This recipe is rich and indulgent but not at all complicated (Image: Steffan Rhys)
There’s an Italian recipe that most people in the UK probably won’t have heard of — but it’s so rich and indulgent, and so easy to make with just a few ingredients.
Pasta alla zozzona is even known as “the pasta Queen of Rome” and is described as “a decadent mash-up of Roman amatriciana and carbonara, with a sausage twist”. But despite these grand promises, you only need a handful of ingredients to create mind-blowing flavour.
I first saw the being shared on by Italian chef Luke Magro and immediately knew I wanted to make it. Luke described it as “divine” and added: “You have to try it.”
And it gets a lot of love from other cooks too, with Canadian cook Daniel Vanson saying: “I have to say I think this is in my top 10 dishes I have ever cooked. This pasta queen of Rome has everything I love in pasta. A sausage meat sauce with guanciale and creamy carbonara-like pecorino cream both come together to make one of the best dishes I’ve ever made. This stuff is life-changing.”
It was easy to find the ingredients, even if they sounded a little daunting at first, and the cooking itself was so simple — it took just a matter of minutes but came together to create one of the most flavourful dishes I have ever cooked.
The ingredient I thought might be the most difficult to find was guanciale, which is cured pig’s cheek. However, I just walked into a deli two minutes from my office and they had plenty of it. They also had two of the other ingredients, Italian sausage and pecorino cheese, so with one quick shop visit, I had most of the ingredients in the bag. The others I already had at home.
Frying the guanciale and the sausage created lots of crisp morsels packed with crunch and flavour, while the egg yolks and pecorino cheese made a magnificently creamy, silky sauce. The whole thing was worthy of a dramatic Italian chef’s kiss.
You can see Luke Magro make this below (though it’s a quick video with no instructions) or you can follow my instructions below. For another amazing (and healthy) pasta dish with a twist, you can try .
How to make pasta alla zozzona
Ingredients
- 500g rigatoni pasta
- 6 egg yolks
- 300g guanciale
- 3 Italian sausages
- 1 onion
- 300g tomato passata
- 400g pecorino cheese
- salt and pepper to taste
Method
- Take the sausage out of its casing and break into small pieces. Chop the guanciale into similarly sized pieces and fry both together in a pan until golden brown and cripsy (no need to use oil for frying). Remove from the pan and set aside.
- Finely chop the onion and add it to the same pan you cooked the meat in. Fry until golden brown.
- Add the tomato passata to the onion in the pan. Then add the guanciale and Italian sausage. Take it off the heat.
- Cook your pasta in salted boiling water. Once cooked, add it to the sauce. Add a little of the pasta water if needed.
- Make your pecorino cream: mix the egg yolks and pecorino cheese together in a bowl with some ground black pepper until they form a silky sauce.
- Pour the pecorino cream into the pasta and sauce and mix it all together. Serve with some added grated pecorino on top.