Ingredients
Method
How to make it
- Get the pasta on. Salt the water properly and cook to just under the packet time. Before you drain it, scoop out a mugful of the water and put it somewhere you won’t forget it.
- Soften the onion. Melt the butter in a large deep pan over medium heat. Onion in, 5 minutes, until soft and translucent.
- Add the aromatics. Garlic, sage, smoked paprika, nutmeg and chilli flakes. Stir for about a minute until it smells good.
- Fry the pumpkin. This is the step. Push everything to one side, add the pumpkin purée to the empty half of the pan and spread it thin. Leave it for 2 to 3 minutes without stirring, until the underside darkens and it starts to smell toasted rather than raw. Then stir everything together.
- Make it a sauce. Pour in the cream and half the pasta water. Bring to a gentle simmer and let it bubble for 2 minutes.
- Cheese off the heat. Take the pan off the hob, then add the parmesan a handful at a time, stirring until each one disappears. Doing this off the heat stops it going grainy.
- Bring it together. Drained pasta into the sauce, back on a low heat, and toss for a minute so everything coats. Add more pasta water a splash at a time until it moves the way you want. It should coat the pasta and pool slightly, not sit in a lump.
- Lemon last. Off the heat, squeeze in the lemon and taste. Then salt and a lot of black pepper.
Nutrition
Notes
Canned pumpkin purée, not pie filling. Pie filling has sugar and spices already in it and it will ruin this. Check the tin.
Smoked paprika is the secret one. It’s not a pumpkin flavour and that’s the point. It adds a savoury, faintly smoky bottom note that stops the sauce reading as sweet. Quarter teaspoon more if you like.
Shapes with ridges or hollows. Rigatoni, shells, penne. This sauce is thick and it wants somewhere to sit. Spaghetti just slides around in it.
Don’t tip away the pasta water. It’s the only thing that will turn a thick paste into a sauce that coats properly. I have made this mistake more than once.
