Bring the soup to a boil and add the pasta. Stirring fairly attentively, simmer until the pasta is tender. For small dried pasta, this will probably be about 8 minutes, for fresh pasta, 3–5 minutes. Keep a small pan of water boiling next to the soup, adding some if the soup seems too thick. Taste to check the seasoning and serve with a little extra-virgin olive oil poured on top.
Pasta e ceci
Pasta and chickpea soup
I first ate pasta e ceci at Bucatino, the sprawling trattoria that occupies the ground-floor left-hand corner of my old building, the one in which the impatient exchanges between fraught waiters and the temperamental chef, along with the clink of cutlery against crockery, provided a soundtrack to our kitchen life. It was probably a Friday, a traditional day for pasta e ceci, and I was with Vincenzo. It wasn’t my primo, but his. It arrived in a deep bowl, steaming so intensely that if I’d had a tea towel to hand I’d have been under it, inhaling the rosemary-and-garlic-scented broth in which were suspended chickpeas and pieces of broken tagliatelle. I traded half a portion of spaghetti con le vongole for pasta e ceci, and there began a habit.
Pasta e ceci is one of Rome’s iconic dishes, and one with a history almost as long as the city itself, dating back two thousand years to a dish of chickpeas cooked with onion and a rib of celery, then united with broken whole wheat pasta. Pasta e ceci appears twice in the informal, unscientific weekly recipe calendar still followed in Rome: it is eaten on Tuesdays and Fridays. Walk past any Roman trattoria on those days and it may be chalked up on a blackboard. Walk around Testaccio on those days and you may well catch the smell of dozens of pans of pasta e ceci simmering.
Pasta e ceci is as changeable and temperamental as the cooks that make it. Like so much good Italian cooking, the principles are clear: cooked chickpeas are added to soffritto, water or bean broth is added, and the soup simmered. Pasta is then added to the soup and cooked until tender. But beyond that, the variations are endless. Pasta e ceci can be brothy or creamy and dense; it can be made with or without tomatoes; it can include anchovies, potato, and celery; it can be scented with garlic, rosemary, or sage; the chickpeas can be whole or blended into a cream (at least partially); the pasta can be tubes, badly cut squares, or broken tagliatelle. No two pans are the same, and even the most meticulously followed recipe will turn out differently each time. It is a dish that invites improvisation and adjustment to taste.
To start improvisation for this infinitely variable dish, however, you need a working model. Two, even. This first pasta e ceci is inspired by, and probably most closely related to, the one I have eaten and still eat at trattorias in Rome. Brothy and scented with garlic and rosemary, it also includes anchovies, which, far from being fishy and intrusive, are anything but, discreetly giving the broth a salty, savory note and then disappearing subserviently. The chickpeas can be cooked hours, even a day, in advance; just keep them under their cooking water. Pasta e ceci is a substantial dish that needs little more than a salad or straightforward vegetable dish afterward, and alongside it a glass of white wine, ideally something with good steely minerality like Fiano from southern Italy.
serves 4
1¼ cups dried chickpeas
2 garlic cloves
2 sprigs rosemary
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 fat anchovies packed in oil, drained (optional)
3 plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped
salt
7 ounces short tubular pasta, such as tubetti or ditalini, broken tagliatelle, or maltagliati
freshly ground black pepper
Soak the chickpeas in plenty of cold water for 12 hours or overnight, changing the water twice if you can be bothered. Drain the soaked chickpeas, cover them with 8 cups fresh water, and add a clove of garlic and a sprig of rosemary. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat and simmer for 1½ hours, or until the chickpeas are tender. Start tasting after 1 hour.
In a large, heavy-bottomed pan or casserole dish, heat the oil and add the anchovies, the remaining garlic crushed gently with the back of a knife, and the remaining rosemary. Cook them gently so that the anchovies dissolve into the oil and the garlic and rosemary are fragrant. Remove the rosemary and garlic. Add the tomatoes and break them up with the back of a wooden spoon. Cook for another few minutes.
Use a slotted spoon to lift the chickpeas from their cooking liquid into the pan, then add 4½ cups of a bean-cooking liquid, making it up with hot water if there isn’t enough, and a pinch of salt. Increase the heat to bring the soup to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until tender, stirring, tasting and adding more bean-cooking liquid or water so as to keep a slightly soupy consistency. Serve with a grinding of black pepper.
