Zucchini Noodles with Tomato & Shallot Sauce

Zucchini noodles, aka Zoodles or Zucchetti, are an alternative to pasta made from flour. Making zoodles is a terrific way to use some of the zucchini that overflows from your garden and from the farm stands in summertime. And they sit much lighter in the stomach than flour noodles.

There are many different vegetable spiralizers on the market. The Paderno spiralizer and the Spirelli spiralizer are two of my favorites. The Paderno is a larger gadget that makes lots of spiralized vegetables very quickly so is a better pick if you would be spiralizing more than a couple vegetables at a time. The Spirelli is much smaller so it would require less real estate in your kitchen storage space but it takes a little bit more time and muscle to spiralize veggies – it’s more suitable for smaller amounts.

The flavor of this sauce is largely dependent on the flavor of the tomatoes used. Super-ripe plum tomatoes that are in season would be the best choice. Cherry tomatoes would be a good second.

In this recipe, the zoodles are not cooked, but you certainly could cook them. Raw veggies are a great option for hot weather but if you don’t digest raw veggies well or just prefer your zoodles cooked, then cook them in a pot with the sauce and let them soak up all that delicious flavor.