Italian Dirty Pasta (Pasta alla Zozzona)

This modern pasta dish combines two of Italy's most iconic sauces - carbonara and amatriciana - to create one rich, flavourful brawl of a pasta dish.

This modern pasta dish dates back at least a few decades, created by a Southern Italian cook from Bari called Geromina Cantavazzi. She allegedly fused two classic Italian pasta preparations - an egg-based sauce and a tomato-based sauce - to create a single ‘messy’ clash of properties which gives this dish the its name, ‘zozzona’. The sauce has crisp bacon and sausage at the base. Use Italian sausage/salsiccia if you have it, otherwise a plain pork sausage can suffice too if deskinned and torn into chunks. The dish starts out like an amatriciana sauce, with a nip of wine and a red rush of tomatoes. Once simmered rich, the cooked pasta is introduced to the sauce along with a golden flash of egg yolks and grated cheese, like a carbonara. Stirred well, the sauce combines to form a creamy emulsion and a moreish flavour. qThere’s really nothing like it! Let’s go!