Cucina Povera

I suppose anyone from the UK of my age - born in the 1950s - and class: working - can remember folk coming back from early-days package holidays to Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, etc., and saying that it was lovely, but 'all the food is swimming in oil'. Ah, how our tastes and palates have changed in sixty-odd years. I know I'm starting to get a bit like a stuck record here with these repeated gratuitous food posts, but whatever; this is worth sharing. Pictured is tonight's pasta sauce in the making: and it's principally comprised of olive oil. Lots of it. As I posted, I did a simpler version of this the other night for myself, but the above goes something like this. Very gently sauté down half a dozen of those tiny, ripe salad plum tomatoes, quartered, with a clove of mashed down garlic, some flat-leaf parsley and a couple of basil leaves, salt, pepper and a pinch of chilli flakes in a goodly quantity of extra virgin olive oil, with a splash of cider vinegar until well soft. Pick out the tomato skins and put on a pan of boiling, salted water for the tagliatelle: about two and a half to three nests of pasta per person, depending on how hungry/greedy you're feeling. While the pasta is cooking, add to the sauce some more quartered, mini-plum toms, more parsley and basil, and half a sliced mild red chilli without the seeds - I did mine in rounds: it looked nicer - then turn off the heat and let the fresher ingredients just wilt slightly. When the pasta's done to your taste, strain, and stir the olive oil mix into it, then serve with parmesan cheese. Cucina povera: healthy, tasty and simple, and in my case washed down with a robust and quite appropriate Primitivo from Puglia, courtesy of Lidl, whose wine buyers never fail to furnish us with outstanding and affordable wines...