SUMMER ZUCCHINI BOLOGNESE

The day was really perfect, with plenty of things we care about and none of the things that do not matter to us in the slightest…There was almost zero stress involved, an approach that we consciously adopted from the outset, although we did possibly take our ‘let’s play it by ear’ attitude to the extreme when we did not think to preorder flowers. So 30 minutes before the ceremony, we ended up walking to (including climbing the highest and wonkiest steps in the Bristol Old Town in high heels) three local florists asking if they can possibly make us a wedding bouquet, like NOW. Things were not looking good initially, but we got third time lucky and did walk away with a beautiful bunch of flowers in the end.

The ceremony itself was a mixture of emotions. There was uncontrollable sobbing (me, of course!!) and lots of laughter. We wrote our own vows and handed them over to the registrar at the beginning of the ceremony so that she can help us say them back to each other. As they seemed fairy conventional, she didn’t bother reading through them beforehand, so it took her by surprise when halfway through she discovered that we decided not to keep the occasion too solemn. We are lucky to share a similar sense of humor (most of the time…) so we thought it would be nice for the vows to reflect that. We did not anticipate, however, that the Registrar would laugh so hard that she needed a moment to compose herself before being able to carry on.

INGREDIENTS

SAUCE

• 2 tbsp / 30 ml olive oil
• ½ medium onion, finely diced
• 3 ripe medium tomatoes OR 400 g / 14 oz can quality chopped tomatoes
• 2 large garlic cloves, finely diced
• 1 Romano pepper, finely diced
• ¼ tsp grated nutmeg
• ¼ tsp smoked paprika
• a pinch of chilli flakes, adjust to taste
• a pinch of dry thyme, adjust to taste
• 1 courgette or small zucchini (about 150 g / 5 oz), coarsely grated
• salt, adjust to taste
• black pepper, adjust to taste

REMAINING INGREDIENTS

• chopped capers, to garnish
• dry-roasted walnuts or sunflower seeds, roughly chopped, to garnish
• 200 g dry pasta (GF if required), cooked

METHOD

• Gently heat up the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan. Add the diced onion and sauté on a low heat until translucent, stirring frequently.
• Meanwhile, if using fresh tomatoes, remove the skins by making a shallow cris-cross incision at the top of each tomato and plunging them into a pot with boiling water for a few seconds. Chop the peeled tomatoes quite finely.
• Add chopped garlic to the onion and sauté for another 2-3 minutes. Finally add the diced red pepper. Sauté, stirring frequently, for another 5 minutes or so.
• Coat the onion / garlic / pepper mixture in nutmeg, smoked paprika, chilli flakes and dry thyme.
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