One-Pan Napolitan · Ryuji

Slice the sausages on the diagonal, the onion (50 g) thinly, and the mushrooms (40 g). Chop the garlic. Cut the green pepper (30 g) into rings and keep it separate from everything else.

Heat the oil (小さじ1) in a wide frying pan over medium heat and fry the sausage, garlic and onion for 2–3 minutes, until the onion turns translucent and the sausage edges brown.

Add the mushrooms (40 g) and fry another 2 minutes, until they have given up their water and started to colour.

Add the ketchup (大さじ3) and the Worcestershire sauce (小さじ1) and fry them — actively, in the hot pan, for about 1 minute, until the ketchup darkens from bright red to brick and smells roasted rather than sweet.

💡 Frying the ketchup is the single most important step in any napolitan. Raw ketchup tastes of sugar and vinegar; fried ketchup loses the vinegar edge and turns savoury. Skip this and the dish tastes like pasta with sauce poured on it — which is exactly what people mean when they say napolitan is childish.

Pour in the water (360 cc) and the consommé (小さじ2/3) and bring it to a proper boil.

Add the dry spaghetti (100 g) straight into the pan. Push it under as it softens and fan it out so it is not in a clump.

💡 This is his one-pan method and the reason there is no colander. The pasta releases its starch straight into the sauce instead of down the sink, which is what thickens it — there is no cream and no roux anywhere in this recipe.

Boil for 7 minutes over medium-high heat, stirring every so often, letting the liquid cook down as the pasta softens.

💡 Stir more often than you would in a pot of water. There is not much liquid, and 1.6 mm pasta will weld itself to the pan base and to itself the moment you look away.

By 7 minutes the pasta should be al dente and most of the liquid gone, leaving a thick sauce that clings to the strands rather than pooling.

💡 Too wet at 7 minutes? Raise the heat and keep tossing for another minute. Too dry, or the pasta still has a hard core? Add a splash of hot water — a tablespoon at a time — and keep going. The 7 minutes is his timing for his pan; yours may run a little different.

Add the second lot of ketchup (小さじ2), the butter (10 g) and the green pepper rings (30 g).

Toss over the heat for about 1 minute more, until the butter melts into the sauce and the pepper is bright green and just barely softened.

💡 The second ketchup goes in here for exactly the opposite reason to the first: the first was fried to cook the raw edge off, this one is added late to put a little of that fresh tomato brightness back. That is why he splits it.

Twist it onto a plate, piling it high the way a kissaten would.

Finish with plenty of black pepper and grated cheese, and eat it hot.