Olympic Gold: Hannah Hammond’s Orecchiette With Zucchini and Bottarga

Zucchini, orecchiette, bottarga. Where’s the problem?

Buying seasonal vegetables in shops when they look particularly nice is always a good idea, even if you have nothing in mind for any of them in that moment. I bought this zucchini for example, it was round – the kind you would stuff, and on a random day when I wasn’t feeling so well I sliced it up thinly with some slithers of garlic and basil and had a real moment with the pan. Perhaps in want of soothing and perhaps because my body really needed it, I cooked the zucchini just right, a high velocity Olympic braise. Wooden spoon as tool and correct judgment as to when to stop. The result was soft, slippery and sweet, a just off-vibrant green tumble of courgette, lots of extra virgin and pregnant with garlic and basil. Gold!

Since there are three elements to this dish, I also reach for a baton bronze bottarga. 

I personally recommend keeping a bar of the stuff in the back of your fridge at all times, especially for those kitchen moments when we feel like a splash of the sea. A little less intense than anchovy, it adds mystery, excitement and ocean depth to any number of things. Grated onto a fennel and celery salad for example, or onto boiled artichokes, or peeled into amber ribbons to sit upon a summer tomato salad, there are no limits to the magic it can impart. 

It’s proper home, perhaps, is in the company of pasta. And since my perfect pile of zucchini needed fashioning into a dish proper, orecchiette was cast, which after cooking was turned delicately with the courgette, then tumbled onto a plate with a generous zest of Sorrento lemon and equally generous gratings of bottarga.

Comprising just three principle elements, I think this is a perfect mid-summer dinner for two. 

For two 

2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 zucchini, delicious and in season
220g dried orecchiette
100ml olive oil
8 leaves of basil
1 stick of bottarga 
1 Sorrento lemon

Take your zucchini, and trim off the ends. Slice into 1.5mm slithers. 

Take the garlic cloves and using a sharp knife, slice length ways to create paper thin petals of garlic. 

Add the garlic and basil into the pan with the olive oil off heat. 

Turn the heat onto medium and bring the oil up to heat using a wooden spoon to move the basil and garlic around without it colouring. (Adding the garlic to cold oil allows more time for the garlic to infuse the oil without burning.)

Now add your zucchini with a generous pinch of salt, and using a wooden spoon, start to move the zucchini around constantly, coating it with the oil but ensuring it never stays still. Continue until you watch the zucchini wilt, soak up the oil and shift hue to a softer more appetising green. Add more salt if needs be, but arrest the cooking when the zucchini is soft to the bite, or is soft beneath the wooden spoon.

Now add the orecchiette to boiling water, and cook for 15 minutes until just over al dente. 

Drain and empty into the pan with the zucchini, stirring to intermingle the two perfectly. A generous drizzle of olive oil and gratings of Sorrento lemon zest from the microplane across the body of the pasta, before spooning generously onto plates. Finish with the best bit, grated bottarga.

Bonus track

On the subject of buying things that look nice, just this morning at Seasons and Blossoms I saw bunches of the most beautiful purslane, the leaves still dewy with water droplets, which I had to buy.

Here she is, with carosello cucumber, in an anchovy and sumac dressing, sprinkled with furikake seasoning. The perfect accompaniment for the plate of pasta which came before it.



Hannah Hammond is a London-based chef who has worked at the River Cafe and Leo’s in London, and Le Servan in Paris. All photography by Hannah Hammond.