Capellini with Zucchini, Mint and Garlic

After a very long, exhausting day (of dealing with my stupid, stupid car), I didn't have much patience for cooking tonight. But I did it anyway. This time I tried to replicate a dish I first encountered in New York the weekend before last: zucchini, mint and garlic pasta. I loved how La Carbonara seemed to almost the caramelize the zucchini slices. I also was able to use veggies obtained from farmers' markets and produce stands, which really do taste fresher!

Here's what I did:

1) I chopped produce. I sliced a small zucchini into penny slices, trying (but not always succeeding) to get them as thin as possible. Next, I smashed and minced about four small cloves of garlic, because I love garlic. I also added three small scallions, cut into small pieces - I find kitchen shears to be most up to this task. Finally I chopped about 1/2 cup of fresh mint leaves (oh, make sure you remove the leaves from the stems first - duh).

2) I set the water to boilin'. Yep, that's pretty self-explanatory. Oh yeah, I put some olive oil and kosher salt in that pot.

3) I heat up the pan. To the hot omelette pan, I added about 3 T of olive oil, then the minced garlic over medium heat. After that browned up I added the sliced zucchini and scallions, plus dashes of salt and freshly ground black pepper (I used too much black pepper, I might add).

4) I boiled me some pasta. I put about 1/4 of a box of capellini into the pot of boiling water.

5) I kept stir-frying those veggies. After about five minutes, I added the mint. A few minutes after that I added 1/2 c of pasta water and another 3 T of olive oil.

6) Drained that pasta! Then I mixed the pasta with the veggies.

Dumbass should've taken a photo. Oh well! Next time I will add less pepper, and try to slice the zucchini more thinly than I did. I also should have more thoroughly mixed the veggies and the pasta together in the same dish. Still, all in all a tasty meal.