There’s been a wet start to the longest day here. The rain has stopped now, but the flowers are all looking a bit soggy. I’m growing a lot of annual flowers this year – filling a whole border and then any other spaces I could find in the garden with them. The idea is that they will attract bees and other insects, and provide plenty of cut flowers too. That’s one of the great things about annuals, the more you cut them, the more they just keep on flowering. It’s when you let them flower and set seed that they feel their mission in life is accomplished, and stop bothering to flower any more. Cutting flowers to put in a vase is just like deadheading them, only a little in advance. I’ve been cutting a few sweet peas over the past few weeks. Even just four or fives stems in a bunch, combined with sweet rocket and some applemint for greenery, have scented a room and generally prettied things up. And now the first cornflowers – the lovely dark purple ‘Black Ball’, are starting to flower too.
In the vegetable patch it’s still mainly just herbs that I’m picking to use, almost every day. The self seeded parsley is slowly taking over as much space as possible, and the best method of control seems to be eating it. No one has said anything yet, but it’s only a matter of time before they start asking if we really need to have parsley with every meal. Soon though, it won’t just be the herbs – there are peas nearly ready to harvest and the broad beans aren’t far off either. The courgettes are coming along nicely too – the plants are flowering well, and a couple of very small courgettes are forming.
When I read about the ingredients for this month’s Recipes for Life challenge, I was hoping that the courgettes would be ready for harvesting sooner, so that I’d be able to use some home grown veg in my recipe. The three ingredients for June are salmon, pasta and courgette. But with time running out, I resorted to buying courgettes and used them, along with lots of herbs and a lime dressing, to make a warm pasta salad. Being a vegetarian, I don’t eat salmon… so I asked nicely and Vanesther kindly agreed to allow me to enter a recipe, just so long as it could easily be made with salmon too. And as far as I can see, there’s absolutely no reason why you couldn’t add some cooked salmon to the pasta in this recipe, along with the vegetables and herbs. On those grounds, this is my entry for June’s Recipes for Life run by Vanesther on behalf the charity Swallow.
Warm pasta salad with courgette & herbs
(Serves 4)
2 medium courgettes
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1tsp red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
16 baby plum tomatoes, cut in half
8 spring onions, trimmed and sliced
a big handful of fresh herbs, roughly chopped (I used parsley and coriander)
240g pasta
1 avocado
salt and pepper
30g parmesan, finely sliced
Wash and cut the ends off each courgette, then cut them into slices about ½ cm thick. Heat the oil in large frying pan, add the courgettes and cook on a medium heat until the slices are tender and browned. Add the chilli and the lime juice, stir and cook for a couple of minute more. Remove the pan from the heat and add the halved tomatoes, spring onions and herbs. Stir to mix everything together.
Bring a large pan of water to the boil, add the pasta and cook for as long as the packet recommends. While the pasta is cooking, cut the avocado in half, take out the stone and take the skin off the flesh. Roughly chop the avocado and stir it into the courgette and tomato mixture.
Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and put it back into the pan. Add the courgette and tomato mixture to the pan and stir them through the pasta. Taste and season with a little salt and pepper if it’s needed.
Tip the pasta into a serving bowl. Scatter the sliced parmesan over the top and serve.
The Garden Deli 
Sounds delicious, I usually cut the zucchini (I mean courettes) into match sticks, seems to work better with the pasta. We’ve been eating our zucchini for about 3 weeks almost EVERY DAY – that is the problem, too many and the peppers and aubergines are nowhere near ready to eat with them yet. Christina
Match sticks of zucchini would work well too – there’s a reason I use slices, my daughter hates zucchini and if I cut match sticks she spends ages picking out every last piece. Slices are easier to find and speed the whole process up – makes it less painful to watch!
The rain has made all my flower border flop over too – they look a bit of a mess at the moment. Like you I have sown lots of wild flower and annual seed and everything is starting to make progress. When the courgettes do start coming you will be wondering what to do with them all I’m sure – although you are a lot more inventive than me so I guess some splendid meals will be coming out of your kitchen.
I’m still at the stage of looking forward to the courgette harvest, but you’re right – there’s usually a time when they are producing more than any family can eat.
