I have made a number of pumpkin/squash pastas in my time, but I have to say wholeheartedly that this is my absolute favourite iteration to date. It’s hot as hell here in Australia at the moment, but this pasta is helping me live vicariously through the northern hemisphere seasons, which I’m thoroughly missing at the moment. And this is really my idea of the perfect, autumnal pasta. It’s creamy without feeling ultra heavy, and the sauce is layered with flavour – with sage and rosemary, garlic, squash, stock and a little smack of tomato paste which cuts through the sweetness of the squash that I can sometimes find a bit sickly. The crispy pancetta is the metaphorical cherry on the cake.

There’s something incredibly comforting about eating very small pasta. Ditalini is a firm favourite of mine, especially because it’s very easy to work it into a one pot type of application. If you can’t find ditalini, you could easily substitute for another small pasta like orzo, or perhaps farfalle, macaroni, or lumache.

Ingredients

450 g butternut squash peeled and cut into cubes
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 tbsp olive oil
200 g smoked pancetta cut into chunky cubes
Several sage leaves
2 garlic cloves minced/grated
1 tbsp tomato paste
320 g ditalini pasta
500 ml chicken stock
100 g mascarpone
25 g parmigiano reggiano finely grated

Instructions

Start by roasting the squash. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan forced. Place the cubed squash and rosemary onto a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with a big pinch of salt. Toss it all together and cook for approx 30 minutes until nicely roasted.
Meanwhile, add the pancetta to a cold pan and place over a low heat. Cook gently over 10-15 minutes until the fat renders from the pancetta and it crisps up. Remove from the pan and set aside, reserving the fat.
Increase the heat slightly and add the sage leaves to the pancetta fat, along with the garlic and tomato paste. Cook for 1-2 minutes until the tomato paste has darkened in colour and the garlic is fragrant, then add the ditalini pasta followed by the roasted squash and chicken stock, along with a good seasoning of salt to taste.
Cover and cook for approx 6-8 minutes (check the cooking times of your brand of pasta) - the pasta should absorb most of the chicken stock by the end of this cook time. If for any reason the pasta seems to be drying out, just add splashes of water as needed.
Remove the pan from the heat and stir through the mascarpone and grated parmigiano reggiano. Cover the pan and let it sit for a few minutes.
Serve topped with crispy pancetta, a drizzle of olive oil and a crack of black pepper.

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Squash ditalini pasta with crispy pancetta