It’s the end of summer, but Redmond is still warm enough and dry enough to ask for light cooking.

What I had in the pantry:

6 Small zucchini

2 Cups of cherry tomatoes

A handful of basil leaves (I have a big hand—just for reference)

A clove of garlic

Extra virgin olive oil (I won’t even try to measure this—I’m Italian)

habanero salt

Pasta*

How I made the vegetarian ragout:

I cut the clove of garlic in small pieces, very small pieces. Despite popular belief, Italians hate the very concept of a chunk of garlic swimming in plain sight in their food. We either euthanize the said smelly bulb of the lily family by chopping it to oblivion, or we removed it from the pan once it has aromatized the cooking oil. For this recipe, I golden-browned the pieces of garlic in several tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil—as I previously said in another post, don’t judge . I shredded the zucchini with a grater, huge waste of time doing it by hand—if you have a machine with the shredder blade, use it—and I added them to the garlic. Salted the vegetables with habanero salt and let it cook. Meanwhile, I cut the cherry tomatoes in two/three parts and I chopped the basil leaves. Once the zucchini were thoroughly cooked, I turned off the heat and added the tomatoes and basil. I cooked the pasta al dente, one or two minutes less than whatever the instructions on the box say, and immediately dressed the pasta with the sauce. I’m not ashamed to say at least another tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil, of the hot spiced variety, was poured over the vegetable ragout before I served the pasta on the table. Everybody loved it, even the carnivores.

*Gluten-free pasta can be used