Spicy Creamy Ditalini
Small tubes of ditalini in a tomato sauce softened with cream and warmed through with chilli — a sauce that holds onto every piece instead of running off it.
6 · Soft & Bite-Sized
Tender, moist bite-sized pieces that break apart under a fork without needing a knife. Some chewing is required, but nothing should be tough, fibrous, or dry.
Suitable for anyone who finds food hard to chew or swallow. Graded IDDSI Level 6 (Soft & Bite-Sized) — soft & bite-sized, easy to chew — the texture standard used in dysphagia care and soft diets.
See all texture levelsIngredients
- 300 g Ditalini Or tubetti. The short tube is the point — see the serving tips
- 400 g Tinned chopped tomatoes Passed through a sieve, or use passata and skip that step
- 2 tbsp Olive oil
- 1 small Onion, finely diced
- 3 cloves Garlic, finely minced
- 1/4 tsp Chilli flakes Start here and taste; see the note on heat below
- 2 tbsp Tomato paste
- 150 ml Double cream What makes the sauce cling and stops the pasta clumping
- 40 g Parmesan, finely grated
- 3/4 tsp Salt Plus more for the pasta water
- 150 ml Pasta water Reserved before draining
- A few leaves Fresh basil Finely chopped, or left out below Level 6
Instructions
Warm the olive oil in a wide pan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook gently for 8 minutes until completely soft and translucent — not browned, and not still crunchy. Onion that has not fully softened is the one firm thing that can survive into the finished dish.
Add the garlic, chilli flakes and tomato paste. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring, until the paste darkens slightly and smells sweet rather than raw.
If using tinned chopped tomatoes, press them through a sieve now and add the smooth pulp, leaving the skin and seed behind. Add the salt. Simmer gently for 10 minutes until it thickens.
Meanwhile cook the ditalini in well-salted water for 2 minutes longer than the packet says, so there is no firmness left in the centre. Reserve 150 ml of the water before draining.
Stir the cream into the sauce and let it come back to a bare simmer. It should turn from red to a soft orange and thicken enough to coat a spoon.
Add the drained ditalini and a splash of the reserved water. Cook together for 2 minutes so the tubes fill with sauce, then stir through the parmesan and the chopped basil.
Check the consistency before serving: the sauce should coat every tube with none pooling in the dish. Loosen with a little more pasta water if it has tightened.
Serving Tips
Important Guidance
- Ditalini is the right shape for this rather than an arbitrary one. The short tube fills with sauce as well as being coated by it, so each piece carries its own moisture; the walls are thin enough to cook soft all the way through; and at under a centimetre it is already within the bite-sized limit for Level 6 without anything being cut. Orzo looks like a sensible substitute and is not — it is smooth-sided, so the sauce slides off, and it clumps.
- The cream is doing a job beyond richness. Small pasta dries and sticks to itself as it cools, and fat is what keeps the pieces separate and the sauce clinging to them. An oil-based or tomato-only version of this dish behaves noticeably worse on the plate ten minutes in.
- On the heat: chilli is not simply a matter of preference here. Capsaicin can irritate the throat and set off coughing, and coughing mid-swallow is exactly what you do not want. Start at a quarter teaspoon, taste, and leave it out altogether for anyone who reacts. The dish works perfectly well without it.
- Cook the onion until it genuinely collapses. Eight minutes of gentle heat, not three. Half-softened onion stays firm through everything that follows and becomes the one piece in the bowl that does not belong.
- For Level 5, give the finished dish two or three short pulses in a food processor, or chop it, until the pieces are 4 mm or smaller, and loosen it with warm pasta water. It takes to this better than most pasta dishes because the cream keeps it from going gluey.
- Serve it straight away. Like any small pasta it tightens as it stands, and a bowl that was right in the pan can need loosening by the time it reaches the table.
Nutrition Facts
Estimated from the listed ingredients across 4 servings. This is an estimate, not a lab-tested nutrition label.
Dietary Notes
Vegetarian. Contains gluten and dairy — a gluten-free small pasta works, and a plant cream will stand in, though it thickens less. Leave out the chilli for anyone who finds heat irritating.