This dish which has zucchini as its focus—is simply amazing when made in midsummer with tender, crisp squash, but it isn’t half bad even when made in midwinter with a limp vegetable that’s traveled halfway around the world to get to your table. Either way, it is an unusual use for zucchini, which here substitutes for meat in a kind of vegetarian spaghetti carbonara, the rich pasta dish featuring eggs, bacon, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Made with zucchini instead of bacon, the dish becomes a little less fat-laden, obviously, but it is still rich and delicious.
The eggs will cook fully from the heat of the pasta. If this makes you at all nervous, however, do the final tossing of eggs, cheese, and pasta in the cooking pot, over the lowest heat possible.
