Darina Allen: How to make three homemade pasta recipes, including cacio e pepe

Homemade pasta takes time but is worth the wait

Three Padella pasta dishes. Pictures: Sam Harris

Padella beside Borough Market in London is my absolute favourite London pasta restaurant. I love it so much that I’ve actually been pondering whether I really want to share this precious nugget of information. It’s already super busy and you can’t book, but it’s so good that I don’t mind waiting. It could be 30 to 60 minutes.

However, you can use the WalkUp app to join a virtual queue — a restaurant definitely needs to be really good to endure a wait that long. The app allows you to save your place in line virtually. Padella will notify you when it’s your turn so you can enjoy an aperitivo close by or pop into Borough Market to wander around the stalls. Pasta is my much-loved comfort food.

My first experiments making homemade pasta were back in the late ’70s from a recipe I found in Gourmet magazine, the legendary but now defunct US food and travel magazine. I carefully sourced durum semolina, made the pasta dough, kneaded, then laboriously hand sliced into tagliatelle. I hung the pasta over the front rail of the Aga to dry and still remember Wowie, our little fox terrier, jumped up to steal it when I left the kitchen for a few minutes. Heartbreaking after all my hard work. We’re talking the early 1980s.

Soon afterwards, I heard about Marcella Hazan, the Italian cook and cookbook author. I travelled all the way to Bologna in Piedmont in northern Italy to join a week-long course, so I learned how to make tender pasta, plump tortellini, ravioli, and cappelletti from none other than the legendary Marcella herself and the nonnas at Ristorante Diana.

Good homemade pasta takes time to make and is sublime but Marcella was at pains to point out that homemade pasta is not necessarily better than a really good brand of Italian ‘bought’ pasta, It’s just different and should be paired with different sauces depending on the shape and size, a point, Tim Siadatan, in his excellent new book Padella, is also anxious to stress.

For those of you who would like to make your own pasta I really think that this is the book you’ve been waiting for.

Trullo, Tim‘s first restaurant, continues to be celebrated, but when Padella was launched in 2016, it was an immediate hit and became a phenomenon virtually overnight. It continues to attract customers who are happy to queue in rain, hail or snow, quite the achievement eight years later.

In this new tome, with over 100 recipes, Tim shares all his best-loved dishes from the iconic restaurant and several of his own kitchen supper favourites. It’s published by Bloomsbury at £25 and is worth every penny. There is now a second Padella in Shoreditch. I’ve never been there, but I hear it’s every bit as good.

Many of my favourite pasta dishes from Padella are there: Pici cacio e pepe, pappardelle with beef shin ragu, gnocchi with nutmeg butter, gnudi with pumpkin…

Here are a few recipes to whet your appetite.

Padella’s Pici Cacio e Pepe

The key to creating the smooth, oozy sauce is grating the Parmesan super-fine

Servings

4

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 500g fresh pici (see below)

• About 1 heaped tsp freshly cracked black pepper

• 110g unsalted butter, cubed

• a squeeze of lemon juice (about 10ml)

• 110g Parmesan, finely grated

• Sea salt

• For the pici dough

• 365g strong white bread flour, plus about 200g for storing the pici

• 155g tepid water

• 25ml extra virgin olive oil

• 5g salt

•  

Method

1. For the pici, in a large cooking pot, bring 4-5 litres water to the boil and add a fistful of salt (only a fraction is absorbed into the pasta).

2. At the same time, in a pan large enough to easily hold all of the cooked ingredients, toast the freshly cracked pepper over a high heat for roughly 45-60 seconds or until you can smell the pepper, shaking the pan regularly to prevent it burning. Immediately add around 200ml of the seasoned pasta water (it will sizzle) and take the pan off the heat for 30 seconds.

3. Put the pan back over a medium-low heat, add the butter with the lemon juice to melt gently, then take off the heat. (It’s important to keep it off the heat while you cook the pasta, so that the pan isn’t scorching hot when you add the Parmesan.)

4. Loosen the pici bundles through your fingers so they won’t stick together as they cook. Drop the pici into the boiling water and cook for around 5 minutes.

