When my food director here at taste, Michelle Southan, said this to me, I felt a rush. You know that feeling when someone tells you there’s a better way to do something you’ve been doing for years and you can’t wait to try it? That was me.
She was talking about making her spaghetti all’assassina dish, which sounds super fancy but it’s really not.
In fact, it’s one of those dishes that only has five ingredients and you can whip up in about half an hour.
This makes it awesome for serving on busy weeknights, or when you just don’t want to go to a lot of fuss to gain a lot of flavour.
However, what makes this famous Italian pasta dish from the Puglia region stand out from loads of other pasta dishes is how it’s cooked.
You see, you don’t boil the spaghetti in a big pot of boiling water and then combine it with the sauce.
Instead, the raw spaghetti is partially cooked directly in a spicy, concentrated tomato sauce, before it is intentionally charred and then cooked like risotto.
It turns out, cooking it this way is all part of the fun – and it gives regular pasta triple the flavour!
Let me explain.
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The spaghetti and sauce are cooked until they burn!
“Instead of boiling the pasta separately in a big pot of water, the dried pasta is added directly to your pan that is filled with a warm, spicy tomato puree mixture,” Michelle explains.
“As the sauce reduces and thickens, it is absorbed by the pasta and the natural sugars in the tomatoes concentrate and caramelise right onto the noodles, giving you an even bigger flavour punch.
“When this step is complete, the pasta has a golden, almost burnt, appearance.”
Burnt? This is not a mistake, Michelle is quick to point out. So, your dinner isn’t destined for the bin.
“This is what you want from this pasta, as it results in a sweet-savoury profile that balances the heat of the chilli and also adds an extra crispiness to the pasta,” she says.
I like to think of it as a bit like getting the crispy edges of a lasagne throughout your spaghetti.
But the dish isn’t done at this point – the pasta isn’t yet cooked through. And this is where things in the pan get even more interesting.
This saucy ‘burnt’ pasta is cooked like risotto
It does sound a little strange but Michelle says this recipe finishes with a technique that is similar to making risotto.
This is because you start to add ladles of tomato-flavoured stock to the pan.
“The dry pasta cooks directly in the liquid and acts like a sponge,” says Michelle.
“It soaks up all that tomatoey liquid instead of just plain, salty water like it would when it cooks in a pot of boiling water.
“The pasta swells, softens and absorbs the sauce until it’s al dente.”
The result is pasta that’s so deliciously and deeply infused with tomato flavour, and with a much more interesting texture than you’d expect – soft and chewy in the middle, with crisp, slightly charred edges.
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We’ve used this technique before…
While we don’t go around burning our pasta every day (though it’s deliciously tempting!), Michelle and some of our other expert foodies have cooked and caramelised pasta in the pan with the sauce before, using the flavoured liquid to soften and infuse the shapes from spaghetti to risoni.
Here are a few you might like to try:
One-pan Tuscan pasta
In the same way Michelle makes her spaghetti all’assassina, recipe developer Tracy Rutherford cooks some penne in the pan with a little tomato stock mixture until the pasta caramelises slightly on base. She then adds more of the liquid, a little at a time, until the pasta is al dente.
One-pan ratatouille risoni
https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/one-pan-ratatouille-risoni-recipe/7oqr0msg?r=zone/thesavvydinnerplanThe%20savvy%20dinner%20plan
In this dish, Michelle softens her ratatouille vegies in the pan, then adds the sauce and some dried risoni.
“Absolutely delicious and so simple to make!” is the general consensus among the recipe reviews.
Crispy one-pan French onion chicken spaghetti
For this dish, taste digital director Amira Georgy sizzles some chicken and onion in a frying pan before adding some French onion soup mix and water, plus the spaghetti.
This is baked until the pasta has absorbed almost all the liquid and is lightly caramelised. A little cream is stirred through as a decadent finish.
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