Spaghetti all'Assassina
Dinner | Italian
Spaghetti all’assassina comes from Bari in Puglia. The name translates to “assassin’s spaghetti”, a nod to the chilli heat and the charred, crispy edges. Instead of boiling the pasta separately, the dry spaghetti goes straight into a pan of chilli, garlic and tomato and cooks in the sauce, similar to the way you’d make a risotto. As the sauce reduces, the tomato sugars caramelise on the base of the pan and the pasta fries in the oil, giving you crispy, slightly blackened pieces through every serve.
It takes about 20 minutes, uses a handful of pantry staples and only one pan, but it does need your full attention. I add boiling water a splash at a time, scraping the fond off the bottom of the pan and folding it back through the sauce. The goal is to have the pasta cooked at the same moment the sauce is thick enough to coat it, with plenty of crispy bits throughout. It’s vegan as written.
Ingredients
- 1 packet of spaghetti
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tsp chilli flakes
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1 x 700g glass jar tomato passata
- salt to taste
- extra virgin olive oil to serve
Directions
- Boil a jug of water.
- To a stainless steel frying pan, add ¼ cup olive oil, chilli flakes and 3 finely grated cloves of garlic. Place over a medium heat and stir until aromatic. Add the tomato paste and stir for 30 seconds.
- Add the tomato passata with a ¼ tsp of salt and bring to a low simmer.
- Once simmering, add the dry spaghetti with ½ cup of water. Leave the spaghetti to gently soften for 5 minutes.
- Stir the pasta through the sauce with another splash of hot water (approximately ½ cup of water).
- Continue stirring and adding water as the pasta cooks. The sauce will begin to stick to the pan. Use a flat wooden spatula to scrape the fond off the base of the pan and stir it through the sauce. The aim is to balance the consistency of the sauce with the time it takes to cook the pasta; so keep adding water splash by splash until the pasta has cooked. The pasta will stick to the pan, so use a fish slice to scrape the crispy bits off the bottom and fold it through the sauce.
- The dish is ready when the pasta is cooked, there’s plenty of sauce to coat the spaghetti and there are crispy pieces of pasta throughout the dish. Add more water to thin the sauce or continue reducing as needed.
- Taste and adjust the seasoning with more salt as needed. Finish with a drizzle of olive oil to serve.
Recipe notes
Spaghetti
Use a standard dried spaghetti rather than a thin variety. It needs to handle about 15 minutes of stirring and scraping in the pan, and thinner pasta tends to overcook and break apart before the crispy edges have time to form.
Tomato paste and passata
The tomato paste goes into the hot oil for 30 seconds, which cooks out its raw taste and deepens the flavour. The passata becomes the cooking liquid for the pasta. The natural sugars in both are what caramelise and stick to the base of the pan, so they’re where most of the flavour comes from. Use a smooth passata without added herbs or seasoning.
Chilli flakes
Chilli is a big part of this dish, so 2 teaspoons gives it a good kick. The flakes go into the cold oil with the garlic and warm through together, which carries the heat through the whole sauce. If you prefer it milder, start with 1 teaspoon. You can add a pinch more at the end, but you can’t take it out.