5. Drain the pici as soon as it’s ready, keeping two mugs of pasta water.

6. Transfer the cooked pici to the buttery pepper sauce, put the pan back over a medium heat and stir until fully coated. Don’t worry if it looks quite soupy at this stage; the sauce will thicken more quickly than you think.

7. Add the grated Parmesan to the pici and stir vigorously to melt it into the sauce. 

8. You should see a bit of steam rising out of the pan as you stir, so adjust your heat up if this isn’t happening. You might need to add small splashes of the reserved pasta water if the sauce needs loosening, stirring until you achieve a smooth, oozy sauce.

9. Once you’re happy with the consistency of the sauce, serve up the pasta on hot plates. Eat straight away.

10. To make the pici dough, put all the ingredients into a large bowl and mix until a dough is formed. (Alternatively, you can put all the ingredients into a food processor and whizz until a dough forms.)

11. Transfer the dough to a clean work surface and knead by pushing, stretching and rolling for few minutes until it’s smooth.

12. Wrap the dough ball in cling film and leave to rest somewhere cool for at least 30 minutes, or keep in the fridge for up to 2 days.

13. To roll the pici
    1. On a clean work surface (ideally stainless steel, marble or unvarnished wood), cut off one-fifth of the dough and use a rolling pin to flatten it into a rectangle, about 3mm thick. (Keep the remaining dough ball covered with a damp tea-towel or wrapped in cling film.)
    2, Using a knife, cut the flattened dough into 3-5mm strips.
    3. Cut the strips of dough into roughly 10cm lengths.
    4. Use the heels of your hands to roll each piece of dough into a thin pici strand, 20-30cm long and roughly 5mm diameter. (They should resemble grissini or thin breadsticks.)
    5. Transfer the pici to a heavily floured tray or a large plate.
    6. You can layer the pici on top of each other but make sure you heavily flour them as you layer, to prevent them sticking to each other.

14. You can cook the pici straight away or store them in the fridge wrapped in cling film for 1-2 days.

Padella Fettuccine with ‘Nduja, Lemon and Mascarpone

In this recipe, the addition of mascarpone mellows the spiciness of the sausage and creates a smooth and creamy sauce, lending richness.

Servings

4

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 450g fresh fettuccine (see recipe in Padella cookbook) *see note at end of recipe for alternatives

• About 75g ’nduja

• 500g mascarpone

• Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lemon

• 4 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

• Sea salt

• Parmesan, finely grated, to finish

Method

1. Put the ’nduja into a bowl and bring to room temperature, so it becomes malleable. Add the mascarpone and lemon zest and mix together until well combined to form a smoothish paste. (This can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for up to five days.)

2. For the pasta, in a large cooking pot, bring 4-5 litres water to the boil and add a fistful of salt. Put the ’nduja-mascarpone paste into a pan large enough to easily hold the cooked pasta. Add half a mug (about 120ml) of the seasoned pasta water and heat gently, stirring, to melt the paste and create a sauce. Take off the heat.

3. Loosen the pasta bundles so they won’t stick together as they cook. Drop the fettuccine into the boiling water and cook for about 1-1½ minutes. Drain the pasta as soon as it’s ready, keeping two mugs of pasta water. Transfer the pasta to the ’nduja sauce and add half a mug (about 120ml) of pasta water, the lemon juice, chopped parsley and a pinch of salt.

4. Stir vigorously for at least 30 seconds until all the ’nduja is mixed around the pasta and you have a smooth, creamy sauce. If the sauce is too dry, add splashes of the reserved pasta water to loosen it as you stir: you want it to be loose and for the strands of pasta to slide freely over each other, and for a layer of sauce to cover the bottom of the pan.

5. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and/or pepper if required. 

6. Serve on hot plates with a creamy halo of sauce around the pasta. Finish with grated Parmesan.

7. Note: The sauce sucks up the Parmesan quickly and can easily become dry. So, be sure to have that excess halo around the plated pasta: my visual reference for the sauce is a slow-moving lava field.

8. Also works with: fresh pici; dried fettuccine, spaghetti, bucatini, linguine, penne, fusilli, farfalle. 

Padella Ricotta and Pumpkin Gnudi with Crispy Pancetta, Sage and Parmesan

Gnudi are small balls of seasoned and flavoured ricotta that you roll in semolina flour and then poach. The creamy flavour goes really well with the sweet pumpkin and salty pancetta. Delicious...