Your cornflowers are gorgeous – mine are tiny, ages away from flowering and I’m so much further south than you. Starting to think our hill has its own micro-climate! Love the sound of your pretty and fragrant cut flowers and inspired to pick some sweet rocket (at least that’s flowering!) and mint. Your courgette pasta looks delicious, like the idea of lime & chilli with it. Would happily eat that for supper without the salmon.
The cornflowers were started in modules in the greenhouse, so that maybe brought them on a bit – they need to be growing well when I plant them out here to have any chance against the slugs!
Such gorgeous photo’s and equally gorgeous dish of pasta and vegetables.
Thank you – it’s a very easy pasta dish to make!
How I envy your glut of parsley! Mine has not done well this year, and I sowed some more earlier today. My borage is also struggling and I had to chop the chives right back as they had some kind of “rust”(?) – the weather extremes have just been too much for many herbs.This recipe does sound good. I think the avocado would make it a little “creamy” – great idea! I will definitely try this when I have courgettes. Thanks Sarah!
So far, parsley has done really well in the garden here, with absolutely no help from me – it seeds itself about and all I have to do is pick it.
This looks and sounds so good. And you’re right, I think this will work very well with some salmon in there too, although just as good without. But for the purposes of the challenge, I might just try a fishy version. Thanks again for another fantastic entry for Recipes for Life. 🙂
Thanks Vanesther – I’ve really enjoyed entering the challenge each month, and appreciate that you’ve let me ‘cheat’ with ingredients a couple of times!
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We’re finally in the clear (weather-wise) for the beginning of summer, but still only eating herbs and salad greens, too…I just planted-out the zucchini on Wednesday.
Love the recipe! A bit of smoked salmon for the meat-eaters would do nicely! 😀
I hadn’t thought of using smoked salmon, but you’re probably right. Here we have midsummer’s day on the 24th June, which seems way too early – especially since the weather is cool and unsettled again.
I can understand playing around with the dates of Patriotic holidays and the like, but how do you pick a different day to celebrate the Solstice? I’ll never understand governments if I live to be a thousand… 😉
We have the solstice on the same day as everyone else – midsummer’s day is… well to be honest I’m not quite sure what it is, but falls it on a different day to the solstice because of changes from one calander to another. Fact is, both days will probably be cool, wet and unsummer-like this year!
Such a wonderful pasta salad. I love zucchini and never thought of putting it in my pasta salad. Great idea Sarah!
Thanks Anne! We eat a lot of pasta in this house – it’s one of the few things my daughter likes to eat, so any variations on pasta with tomato sauce is a welcome change.
What a gorgeous salad. Loving the lime and chilli additions to zing it up! And what beautiful flowers you have growing in your garden 🙂
The flowers were starting to look lovely, but some good heavy rain showers and a blustery wind has pretty much flattened them!
What a healthy Summer dish – really like the idea of using lime in the dressing. I might try this myself – perhaps with chargrilled courgettes instead of fried just for a hint of smokiness. The water droplets captured on the first flower are beautiful!
Chargrilled courgettes sounds like a good idea – once my plants get going I should have plenty to try this out.
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Your pasta salad sounds wonderful…I like that you added avocado to the combination. Salmon would be a delicious addition if one wanted to add it.
Thanks Karen – a good ripe avocado gives a bit of a creamy texture to the pasta. although it can be hard to get a good ripe avocado here…
I just bought a rock hard avocado today so I know what you mean. There is a fine line of using it when it is perfect and forgetting about it until it is too soft. 🙂
Oh how delicious, I adore courgettes and can’t wait to harvest some. Your salad is just such a great way to enjoy courgettes and avocado too. I wouldn’t say you need the salmon but it would add a lovely salty note which you have done by adding the Parmesan!
Hope you get to harvest some courgettes soon Laura!
Beautiful photos! My courgettes are just starting to fruit now – hopefully in another day or so it will be ready to eat. I’m hoping to get enough this year to have a go at making stuffed courgette flowers.
At the moment the courgettes seem to taking ages to grow – usually you only have to turn your back for a minute and they’ve reached giant marrow proportions! I’d be interested to hear how the stuffed courgette flowers taste – something I’ve not yet tried.
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