Pasta is the perfect midweek dinner – warm, comforting and delicious in the drizzly autumn months. But there’s no need to always rely on jarred pesto to whip up a quick meal in under 20 minutes. These are five simple recipes to add to your rotation; from my storecupboard staple anchovy option to new recipes from our favourite chefs and classic food writers.
Bigoli in salsa
This is my ultimate store cupboard pasta, asking for little more than onions, anchovies and pasta but delivering a multi-faceted punch from the sweet and soft onions and salty, oily anchovies.
Slice two large onions and fry them in 2 tbsp olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan. Take your time; they should slowly sweat until meltingly soft, and make sure you don’t burn them. Add a small glass of white wine and a tin of anchovies, oil and all, and stir to combine so that the anchovies fall apart into the onions.
Bigoli is a long pasta, similar to spaghetti but fatter. It’s often homemade but you can substitute it with spaghetti or bucatini, and this sauce is an especially good partner for wholemeal spaghetti.
Once your pasta is ready, add it to the sauce and stir to combine. Add pasta water if you want a slightly runnier, silkier sauce. Taste for seasoning, but as the anchovies are already so salty, you will only need a little, if any.
Ricotta & Rigatoni by Jacob Kenedy
While the cheese and black pepper sauce cacio e pepe has become a cult pasta dish in the UK over the past decade, chef and restaurateur Jacob Kenedy aims to challenge its primacy with a recipe from his brand-new cookbook Pasta Tricolore: Recipes in Green, White and Red, which is published this week.
“Both [ricotta and cacio e pepe] are creamy, lush, cheesy emulsions on pasta, but where cacio e pepe is all about bastardish, violently strong flavours, ricotta provides a delicate, billowing foil,” Kenedy writes in the section on white sauces.
Kenedy’s recipe, which serves four, can be cooked in just 20 minutes. And if you’re a die-hard cacio e pepe fan, he has a recipe for that too.
- Blend 400g ricotta with 1tsp black pepper, the grated zest of half a lemon, 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil and 175ml water until smooth. Transfer to a large heatproof bowl and season to taste.
- Boil 400g rigatoni in well-salted water.
- Set the bowl of ricotta above this to warm, stirring every so often and removing from the heat before it is hot or cooked in any way.
- Drain the pasta when just undercooked, reserving some pasta water. Add to the ricotta sauce.
- Stir to combine and add a splash of pasta water if necessary; it should be creamy, not claggy.
- Stir in fresh basil leaves at the last moment, along with pecorino Romano if you used sheep’s ricotta (his first choice), Parmesan if buffalo or cow’s milk ricotta, or olive oil.
Pasta Tricolore: Recipes in Green, White and Red by Jacob Kenedy is out 15th October (Bloomsbury Publishing, Hardback, £18.99). Photography by Howard Sooley
Fusilloni alla Norma
Pasta alla Norma is a Sicilian dish and the ideal transitional pasta, bringing the bright summer flavours of aubergine and tomato into a punchy, warming dish.
This version is from Big Mamma Pasta: 150 of the best Italian pasta recipes, published last week by the Big Mamma restaurant group. Each recipe comes with a soundtrack, and for Fusillioni alla Norma, Big Mamma explains: “It is said that this Sicilian dish was named in honour of Vincenzo Bellini, a native of Catania and composer of the opera ‘Norma’,” So, of course, play the aria ‘Casta Diva’ in Maria Callas’ spellbinding version.”
- To serve four, use two large aubergines and 400g pasta. Wash the aubergines, cut into cubes, salt and drain in a colander for at least 30 minutes. Pat dry and fry in hot oil until tender and golden brown. Drain on kitchen paper and keep warm.
- Now fry two crushed garlic cloves in a generous dash of olive oil, add 700g peeled tomatoes or 600ml passata and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Add a little fresh basil at the end and season with salt and pepper.
- Cook the fusilloni al dente in boiling salted water, drain, add to the tomato sauce and mix. Arrange on a deep serving dish and top with the aubergine and 150g crumbled ricotta salata.
Big Mamma Pasta: 150 of the best Italian pasta recipes, White Lion Publishing, £26, Recipe photography: Lucile Casanova
Garlicky roast squash with radiatori
Roast squash and pasta is one of my favourite autumn combos and works especially well with a kick of chilli.
You can use any kind of squash or pumpkin. My hot tip for making the very worst part of any squash recipe – peeling and chopping the damn thing – easier is to not bother with the peeling part. Butternut squashes are fairly easy to peel, but anything with a thicker skin will take forever and you’ll lose precious flesh if not an actual finger.
- Chop and deseed your chosen vegetable. I use a whole butternut squash or small pumpkin, such as crown prince or kabocha. Add to a large roasting pan with three or four unpeeled garlic cloves and toss in two tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp dried chilli flakes (optional) and plenty of salt and pepper.
- Roast at 180C fan for 30 minutes and set aside to cool slightly while you cook your choice of pasta. As this will be a smooth sauce, I’d go for something with ridges to hold onto it, such as radiatori or penne, or perhaps pretty frilled blankets of mafalde.
- Squash and pumpkin vary so much in size but I recommend 80-100g of flesh per person eating. Save the rest for lunch. Blitz with the garlic cloves, peeled, and around 200g cream cheese, cottage cheese or sour cream. From here, add the pasta water, 50ml at a time, and blend to a thick, saucy consistency.
- Taste for seasoning. Drain your pasta and add back into the pan with the sauce, stirring to combine as you gently heat through. Serve with olive oil, more chilli flakes, and some of the roast squash, diced, if you want to add more texture.
Nigella’s Dreamy, Creamy Peanut Butter Pasta
If you’re a newly minted Nigella fan thanks to her judging role on The Great British Bake Off, I recommend trying her cult peanut butter pasta dish. It’s cheap, quick to make and filling. What’s more, while Nigella famously scolded Paul Hollywood on Bake Off for describing food as “naughty”, it definitely feels indulgent.
All you need is a packet of spaghetti, smooth peanut butter, a bag of baby spinach, an unwaxed lemon and dried thyme and chilli flakes.
She wrote the recipe for Ocado a few years ago, when energy prices began to soar. It aims to provide pasta portions for a pound each and reduce the power used by part-steaming the spaghetti.
- Bring a large pan of water to the boil, salt and add 320g spaghetti. Add the pasta and stir so it doesn’t stick together. Cook for two minutes before taking off the heat and covering with a tea towel and tight lid. Leave to steam for eight minutes. Meanwhile, empty your spinach into a colander in the sink.
- After eight minutes, take the lid from your pasta pan and extract 500ml of the cooking water. Drain the pasta into the spinach-filled colander to wilt the leaves. Take the pan back to the hob and add 75g smooth peanut butter and 125ml pasta water, stirring well. Don’t worry if it clumps up at first.
- Add two cloves of garlic, minced, 1 tsp dried thyme, ½ tsp chilli flakes, 2 tsp lemon juice and keep stirring. Add in another 125ml of the pasta water, and stir until incorporated.
- Now add your pasta and spinach. Keep stirring to coat the spaghetti with your peanut butter sauce, adding in more pasta water, a little at a time, until you have used most of the 500ml and are left with a smooth and rich sauce.
- Taste and add more salt or lemon if necessary before serving.