Pasta e ceci 2
Pasta and chickpea soup 2
This second pasta e ceci is my own version, which owes everything to Roman food and lessons I have learned, but also much to the thick bean and vegetable soups made with canned beans that I ate growing up in England. This version is one I make with canned chickpeas, which, unlike other canned beans, are generally very good, and very useful. This version begins with a soffritto of onion, celery, and carrot. It includes rosemary, just a little tomato paste, and a Parmesan rind. I will be forever grateful to the person who taught me to keep the Parmesan rinds with an inch of cheese still attached in a bag in the freezer. Added to soup and stew, the rind imparts its intense, sweet, umami flavor, then provides an excellent treat for the cook. The big difference between this and the first recipe is the consistency. I puree half the soup, which makes it denser and creamier. Mostly I add dried ditalini pasta, but I also like fresh maltagliati.
serves 4
1 mild onion
1 garlic clove
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra to serve
2 tablespoons tomato paste
a sprig of rosemary
2 (14-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained
salt
a Parmesan rind (optional)
8 ounces short tubular dried pasta such as tubetti or ditalini, or broken tagliatelle
Finely dice the onion with the garlic, carrot, and celery. In a large, heavy-bottomed pan, heat the oil; add the vegetables and cook gently until soft and fragrant. Add the tomato paste and rosemary, stir, and cook for a few minutes, or until the rosemary is fragrant. Add the drained chickpeas, stir, add 4½ cups hot water, a pinch of salt, and the Parmesan rind, then stir again. Bring to a gentle boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and leave the soup to simmer gently for about 20 minutes.
Remove half the soup and pass it through a food mill or blend it with an immersion blender until smooth and creamy, then return it to the pan. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Bring the soup back to a boil, add the pasta, and then, stirring fairly attentively, cook until the pasta is tender, adding more boiling water if necessary. Taste to check the seasoning and serve with a little extra-virgin olive oil poured on top.
Minestrone
The big soup
In Italian, to denote largeness you add -one, -ona, or -oni to the end of a word. Libro (“book”), for example, becomes librone (“big book”), culo (“bottom”) becomes culone (“big bottom”), casa (“house”) becomes casona (“big house”), and minestra (“soup”) becomes minestrone (“big soup”).
Minestrone, as you probably know, is a very substantial mixed vegetable soup that may or may not include beans, and probably does include some pasta or rice. It is cooked very slowly over low heat, emerging dense with a deep, mellow flavor that recalls no vegetable in particular, but all of them at once. There are, as is natural with a dish of this kind, many recipes, ideas, and thoughts about minestrone, the character of each panful being shaped by its circumstances, the place it is made in, the season, the produce available, and, of course, the cook.
The big, bold, relaxed “everything in the pan” aspect of minestrone is accurate, but misleading if you think it means “chuck it all in the pan.” Good minestrone, I have learned, is made with care, and needs time. True, a large part of this time requires minimal attention—a stir every now and then, the later addition of the beans—while the pan simmers for about 2 hours over very low heat. The initial steps do, however, need about 30 minutes of your cooking concentration. This is because the ingredients enter the pot gradually in a set sequence. The steady march of ingredients into the pot allows the essential underlying flavors to develop, imparting each one to the next vegetable. While one vegetable is cooking you prepare the next. It’s actually a nice process if you’re not in a rush and have some good chopping music and a glass of red wine, perhaps a Cesanese from Lazio.
When you get to the simmering, the heat should be low and the simmer tremulous, the kind that has you checking that the flame hasn’t gone out because the pan looks so still, then you lift the lid, look closely, see that the surface is quivering and suddenly—plop!—a burp of a bubble breaks the surface of the soup, and you are reassured that all is well. Minestrone is even better the next day, so it’s worth making plenty, which is why the recipe below is for 8.
serves 8
2 red onions
3 carrots
2 celery stalks
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
7 ounces potatoes
12¼ ounces zucchini
5¼ ounces green beans
7 ounces savoy cabbage
4¼ ounces canned or fresh plum tomatoes
a large Parmesan rind
2½ cups cooked cannellini beans
to serve:
5¼ ounces small dried pasta
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
or
4 slices good bread, toasted
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
salt
Finely dice the onions, carrots, and celery. Gently heat the butter and oil over low heat in a very large, heavy-bottomed pan, add the onion, carrot, and celery, and cook gently, uncovered, until they are soft and fragrant and starting to deepen in color—only just. This will take a good 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, dice the potatoes, zucchini, and green beans. Add the potatoes to the soup, stir, and cook gently for 5 minutes. Shred the cabbage, and peel (if fresh) and roughly chop the tomatoes. Add the green beans and zucchini, and after 5 more minutes, add the shredded cabbage. Add the tomatoes, stir, and increase the heat so the contents of the pan bubbles more vigorously for a few minutes. Add 6½ cups water and the Parmesan rind, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a tremulous simmer. Cover the pan and leave it just so for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
After 1½ hours, add the cannellini beans, stir carefully and firmly, then cook for another 30 minutes. If you find the soup is looking too thick before it has finished cooking, add a little more water. When the minestrone has finished cooking, pick out the Parmesan rind and transfer about a fifth of the soup to a separate bowl. Process it until smooth with an immersion blender before returning it to the rest of the soup.
There are different options for serving it. I generally divide the minestrone in half once I’ve made it, warm up the first day’s half, and add 5¼ ounces dried pasta that I’ve cooked in a separate pan until al dente. I then stir in a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmesan, wait 5 minutes, and serve. The next day, while the remaining soup is gently reheating, I toast 4 slices of bread, put them in the bottom of 4 bowls, sprinkle them with grated Parmesan and a little salt, and then ladle over the minestrone.
