A funky fusion dish with crisped up pasta edges, like spaghetti all’assassina, but with a Korean backbeat
Today’s recipe is based on the famous spaghetti all’assassina, a dish native to Bari in Puglia. The pasta is cooked directly in the pan risottata, or risotto-style, and tomato stock is poured in a little at a time until the spaghetti is bruciata, or burnt and crisp. I won’t call the dish by its original name because that contains dried chilli and tomatoes, whereas my version features two of my favourite ingredients: gochujang, the Korean sweet and hot chilli paste, and my beloved sun-dried tomato paste. The result is killer, even if the name is not.
Crispy one-pan spaghetti with gochujang and mozzarella
You’ll need your widest nonstick pan for this – with any other type, you’ll find the pasta will stick to it (if your pan isn’t wide enough to fit the spaghetti whole, snap it all in half). A slotted spoon or fish slice is really useful for shimmying and folding the spaghetti.
Prep 10 min
Cook 35 min
Serves 4
- 200ml passata
- 1½ tsp fine sea salt
- 5 tbsp good olive oil, plus extra to serve
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
- 1½ tbsp gochujang
- 1 tbsp sun-dried tomato paste
- 400g spaghetti
- 1-2 mozzarella balls, to finish
First, make a stock to cook the spaghetti in. Put the passata, salt and 650ml freshly boiled water in a heatproof bowl or jug, and leave to steep.
Put the oil in a frying pan on a medium heat and, when hot, add the garlic and cook, stirring, for two minutes, until pale golden.
Add the gochujang and tomato paste, stir for a minute, then add the pasta and coat it in the paste and oil by sliding a spatula between the strands and shimmying until coated (this way, the won’t cook as a solid mass).
Pour in a quarter of the stock and again shuffle the pasta briefly, but after that don’t touch it. Now leave to cook until the spaghetti absorbs all the stock. Once that’s absorbed, pour in another quarter of the stock and, again, do not touch until that, too, is absorbed.
Carefully fold over the spaghetti with a spatula and distribute it evenly across the pan (you might find the outer bits cook more quickly than the central strands), then repeat with another quarter of the stock and, once that’s soaked up, the final quarter. This should all take about 15 minutes or so.
When all the stock has been absorbed, cook the pasta until it dries out a bit in the pan and, when the pasta starts to sound a bit sparky and hollow, fold it over again. Cook for another 10 minutes, folding once halfway through: the aim is to char and crisp up some of the strands. Keep going until you have some really nice crisp bits of pasta, then take the pan off the heat.
I like to serve this from the pan. Make a little dent in the centre of the spaghetti, rip open a mozzarella ball or two across the belly and nestle the cheese in the pasta. Drizzle over some good olive oil and a reasonable sprinkling of togarashi, and serve.
