Vegan Nduja Pasta With Toasted Breadcrumbs

Method

1. Bring a large pot of water to the boil and add the salt. It should taste like a mild broth.
2. Warm 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat, add the panko and stir constantly for 3 to 4 minutes, until the crumbs turn sandy gold.
3. Tip the crumbs onto a plate straight away. Left in the pan they keep cooking and go from toasted to burnt in a minute.
4. Once the crumbs have cooled for a couple of minutes, stir through the lemon zest, the parsley and a pinch of salt flakes.
5. Wipe out the pan, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil and the onion with a pinch of salt, and cook over medium-low heat for 5 minutes until soft and translucent, not coloured.
6. Add the garlic, or the roasted garlic paste, and cook for 1 minute.
7. Turn the heat to low and add the Ve-du-ya. Press and stir it into the oil for about 2 minutes, until it loosens and the oil turns deep red. Keep the heat low, because chilli paste boiled hard turns bitter.
8. Stir in the sundried tomato paste if you are using it. It rounds the sauce out and takes an edge off the heat.
9. While the sauce warms, cook the fusilli for 1 minute less than the pack says. It finishes in the pan.
10. Ladle 250ml of the pasta water into the pan, turn the heat up and simmer for about 2 minutes, until it looks glossy and joined rather than oil floating on water.
11. Lift the pasta straight into the pan with tongs, or drain it and keep a mug of the water. Toss hard for 1 to 2 minutes, adding splashes of water, until the sauce clings to the spirals.
12. Take the pan off the heat, squeeze in the lemon juice, then taste and season.
13. Serve into warm bowls and scatter the crumbs at the table. Crumbs stirred in at the stove go soft before the bowls land.

Make ahead, and the day after

The sauce base is the part that waits. Take it to the point where the paste has melted into the oil and it keeps for three days in the fridge. It sets firm when cold, so reheat it gently and loosen it with hot water before the pasta goes in. The crumbs keep two days in a jar, and a minute in a dry pan brings them back.

Leftovers hold up better than most, because there is no cream or cheese to split. Reheat in a frying pan with a splash of water, not the microwave, and add fresh crumbs. For more from the range, our guide to Belazu tagine paste does the same for another jar, and vegan Christmas food that is not an afterthought covers December.

Questions we get asked

What is nduja and what does it taste like?

’Nduja, said roughly as en-doo-ya, is a Calabrian cured pork paste with a lot of chilli in it, soft enough to spread rather than slice. It tastes of chilli first, then salt and a deep cured savoury note, and it is oily enough to become a sauce on its own. Ve-du-ya trades pork for peppers and lands close by: hot, savoury and rich, without the cured meat edge.

Is Ve-du-ya actually vegan?

Belazu makes it as a vegan alternative to ’nduja and names it that way on the jar, and we list it in our vegan range. If you are cooking for someone who takes it seriously, the label is the authority, not a recipe page. Check the pasta pack too, since that is where an egg quietly appears.

How much nduja paste do you need for a pasta for four?

About 3 tablespoons, roughly 60g, which is a third of a 170g jar. Add two, taste once the pasta water has gone in and the sauce has come together, then add the third. Tasting before the water goes in tells you little, because the water is what stretches the paste across 400g of pasta.

What pasta shape suits a nduja sauce?

Anything ridged, hollow or twisted. The sauce is thin and oily by design, so it needs somewhere to sit: fusilli napoletani, rigatoni, penne rigate or casarecce all hold it. Long smooth shapes let it slide to the bottom of the bowl.

One jar, several dinners

A 170g jar of Ve-du-ya is $13.95 and this uses a third of it, which makes it a cheap way to put a genuinely spicy dinner on the table. The rest of the Belazu range works the same way, jars that do a job rather than sit in the fridge door, and Ve-du-ya is the one to start with if chilli is your thing. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, VIC warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.