Cheesy Pasta Courgettes

Ingredients

• Butter (for buttering the oven dish)
• 500g Courgettes
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 250g pasta
• 2 balls of buffalo mozzarella (250g total)
• 2 tbsp double cream
• Salt + Pepper
• Parmesan or other hard cheese

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C (Gas 5). Lightly butter an oven dish (~1.5L capacity)
2. Cook the courgettes:
   1. Cut the courgettes into 3mm thick slices
   2. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat and add the courgettes. Once they are sizzling nicely, but before they start to brown, turn the heat down and season with a little salt - this helps draw out their moisture.
   3. Cook the courgettes gently, stirring often and breaking them down a little as they become tender
   4. Continue to cook until they have softened almost to the point of mushiness (up to 30 mins)
   5. Add the garlic when you think they are almost done. You should end up with a fragrant, garlicky, rough courgette puree
3. While the courgettes are cooking: Bring a large pan of water to the boil, salt it well and add the pasta. Cook for a minute or two less than the suggested time, so it is marginally underdone.
4. Mix it all together:
   1. Drain the pasta well and combine with the mushy, garlicky courgettes
   2. Tear up the mozzarella with your hands and add it to the pasta, along with the cream.
   3. Season with salt and pepper and stir together one more time
5. Bake it in the oven:
   1. Transfer the mixture to the oven dish
   2. Give it a good grating of parmesan
   3. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or until piping hot or golden brown on top

Optional Extras

Various optional extras work very well here, such as little matchsticks of chorizo or lardons of bacon, fried until crisp and stirred in with the courgettes. If you would prefer to keep the dish meat-free, try some roughly chopped oven-dried tomatoes and/or chopped stoned black olives.