italian pasta recipes: pappardelle in red pepper sauce with smoked bacon
- Mark Gowen
- Oct 12, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Oct 15, 2025
Here's the next in this season's autumn pasta in our Italian Pasta Recipes series. It's from the first Vol of the Pasta & Magic series, Oil Sauces, which you can buy here: https://www.pastaandmagic.com/buypastaandmagic
It's a fantastically seasonal pasta sauce for Bonfire Night - a smokey red pepper and pecorino sauce with smoked bacon. It's based my sauce on a kind of Turkish ‘ajvar’ red pepper sauce, which you make with roasted red peppers, aubergines, garlic and smoked paprika. You can find jarred ajar in UK supermarkets but it’s really worth going to the effort of making it yourself from scratch.
After Turkish Ajvar, my other inspiration for this sauce was classic Italian Amatriciana, which, as you all know, is simply a tomato sauce with guanciale and pecorino stirred through it. For this Bonfire Night variation, we’re going to stir pecorino through an Ajvar inspired sauce, then throw in shards of smoked bacon and make it taste even more Iike November 5th with a little extra smoked paprika. I like the hot and spicy kind, but you could also just as well use the ‘sweet’, non-spicy variety.
ingredients
FOR FOUR PEOPLE
2 smoked bacon rashers per person
4-6 red peppers
1 medium aubergine
tomato concentrate / sun-dried tomatoes
smoked paprika
1 clove garlic
pecorino
PASTA
400g fresh pappardelle
what you'll need to do
roast the peppers
fry the aubergine
blend the sauce
fry the bacon
boil the pasta
combine, plate and serve
roasting the peppers
Begin by roasting the red peppers directly over a gas burner. If you haven’t got a gas cooker and are therefore incomplete, either break out the BBQ or cut your peppers into thin strips and fry them gently until soft and tender.
Cooking them on a gas cooker, keep turning them until the whole of the skin is charred and blackened. Your hob might get a little messy but the kitchen’s going to smell FANTASTIC. Removing the skin from the peppers is easy - just plunge the cooked pepper into a bowl of cold water, cut a slit with a knife so that the hot air tipped inside the pepper bubbles away. Then just tear each pepper in half with your hands and rub gently between your fingers to get most of the skin off.
Pat the peppers dry and transfer them to a chopping board where you can use the edge of a knife blade to scrape any stubborn bits of skin off, before cutting the peppers into strips.
(NB if you pat the strips of pepper dry with kitchen towel you can store peppers in a jar under olive oil for a week or so and add them to salads, pizza etc).
frying the aubergine and making the sauce
Next, cut the aubergine into small cubes and fry in a little olive oil with a crushed clove of garlic, until cooked.
A little like making a pesto, blend the peppers and aubergine together to taste, adding a squirt of double-concentrate tomato paste (or a couple of sun-dried tomatoes in oil), salt and smoked paprika.
Transfer the sauce to a non-stick saucepan and let it reduce a little until you get the balance of flavours you like, and also simmer away any excess water.
finishing and combining the sauce and pasta
While the sauce is reducing, fry the bacon and then tear or cut it into small pieces.
Take the sauce off the heat and stir a few tablespoons of grated pecorino through it.
Boil the pasta and then transfer to a low, wide pasta pan which you ‘ve previously added a few ladles of pepper sauce to, toss to combine. Sprinkle on the bacon, toss again and plate.
Add more paprika, cayenne pepper or fresh chillies to taste.
what's the best pasta to use with a Red Pepper and Smoked Bacon sauce?
I’ve used fresh pappardelle from the supermarket chiller cabinet because I think the lightness of fresh pasta goes really well with this pretty robust sauce. If you’re not bothered by that kind of stuff you could also use any dry pappardelle, reginelle or pici.... but expect a heartier-eating dish. Other options for fresh pasta are chiller-cabinet tagliatelle or, for a shorter shape, orecchiette. Dry corzetti are an unusal short shape alternative too.
can I use ready-prepared roasted peppers?
As long as the supermarket-bought jarred peppers are preserved in oil and not vinegar you can use them to cut preparation times - but you'll get the best results, the most flavour, and fewer calories by roasting your own fresh peppers
can I use guanciale instead of bacon?
The point of this recipe is layers of smoky flavour. Most guanciale isn't smoky and is much fattier than bacon. Smoked pancetta might be an alternative to smoked bacon.
what is an alternative recipe for non-meat eaters?
If you don't eat meat, try this alternative - Strozzapreti in Red Pepper Sauce with Cuttlefish (full recipe in Pasta & Magic: Oil Sauces)
You can order your copy of Pasta & Magic: Oil Sauces here: https://www.pastaandmagic.com/buypastaandmagic
Comments