetite. The plate at the end is dinner, not a sample.