Big boi rigatoni with browned butter, spicy roast pumpkin and bell pepper

While I’ve always felt very at home in the kitchen I do not have much experience with food styling. One of the golden rules of food photography seems to be thou shalt worship no other god besides natural light. Well, thou-truly deffos did dabble with some non-natural light, for natural light shalt not return until April. Bare with me on that journey.

To the food! I have an unconditional and insatiable love for pasta which will be reflected in these newsletters. Sorry not sorry - and so we are kicking this baby off true to brand! On your menu this week is this gorgeous gal:

Ingredients #

For two people:

• 200g De Cecco Rigatoni Napoletani no. 124 - or similar - or different
• 1 small butternut squash (no more than 400-500gr)
• 1 bell pepper (I like ‘em yellow, red works too!)
• 2 red chilis (or less if you no likey the spicy)
• A handful of fresh sage leaves
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 lemon
• A big piece of Parmigiano Reggiano
• 25g salted butter
• A handful of hazelnuts
• 2 glasses of white wine, one for the pan one for the chef
• black pepper
• salt + flaky salt for finishing if you know what's good for you

Method #

1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius or something higher/lower in Fahrenheit, who knows. Also bring a heavily (I repeat, HEAVILY) salted pot of water to a boil.

2. Cut open your butternut squash lengthwise and remove seeds with a spoon. You can absolutely peel your butternut squash if you feel very strongly about that, I do not.. Cut the squash into +-2cm cubes and place them on a baking tray. Cut your yellow pepper in half lengthwise, remove the stems and seeds and add to the tray. Pop this party into the oven until the pep starts to blister blackish and the squash feels tender, around 15/20 minutes.

3. Finely chop the garlic cloves and red chilis and set them aside. Pick a handful of sage leaves from their stems and roughly chop some hazelnuts, set them aside as well. Heat a large skillet, dutch oven, or your other absolute favorite pasta pan over medium high heat and add the butter. When the butter is foamy add hazelnuts and sage to the pan and fry until the hazelnuts are roasty toasty and the sage is crispy, a few minutes.

4. In the meantime, when ready, take the squash and pepper out of the oven and blend them smoooooth with an immersion blender or high power blender.

5. When l’ottimo crispiness and toastiness has been achieved with the sage and hazelnuts take them out of the pan. To your now magically browned butter add the chopped garlic and chilis, fry these until fragrant, being mindful not to burn the garlic. When your house is filled with mouthwatering garlic smells add a big-boi glass of white wine to your pan. Cook for a minute or so until the alcohol is cooked off (sorry) and the liquid is slightly reduced. Add your smooth AF squash&pep mixture to the pan and folks we gots a SAUZ. This is the time to bust out your black-pepper-beast-mode and grind grind grind until you can’t grind no more. I like my black pep in GRANDE quantities, if you don’t well then grind less. Season your sauce with a few generous pinches of salt too, but don't go crazy yet, we'll have another round of salt-ing at the end.

6. Cook your pasta according to the directions on the package, taking it out 1 minute shy, so we can finish cooking it in the sauce. Add the boiled pasta to your sauce and add a GOOD splash or two of your pasta water, don't be shy here. This will help with getting your sauce to perfect consistency and all the other things you never even knew you needed help with.

7. Add ze zest of ze lemon, ze juice of half ze lemon and a frighteningly irresponsible amount of freshly grated parmesan to your pasta - we are talking mountains here: be shameless. Give everything a final stir through, taste for seasoning, add salt because nobody is here for under seasoned food, and bust out your plates or bowls of choice. Serve the pasta topped with the sage, chopped hazels, flaky salt - and FEAST.

Before you start cooking I just want to give you a gentle reminder that this is a pasta recipe. Not a mathematical equation. Please take the ingredients above as the mere suggestions they are. Use more, use less, swap something out, add bacon (this is always allowed - nay: encouraged) have fun with it. Will you be reprimanded for using pine nuts instead of hazelnuts? Absolutely not. Will the ghost of my departed body haunt you until the end of days if you add ketchup to it? Yes, oh yes. Feel like these rules are too arbitrary? Too effin bad my friends.

Hope you guys will have a lovely weekend and make some squashy squashy pasta. Absolutely do let me know how things went for you and get ready for round 2 next week!