Pumpkin Alfredo Pasta with Sage

Ingredients

Ingredient notes & substitutions

Canned pumpkin:

Pure pumpkin puree, not pie filling — the sweetened, spiced version would be badly wrong in a savoury sauce. One cup is half a standard can.

Pappardelle:

Wide flat noodles hold this sauce best. Fettuccine works; short shapes and tubes do not carry it as well.

Cream and milk together:

All cream would be heavy and all milk would be thin. Half and half of each gives a sauce that coats without being cloying.

Fresh sage:

Whole leaves fried in the butter and then removed. Sage is strong, and this method flavours the fat without leaving bitter fragments through the sauce.

Nutmeg:

A quarter teaspoon, and it should not be identifiable. It is doing background work in a cream sauce, as it does in béchamel.

Method

1. 1

   Bring a large pot of well-salted water to the boil and cook the pasta to the package timing. Everything else happens while it cooks — the sauce takes about the same time.

2. 2

   Melt the butter in a wide pan over medium heat, add the minced garlic and the whole sage leaves, and cook 1-2 minutes until the garlic smells sweet and the sage crisps slightly at the edges. Frying the sage in butter rather than dropping it into liquid is what draws its flavour out.

3. 3

   Pour in the cream and milk, add the nutmeg, salt and pepper, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook 3-4 minutes, stirring, until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

4. 4

   Stir in the Parmesan a handful at a time, letting each addition melt before the next. Adding it all at once makes it clump into strings instead of melting smoothly.

5. 5

   Fish out and discard the whole sage leaves — they have given up their flavour and turn leathery if left in.

6. 6

   Whisk in the pumpkin puree and cook 2-3 minutes more, just until heated through and evenly orange. Do not let it boil hard after the cream is in, or the sauce can split.

   
7. 7

   Reserve a cup of pasta water, drain the pasta, and add it straight to the sauce, tossing to coat. Loosen with splashes of the reserved pasta water until the sauce clings to the noodles rather than pooling under them — the starch in that water is what binds sauce to pasta.

   
8. 8

   Taste and adjust the salt, then serve with extra Parmesan, cracked black pepper and a few fresh sage leaves.

   
9. 9

   bon appetit

   

Variations to try

• Add cooked chicken, crumbled Italian sausage or pancetta.
• Use pureed butternut squash in place of the pumpkin.
• Swap the cream and milk for full-fat coconut milk to make it dairy-free, and use nutritional yeast for the Parmesan.
• Finish with toasted walnuts or crisped sage leaves for texture.

Storage & make-ahead

Best eaten straight away — cream sauces thicken and dull on standing. Leftovers keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days; reheat gently in a pan over low heat with a splash of milk or cream to loosen, stirring constantly. Do not microwave on high, which splits the sauce. Not suitable for freezing.

Frequently asked questions

Why did my sauce split?

It boiled after the cream went in. Keep it at a gentle simmer once the dairy is in the pan, and reheat leftovers on low heat only.

Can I use pumpkin pie filling?

No. It is sweetened and spiced for dessert and would make the sauce inedible. You need plain pumpkin puree.

The sauce is too thick. What do I do?

Loosen it with reserved pasta water a splash at a time — better than milk, because the starch helps it cling to the noodles.

Can I use dried sage?

Yes, about 1/2 teaspoon of ground sage stirred in with the nutmeg. The flavour is flatter but it works.