Easy and delicious - Chinotto with fried courgettes

Recipe, Food, Styling & Photo: Oliver Schwarzwald

Tart drink and mild vegetables

Chinotto is a soft drink made from the juice of the chinotto fruit and other aromatic plant extracts. The dark drink is visually very similar to cola, but it tastes less sweet and is clearly more bitter. The lemonade is available from various manufacturers, e.g. also from San Pellegrino. This time I use a product from Tomarchio. Tomarchio has some great bitter lemonades in its range, which make excellent mixers. Today I'm mixing it with "Fields" from Easip in Berlin. This botanical has a spicy note, but clearly more floral hints than the Woods botanical from the same company. In this case, it gives the drink more depth. A dash of Lemonsquash softens the bitter notes of the Chinotto a little, and a nice aperitif is ready.

It's served with fried courgettes. Also very simple. The trick here is the "topping" of chopped olives, parmesan and breadcrumbs with thyme. In this combination, this is an extremely delicious starter. It also works well as a main course, then with some rice.

The drink:

5 CL Easip Fields

1 Cl Lemon Squash

Ice

Chinotto for filling up.

The snack for 4 :

2 courgettes

Olive oil

4 garlic cloves pressed

5 sprigs thyme

1 old roll, grated

4 tbsp butter

1 sprig rosemary / decoration

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Grated 1/2 lemon

Salt

Pepper

10 green olives

4 tbsp grated parmesan

Use a peeler to cut the courgettes and very thin strips. Fry in a grill pan with a little oil. Leave to cool. Heat the butter with the garlic in a saucepan and let the garlic cloves soften a little. Remove the garlic from the pan. Add the breadcrumbs and brown them slowly. Add the plucked thyme. Chop the olives. Season the courgettes with lemon juice, a little olive oil, salt and buffer. Serve with breadcrumbs, Parmesan, lemon zest and some rosemary.