Padella’s Tim Siadatan’s top tips for perfecting pasta at home

Digging into an unctuous 16-hour beef shin ragu wrapped around fat pappardelle pasta, it’s obvious why this is one of Padella’s signature dishes.

A handful of chefs work busily in the open kitchen of the pasta restaurant’s original London establishment (there’s now two), chopping girolles, flipping pastas in a pan and grating mountains of Parmesan on every dish at the pass. And the beef shin ragu is flying out.

“It’s really, really, really good, it’s hard to explain to English people how good,” says my waiter Francesco (and he’s Italian). The pici cacio e pepe is their other most popular choice, he shares.

There’s usually a queue out the door here for owner and chef Tim Siadatan’s creations, so much so that it’s gained somewhat cult status since opening in 2016. “Pasta shouldn’t be expensive,” Siadatan says. “You can definitely make it high quality and make it affordable and accessible.” So here, plates of unpretentious, handmade pasta range from £9.50 to £16.50. You might even catch it being rolled in the window.

“I respect tradition, the culture, I certainly wouldn’t be messing around and putting cumin or lemongrass into pasta.”

British people have a real affinity to pasta, he notes. “Everyone already has a relationship with pasta” and most of us cook it somewhat regularly, but “I think we’ve been more influenced by British-American pasta than we have Italian pasta”, he says, with large portions and only handful of sauces in our repertoire, like carbonara and bolognaise. While British people see it as a main meal, the Italian tradition is to have a small plate of pasta before a main course.

Siadatan’s new cookbook, Padella, aims to help home cooks improve their pasta game. “My hope is bringing 20-odd years of theory and being a professional chef, translated into not-chef-talk. I’ve broken it down so it’s easy to follow and some super-simple steps that will elevate your pasta to the next level, whatever level you’re already at.”

From everyday dishes like tagliarini with crab, chilli, lemon and parsley, to slow-cooked creations like pici with duck, orange and cinnamon ragu, there are so many flavours to inspire cooks to put down the jar of pesto, key traditional techniques to try, and step-by-steps to hand-make everything from your own mezzaluna (half-moon shapes) to cavatelli (shell-like shapes) to spinach or squid ink pasta dough.

1. Give making your own sauce a go

Pasta sauce can be extremely quick and straightforward to whip up at home, says Siadatan – “and it will be far superior to what you’re buying in a jar.

“Using some seasonal products, throwing in some garlic and getting some colour on it, which will take two minutes, throwing in tomatoes and cooking them down for another minute or two, and then wrapping that around your spaghetti – it’s going to be significantly better than something from a jar, it will probably be cheaper, and better for your body.

“Some people haven’t got the time, and I get that. But some people go, ‘I haven’t got the time’ without actually [realising] I probably do have 10 minutes to do that.”

2. Don’t buy the cheapest dried pasta

Siadatan says ‘bronze-die’ pasta is higher quality. “It gives little ridges on the pasta that helps the sauce cling onto it – it won’t be the cheapest one”, and anything organic is a good sign too.

“The nice thing with dried pasta is that it is super-affordable. I’m not saying this is for everyone but for a lot of people, the difference between the cheapest pack, let’s say a pound, compared to the most expensive pack, which let’s say is two pounds or three pounds – it’s not a significant jump but it does make a big difference.

“In the super-cheap stuff they’re using a blend of flour that has different protein levels, different carbohydrate levels and different gluten levels. If you’re trying to get an al dente bite, you can’t get it. It goes from being undercooked to mushy, there’s nothing in between – it goes from being raw to being overcooked.”

“The key, when you’re cooking dried pasta, is to always cook it for two or three minutes less than what it says on the packet,” he says.

“What happens then is once you drain the pasta, when it’s sat in a colander, it keeps cooking – the steam keeps cooking it. That residual heat continues every second you drain it. If you cook it to exactly what it says on the pack, you’re going to overcook it the moment you drain it.”

4. Learn a solid tomato sauce

“In summer, go with fresh tomatoes and make a quick tomato sauce – it’s fresher, it’s lighter, it chimes with the warm summer weather, it’s what your body is after. The key is to use super-bright tomatoes and you won’t go far wrong,” says Siadatan.

“In winter, when your body is after a bit more comfort and nourishment in a different way, you want to go for tinned tomatoes and slow cook. The key with slow and low cooking is [to use] more tomatoes than you think to get a really jammy, almost verging on purple colour. A nice amount of olive oil going in there, a good kick of garlic, [cook it] for an hour or so. It feels like quite a long time but once you get the final product it’s really worth it.

“Especially for slow cooking, it, I’m always saying make more than what you need for a plate of pasta – quadruple it!” he says.”It sits well in the fridge for a few days, and it can go with loads of other things, or you do another pasta dish with it a few days later, or it’s freeze as well.”

5. Don’t pour away the starchy water

A step a lot of homecooks miss out is utilising the water the pasta has cooked in for the sauce. “It’s crucial,” says Siadatan. “A lot of the sauces you make with pasta, you need that starchy water to bring that sauce together – it’s one of the major attributes to making pasta exceptional. It’s not the case with everything, but the vast majority.”

Do it right, and “it will help elevate people’s pasta at home”, he notes.

It’s important to make sure the pasta is really well mixed with the sauce – “especially with fresh pasta, with dried as well, but fresh pasta even more so, to work it in the pan.

“In Italy they have a word for it because it’s such a crucial technique in Italian cooking.

“The beef shin ragu and pappardelle – if you just mix it together for 10 seconds, it’s still going to be nice. But if you vigorously stir it or toss it with the beef shin, adding splashes of pasta water for 30 to 45 seconds, you see a change in the pan from being two ingredients that are separate, to being one harmonious ingredient.

“Because what happens in that process is a thing called ‘mantecare’, which is where the starchy pasta water starts to emulsify with the fat in the beef shin and a bit of butter that goes in there. And then, when you toss the pasta around it, the gluten that’s still on the pasta also adds a bit of thickness into the sauce. So the sauce starts to gently thicken up in front of your eyes.”

Padella by Tim Siadatan is published in hardback by Bloomsbury Publishing, priced £25. Photography by Sam A Harris. Available September 11.