Rigatoni with self-saucing roast pumpkin!

Plus there's sage, stracciatella and a walnut pangrattato

Sometimes on a Sunday, I’m invested in the cook. I am more than happy to dedicate the equivalent of a work day to a sauce slowly simmering away, or rolling fresh sheets of egg-rich dough, making compound butters, herb oils, a stock from scratch - all in the quest of a good meal at the end. Other times, I just truly can’t be arsed.

And while sometimes I CBA, I always want whatever I make to be delicious.

This is a wonderful CBA pasta - combining the classic flavour combination of pumpkin and sage, adorning with dollops of stracciatella (the inside of what you would find in a ball of burrata), before adding a lil toasty walnut pangrattato to add a wonderful nuttiness and crunch. The beauty of this dish is that it is mostly handled in the oven. We aren’t blending, we aren’t watching a stove top and stirring occasionally, we are simply throwing it in the oven and saying see ya in an hour love.

The pasta of choice is rigatoni. Rigatoni always gives big CBA energy. Why? Because it’s an excellent shape that will become an edible barrel of sauce in literally any application. It doesn’t have to work hard at anything, because it will always excel at life. Think you could use penne instead? THINK AGAIN. Nothing compares to queen Rigatoni.

So let’s break it all down. First pumpkin is roasted with some aromatics until super soft and slightly caramelised. We throw in lots (and I mean lots) of pasta water, some butter for good measure and of course the pasta. The sauce is thicker than what we’d get if we blended here, but the natural texture of the pumpkin makes this feel more substantial and hearty, perfect for a cosy evening in - admittedly it’s quite wintry but if you’re in the S hemisphere like me and copping as much rain as we have, it is suitable for eating on the couch to escape the bad weather, too.

The making of this dish IMO is the addition of stracciatella. The creamy, cheesy inside of a burrata adds a coolness to the palate and becomes part of the sauce as the residual heat sets through. I love how easy stracciatella is to make at home and I’ll include the details below, but if you’re Australia-based and looking for a good store-bought option, I love this one from That’s Amore Cheese (not spon!).

Finally, the walnuts. Now for full disclosure, I went back and forth between hazelnuts and walnuts for this dish for quite some time and eventually went with the latter. I just cannot get around hazelnuts in a savoury application. Consider it a personal ick of mine, but I find it adds a sickly nuttiness that I just really, truly detest.

They are also more expensive than walnuts (roughly an extra $5/kg from a quick search), but of course if you are a fan of hazelnuts, sub accordingly. I like to take the toasting pretty far here, on the brink of burning. We want to depart from that raw flavour of walnut entirely - but proceed with caution because similar to an avocado, turn away for a second and it’ll be overdone.

Pssst - If you love the flavour combo of this dish but are looking for something a little more involved, check out this recipe for creamy pumpkin with brown butter, sage and hand cut fettuccine.

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The Recipe

Serves 4

For the sauce