Per cena, voglio gratinare le zucchine con un po’ di formaggio.

Per cena means for dinner. It sets the context first: this is what the speaker wants to make for the evening meal.

Italian often puts this kind of time or purpose phrase at the beginning of the sentence to frame what follows. So:

• Per cena, voglio... = For dinner, I want...

You could also hear A cena in some situations, but per cena is very natural when you mean for dinner / as dinner.

The comma marks a pause after the introductory phrase Per cena. It is similar to English when you write:

• For dinner, I want to...

In informal writing, people may leave the comma out, but with this word order it is completely normal to include it.

After volere (to want), Italian normally uses a second verb directly in the infinitive:

• voglio mangiare = I want to eat
• voglio cucinare = I want to cook
• voglio gratinare = I want to gratinate / brown with a topping

So there is no preposition between voglio and gratinare.

Gratinare means to cook something so that it forms a lightly browned or crispy top, usually in the oven, often with cheese, breadcrumbs, or both.

So with le zucchine, it suggests something like:

• topping the zucchini
• putting them in the oven
• letting the surface brown

It is related to the idea of a gratin.

Italian often uses the definite article with food items and nouns in a more general or concrete way than English does.

So:

• le zucchine = the zucchini / zucchini
• il pane = bread
• la pasta = pasta

In English, we often omit the article, but in Italian the article is very common and natural here.

The singular is la zucchina and the plural is le zucchine.

This follows a very common pattern:

• feminine singular in -a
• feminine plural in -e

So:

• zucchina → zucchine
• melanzana → melanzane

In this sentence, the speaker is talking about more than one zucchini, so the plural is used.

This is about Italian spelling and pronunciation.

The singular is zucchina, with ch making a hard k sound before i or e. In the plural, Italian keeps that hard sound by writing:

• zucchina → zucchine

If it were written zucine, the sound would change. The h is there to preserve the hard k sound.

Un po’ di means a little, a bit of, or some.

So:

• un po’ di formaggio = a little cheese / some cheese

This is a very common structure in Italian:

• un po’ di pane = a little bread
• un po’ di vino = a little wine
• un po’ di tempo = a little time

The di is required before the noun.

The apostrophe in po’ shows that the word is shortened from poco.

So un po’ is literally a shortened form meaning a little.

A very common learner mistake is writing pò with an accent, but the standard spelling is:

• po’ ✅
• pò ❌

Con means with, so this phrase tells you what will be used to gratinate the zucchini.

• gratinare le zucchine con un po’ di formaggio = to gratinate the zucchini with a little cheese

It explains the ingredient or topping used for the browning.

You might hear something like zucchine al formaggio, but it is not exactly the same idea.

• con un po’ di formaggio focuses on the ingredient being used
• al formaggio can sound more like cheese-style or with cheese as a defining feature

In this sentence, con un po’ di formaggio is clearer and more natural for saying that a little cheese will be added on top or used in the preparation.

Yes, you can, but Italian usually drops subject pronouns when they are not needed.

So:

• Voglio gratinare... = perfectly natural
• Io voglio gratinare... = also correct, but more emphatic

You would use io if you want contrast or emphasis, for example:

• Io voglio gratinare le zucchine, tu invece vuoi friggerle.

Yes, it sounds natural. It is a normal way to say what you want to make for dinner.

The only thing to remember is that gratinare is a specific cooking verb, so it sounds especially natural if the speaker really means oven-browning the zucchini with cheese or another topping. If you wanted a broader, less specific cooking idea, Italian might use a different verb such as cucinare or a more descriptive phrase.