A Balcony Over Lake Como, and the Two Dishes I Always Cook There
A summer visit to family on the lake, a morning at the market, and the squash blossoms and zucchini pasta that turn an afternoon into a meal worth staying for.
The train north from Tuscany empties the closer it gets to the water. By the time I reach my family’s house above Como, it is just me, my bag, and the cool smell of the lake coming up through the open window. I have made this trip a dozen summers now, and it still does something to my chest every time.
The house sits high on the hillside, and the balcony looks down over a scatter of villages that seem to have been poured toward the lake and left to set. I put my bag down, I stand at the railing for a while, and then, almost before I have properly said hello to anyone, I start thinking about what we will cook. Cooking in Lake Como has its own rhythm, slower than the city, and I fall back into it within the hour.
The market decides what we eat
There is never a menu when I come here. There is the market. We walk down in the morning while the air is still soft, before the heat presses the whole valley flat, and I let the stalls make the decisions. Tomatoes that smell like tomatoes. A bundle of basil so fragrant it announces itself three tables away. And zucchini, still warm, their flowers attached, gold and trembling and already half closed against the sun.
The flowers are the first thing I look for. You cannot keep them. You buy them in the morning, and you cook them by midday, or you lose them. There is something in that short window that I have come to love. It makes you pay attention to the day you are actually in. I fill the basket with the zucchini and their blossoms, the basil, and a knot of anchovies from the man who has sold them to my aunt for thirty years, and we climb back up the hill before the heat wins.
Why I fry the flowers first
Back in the kitchen, the flowers come first, because they will not wait for anyone. I open each one and feel inside for the little bitter pistil and pinch it out, leaving the petals whole. My niece stands on a chair to watch me twist the petals closed over a baton of mozzarella and a single anchovy. She wants to do the next one. She does it badly. We keep hers anyway.
The batter is barely a batter, flour and a whisper of bicarbonate loosened with beer straight from the back of the fridge, cold enough to ache. The oil is hot. That is the whole secret, really, the cold and the hot meeting for ninety seconds until the flower puffs into something that shatters when you bite it. We eat them standing at the counter, too impatient to carry them to the table, burning our fingers, and no one minds at all.
What cooking in Lake Como taught me about a slow lunch
If the flowers are about speed, the pasta is about waiting, and cooking in Lake Como is where I finally understood the difference. Spaghetti alla Nerano is not from this part of Italy at all. It belongs to the Sorrento coast, far to the south. But I learned to make it properly in this kitchen, from a friend of my aunt who married a man from Nerano and never once cooked, as she had left.
The whole dish turns on patience, and you spend that patience early. You fry the zucchini in the late morning, layer the golden rounds with torn basil, and then you walk away from them. You let them sit for two hours while the family swims, argues, and naps on the balcony through the worst of the afternoon. When you finally come back, the zucchini has gone soft and sweet and loosened its juice, and it folds into the cheese as though it had always meant to.
The cheese goes in off the heat, always off the heat. You take the pan from the flame, and you toss until the Provolone and the starchy water pull into something silky and glossy that clings to every strand. Heat is the enemy here. Heat is what makes it seize. Restraint is what makes it shine.
The table is the whole point
We eat late, the way you do when nobody has anywhere to be. The light goes long, and gold across the water, and the villages below begin turning on their lamps one at a time. Someone carries out a lemon granita scraped from a tray in the freezer, and we pass it around in small cold glasses while the plates sit empty between us.
I cooked in restaurants for years. I cooked for strangers who were paying to be impressed, and I was good at it, and none of it ever felt like this. A balcony over Lake Como, a basket from that morning, and the people I love quietly fighting over the last of the pasta. That is the meal I keep coming back for.
Both recipes are below. Cook them in the order I do, the flowers first, while they are still alive, the pasta slowly, and I think you will understand what I mean.
Spaghetti alla Nerano
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Fry the zucchini rounds in olive oil at 150C / 300F, a few at a time, until golden. Drain, salt lightly, layer with torn basil, and rest at least 2 hours so they soften and sweeten.
- Boil the spaghetti in salted water until very al dente, about 6 minutes.
- In a wide pan, warm the olive oil with the whole garlic clove, then lift the garlic out. Add the rested zucchini and a ladle of starchy pasta water, mashing some rounds into a loose cream.
- Move the spaghetti straight into the pan and finish it there for 3 minutes, tossing, so it drinks up the sauce.
- Take the pan off the heat completely. Add the grated Provolone and Parmigiano and toss hard until the cheese pulls into a glossy emulsion.
- Loosen with a little more pasta water if needed, crack over black pepper, and serve at once.
Notes
Fiori di Zucca Fritti (Fried Stuffed Squash Blossoms)
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Open each flower and pinch out the bitter pistil inside, leaving the petals whole. Rinse in ice water and dry on a linen towel.
- Slide one mozzarella baton and one anchovy fillet into each flower, then twist the petal tips to seal.
- In a chilled bowl, whisk the flour, bicarbonate, and a pinch of salt. Pour in the ice-cold beer a little at a time until the batter is thin and smooth. Keep it cold.
- Heat the oil to 175C / 350F.
- Dip each flower in the batter, let the excess run off, and lower into the oil in small batches.
- Fry 1.5 to 2 minutes, until puffed and pale straw gold. Drain on paper, salt at once, and serve immediately.
