Instructions for Preparing Padella’s ‘Nduja Fettuccine

Chloe Harrison
Sep 8
2 min read

Replicate an iconic pasta dish from London in your own kitchen.

Padella: Iconic Pasta at Home by Tim Siadatan is out 11th September (Bloomsbury Publishing, Hardback, £25). Photography by Sam A Harris.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

450g fresh fettuccine
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

Method:

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 5 days.)
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.
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.
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. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and/or pepper if required.
Serve on hot plates with a creamy halo of sauce around the pasta. Finish with grated Parmesan.
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.