Servings

4

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• For the gnudi

• 1.5kg Delica pumpkin (or butternut squash), to yield 450g cooked pumpkin

• ¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

• ¼ tsp ground cinnamon

• ¼ tsp crushed dried chilli (or more if you like heat)

• 200g ricotta, strained of all liquid

• 1 medium egg yolk

• 50g Parmesan, finely grated, plus extra

• To finish

• 25g plain flour 100g semolina, for shaping and coating

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• For the sauce

• about 20ml extra virgin olive oil

• 120g unsmoked pancetta, sliced paper-thin

• 120g unsalted butter, cubed

• 12 sage leaves

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 190°C/180°C Fan/Gas 5.

2. Cut the pumpkin into even-sized wedges, about 7-8cm, discarding the seeds. Place in a roasting tin and season with the nutmeg, cinnamon, chilli and salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for about 1 hour until the pumpkin is soft all the way through. Allow to steam-dry and cool (to drive off all excess moisture).

3. Scoop the pumpkin flesh out of the skin with a spoon, weigh 450g and place in a large bowl. Add the ricotta, egg yolk, Parmesan and flour. Mix well to form a smooth paste. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and/or pepper.

4. Put half the semolina into a bowl. Roll the pumpkin and ricotta paste into little balls, about 4cm in diameter, to create the gnudi. Drop the gnudi balls into the bowl of semolina and turn to coat all over. Scatter the rest of the semolina in a container, or on a tray or plate and sit the gnudi on top. Store in the fridge for 24 hours before using (this gives the gnudi a better texture).

5. Heat a thin layer (about 20ml) of extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and fry the pancetta slices in batches until golden and crispy. Drain the pancetta on kitchen paper then chop into roughly 1cm pieces. 

6. For the gnudi, in a large cooking pot, bring 4-5 litres water to the boil and add a fistful of salt. Turn down to a simmer.

7. Melt the butter in a saucepan large enough to easily hold the cooked gnudi. Add the sage leaves and fry over a low heat for 2-3 minutes until crispy and the butter has turned golden brown. Take off the heat and stir through the pancetta. Add small splashes of cold water and stir to stop the cooking.

8. At the same time, drop the gnudi into the pan of simmering water and cook for about 1½ minutes until they start floating to the surface. Using a large, slotted spoon, sieve or spider strainer, lift the gnudi out of the simmering water and add them to the pan with the sage and pancetta. Place over a low heat and gently fold the gnudi through the sauce for a few moments until they are nicely coated (be careful not to mash them!). If the sauce is a little dry, add small splashes of the hot cooking water to loosen it. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and/or pepper if required.

9. Serve on hot plates or bowls and finish with grated Parmesan.

• Recipes from Padella by Tim Siadatan (Bloomsbury Publishing, Hardback, £25). Photography © Sam A Harris

Seasonal Journal

Annual Organic Growers of Ireland Conference

NOTS are delighted to partner with the Organic Growers of Ireland (OGI) to present their annual 1-day conference for horticultural growers and producers, and anyone interested in converting to organic growing.

Taking place in the Avalon House Hotel, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny on Tuesday, 25th November 2025, this event brings together organic growers from around Ireland for an in-depth day of presentation and discussions about the current issues and future plans.

organicgrowersireland.ie

Order your turkey early for Christmas…

Christmas is just around the corner so don’t delay….Get your order in for a beautiful free-range organic bronze turkey or a plump goose. Sounds like there may be a shortage of birds this year. Fewer and fewer farmers are rearing birds because of growing costs and fewer and fewer processing facilities open to artisans.

A few suggestions:

Regan Organic Farm - Drinagh, Co. Wexford

Tel: [phone], reganorganicfarm.ie

Coolanowle Organic Farm (Organic Turkey’s & Free-Range Geese) - Co. Carlow

Tel: [phone], organicmeat.ie

Fior Bhia Farm (Free-Range Bronze Turkeys) – Co. Laois

Tel: [phone] (Brendan), fiorbhiafarm.ie

Caviston’s Food Emporium - Co. Dublin.

Tel: [phone], cavistons.com