Pasta

Yesterday, for once in a while, was a pasta day. Something we did quite a lot of a while back, but nothing much recently.

Take three onions, chop finely and simmer in a little rape seed oil. After a while add a finely chopped clove of fresh garlic. After a further while take three large tomatoes, chop finely and add to the mix. Bring back to heat and simmer for a further quarter of an hour or so. No need to add water but there is need to boil off some of the tomato water towards the end of the quarter of an hour. But worth it, as tomatoes fresh work better than tomatoes paste - or, for that matter, tomatoes tinned, which last always taste to me of tin.

Take about 300g of corkscrew pasta. We use fusilli from Napolina. Fill saucepan with water and add three large stalks of celery, sliced crosswise. Bring to boil and simmer for ten minutes. Add the pasta and simmer for a further ten minutes, stirring occasionally, as necessary.

Meantime, take two medium carrots and slice crosswise, thinly towards the fat end. Add to the tomato mix, continuing to simmer while the pasta cooks.

Meantime, take 150g of Italian salami. We use milano from Tesco. Chop into approximately 1cm cubes and add to the tomato mix.

Serve with a light lettuce and cucumber salad, without dressing. Leave that sort of thing to continentals. We also prefer to serve the tomato mix to the side of the pasta mix, rather than on top of it. Furthermore, despite boiling off, the tomato mix is apt to be a little wet so best served with a perforated spoon.

Note the fine mix of reds in the completed tomato mix. All very arty. All followed by a fine riesling from Leitz of Rüdesheim am Rhein (see 49.992395, 7.922644) via Waitrose.

Quantities for two.

PS: continuing with Volume I of the Osbert autobiography (see 25th May), I read this morning that as a young child he used to like to be visited by his mother before he went to sleep at night. Perhaps bearing sweets (from the grown-ups' dinner) and perhaps in defiance of a disapproving father. Echoes of the vaguely contemporary Proust. Which prompts me to think of lots of other parallels between the two lives and works.