Food - Drink

The Simple Italian Pasta Dish That Stanley Tucci Swears By

By LAUREN ROTHMAN

Actor Stanley Tucci has garnered much attention over the past few years from food lovers with his CNN travel series “Searching for Italy.” In the show’s debut, Tucci admitted he visited Nerano in the past and has since been trying to recreate a simple-looking pasta dish: Spaghetti alla Nerano.

The dish was created at the Mariagrazia restaurant in Nerano, Italy in 1952, and the restaurant claims ownership of the four-ingredient dish, which features spaghetti, zucchini fried in oil, butter, and Parmesan cheese. The recipe calls for the deep-fried rounds of zucchini to be placed on paper towels for several hours or overnight to absorb the excess oil.

They are then reheated, tossed with al dente spaghetti, pasta cooking water, a generous pat of butter, and plenty of grated Parmesan. Many including Tucci have made the mistake of pan-frying the zucchini rounds, but they actually need to be deep-fried to bring out their nuttiness.

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