The Food I Eat

Any food blogger worth their salt seems to be playing around with ndjua at the moment, so when I came across the glistening meaty log at Broadway market last week, I couldn’t resist jumping on the band wagon myself. And what a super jump it was.

The fiery Calabrian meat is often described as a ‘spreadable’ salami…but to say it’s ‘spreadable’ suggests that it could be treated like flora and slathered on toast - which would be a big mistake, because this stuff is H.O.T.

I thought of adding it to a tomato sauce, but then changed my mind, and decided to start with an undiluted version - putting it straight into pasta with a few roasted vegetables. If I’m being honest it was so spicy it was a little painful to eat at times…but in a good way. The hotness is a Mediterranean, peppery hotness – a bit like fresh chilli oil on hot salami pizza.

Ingredients
150g orecchiette (obviously any pasta will work, but sauces tend to stick better to orecchiette)
small lump of ndjua – probably around 70g …a little bit goes a long way
1 red onion
1 large courgette

Cut the onion into wedges, and slice the courgette into 1cm rounds. Put them into a roasting tin with oil and pop them into an oven at 200C.

Once then onion and courgette has been cooking for 25 minutes, put the pasta on to boil. Heat up a knob of butter in a pan and add the ndjua.

Drain the pasta, and add it along with the onion and courgettes to the ndjua. Enjoy – with a glass of cold water at hand.