Pasta with Fried Zucchini and Cannellini in Vinegar Sauce (FM)

• 1 pound zucchini, cut into 1/2 x 3-inch sticks
• Salt
• Olive oil as needed
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon garlic
• Black pepper
• 2 cups cooked or canned cannellini or other white beans, drained
• 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, or to taste
• 8 ounces any pasta, preferably whole wheat
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint, dill, or parsley [I forget what I had here.  I'm thinking parsley?]
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, for serving.

Mise en place.  The zucchini has been salted for 20 minutes and patted dry.

I was not quite happy that olive oil is used to fry the zucchini in this recipe.  A half-inch of it.  Decided to strain it through a coffee filter after this step.

Which was, by the way, wicked dangerous to start off with, but Mark Bittman's recipe didn't state to let the oil come back to temp between batches.

Cook onion and garlic (with some salt and pepper) in 2 tablespoons of the oil until onion begins to softer.

 

Add beans and mash with fork or potato masher until more or less broken up.

Toss everything together and adjust the seasoning.  The dish already seemed totally sad at this point.
Maybe if I had used a full 1/2 cup in general in topping the dish, divided among the servings of course, this dish would've been palatable, but it really shouldn't be that way.

Bittman says that "You don't really see vinegar in pasta dishes too often", but personally I've seen vinegar applied to Italian dishes at least and within Bittman's other cookbooks to much better effect.  I've never seen it used with cannellini beans, and overall the dish struck me as muddled, unspecial, and a waste of olive oil.
Oh well, they can't all be winners.