The Samantha Barnes Google recipe Challenge #2: Creamy lemon spaghetti with courgette and pancetta

It’s the end of the month and we’ll be on freezer forage tomorrow but frankly, after wasting an hour this morning after I locked myself out of the house and had to climb up over the roof and break in through Pink’s bedroom in time to get ready for my boss to pick me up at 10 for a meeting in Oxford, all thoughts of what we might eat this evening were banished from my head.

Just the right night for the second Samantha Barnes Google Recipe Challenge night, then.

So I’ve been through the fridge and this evening, we have: 1 lemon, already zested and looking a little tired, a courgette, some fairly old parmesan , the end of a pot of sour cream and – ta dah! a pack of pancetta (bonus!).

Not necessarily the right evening for hot food, but we won’t be eating till later anyway because the Husband is off cycling, and the most likely looking candidate on Google, using “pancetta courgette lemon juice recipe” as the search term is Lemon pasta with squash and pancetta . I can’t follow the recipe exactly, because I have no lemon zest, and will be using sour cream instead of mascarpone - so Sam will have to judge whether this is allowed - but this recipe fits most accurately what I asked for. It came up on page 2 of the results – a little irksome given that half the recipes on page 1 included chicken or tomatoes or something I definitely hadn’t suggested. Take heart, fellow recipe-Googlers with dodgy fridge contents – the recipes you need are there!

So here it is: The Samantha Barnes Google Recipe Challenge presents:

Creamy lemon spaghetti with courgette and pancetta

 
Ingredients: (to serve 2): 100ml sour cream, juice of half a lemon, salt & pepper, 1 teaspoon of olive oil, 6 slices of pancetta, 1 courgette, thinly sliced, 200g spaghetti, linguine etc, parmesan to serve.

Method: mix together the sour cream, lemon juice and a grind of black pepper and a pinch of salt then set aside; chop up the pancetta quite small, heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the pancetta till crispy:

This is why I could never truly become a vegetarian...

Remove from the pancetta from the pan set aside (on kitchen roll to drain off some of the fat if you are that way inclined – I tried my shorts on recently – I am now that way inclined). Pour most of the residual fat out of the pan, leaving about a teaspoon left (taking care not to pour hot fat all over your hand or your bare feet and the floor...only joking – I didn’t – well, not this time...), and add the courgette slices to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes till just tender, then add the lemon/sour cream mixture and set aside.

Cook the pasta according to cooking instructions – you could do this at the same time as making the sauce, but I am waiting for the Husband to get back so I am taking the 2 stage approach in the original recipe – then drain, reserving a little of the pasta water. Toss the lemon/sour cream/courgette mixture through the pasta, top with the pancetta and serve with grated parmesan.