Pasta
“Pasta, pasta, pasta!” Luca shouts in a peculiar north London-Roman accent as it nears midday. Pasta is a small word for a big family that comprises hundreds of shapes and forms with a long, evolved history that’s part of the history of Italy itself. It can be long or short, made in a factory or by hand, stuffed or rolled, served in broth, dressed simply or to the nines with sauce. It can be made of hard durum wheat or soft wheat flour, with eggs and or/water, and comes in a dazzling variety of shapes. Some of these speak of great wealth and privilege; think of a hand-rolled sheet of rich egg pasta, or a hand-twisted parcel of seasoned meat. Others speak of great poverty, like struncatura, which literally means “sawdust pasta” and was made from the sweepings from the floor of the flour mills. For many Italians, pasta’s presence at the table signifies that all is right with the world.
Most Italian pasta is made from one of two basic doughs: the hard durum wheat flour-and-water pasta that traditionally comes from the south, or soft wheat flour-and-egg pasta that is traditionally from the north. Both doughs can be fresh or dried, factory-made or homemade, but the hard wheat flour-and-water pasta (the type I was most familiar with) is most commonly factory made, and soft wheat flour-and-egg pasta is often made at home, or in small, independent pasta all’uovo shops to be bought by weight.
I used to think that fresh pasta is better than dried pasta, but it isn’t, it’s just different, and possesses different qualities. Generally speaking, dried hard-wheat pasta is chewier and more robust, whereas well-made fresh egg pasta is silkier and more buoyant. The difference between the two is heightened by the shape. Fresh and dried pastas lend themselves to different shapes and are therefore a very different experience in the mouth. Consider the difference between a thin, rounded strand of hard-wheat spaghetti and a wide, soft egg noodle, a tube of ribbed maccheroni and a hand-twisted spiral of fusilli. Quite aside from the sauce, form leads to flavor. This explains why different shapes are better suited to different sauces; why a tiny tube is good for a chickpea soup and a flat ribbon of fettuccine is more fitting for a sauce of butter and anchovies. I have tried to share what I have observed, learned, and come to like. These are only suggestions, though, and imperfect ones at that, and should never override the fact that this is your lunch or dinner.
Buying dried pasta
We eat pasta almost every lunchtime, and it’s usually dried. Vincenzo, who is from Sicily, where dried flour-and-water pasta is ubiquitous, actually prefers it to fresh, saying it has more soul and more balls. I’m not sure I’m in a position to make such a bold claim, but I do know that good-quality dried pasta is a wondrous thing: full-bodied, nutty, and chewy enough to engage your whole mouth. I’ve learned that when buying dried pasta you should look for the best-quality durum-wheat pasta, which can be listed as grano duro, semolina, or simply farina. If there are any other ingredients on the list except water, avoid it. Also, look out for pasta extruded through bronze, which gives it texture. Even the smoothest-looking spaghetti, if made well, has a slightly rough surface like fine sandpaper to which the sauce can cling. Price is a good indicator of quality, and good dried pasta should cost accordingly. Flour and water it may be, but decent machinery, good drying techniques, and craftsmanship all have a cost—it can’t possibly be very cheap. If it is, it will probably be crummy. Neither should it be very expensive, however. Look for Garofalo, Setaro, and my favorite, the one in the yellow packet, Martelli.
Cooking pasta
One of the most useful lessons I’ve learned is one I had no idea I needed: how to cook pasta. I was incredulous when, after a few weeks of meeting and cooking together, Vincenzo suggested that I might like to do things differently. “What?” I said, placing the pan gauntlet quietly on the table in the old flat. “What should I do differently?” To which he replied: “Do you really want to know?”
There was a lengthy pause, during which my pride, irritation, and curiosity had a serious tussle before my curiosity and the anesthetizing effects of a new relationship won out. “Tell me,” I replied. There was another long pause while he lit a cigarette, inhaled, then exhaled toward the window. “Use a bigger pan and more water, add more salt, but not until the water boils, stir the salt into the water, start tasting two minutes before the end of the recommended cooking time, drain the pasta one minute before the time is up, always save the cooking water, and never overcook the pasta.” In short, a list so long and comprehensive, so infuriating, and so obviously true that I was silenced and we didn’t have pasta for lunch.
A few days later, I did the most familiar thing in an unfamiliar way. I took the largest, lightest pan, the one that holds 6 quarts, and for the first time ever I measured the water into it. The rule of thumb is 1 quart water for every 4 ounces pasta, so for 16 ounces spaghetti I needed 4 quarts. It was more water than I’d ever used. I brought it to a boil, which took less time than I thought, then weighed out 3 tablespoons coarse salt—more salt than I’d ever used—stirred it into the water, and tasted. It was, as promised, pleasantly salty, which is precisely what pasta, which doesn’t contain any salt, needs. I checked the time and added the pasta, gently pressing it down with the back of a wooden spoon before re-covering the pan until it came back to a boil. I stirred and tasted in good time, drained the pasta quickly, and saved a cupful of water for loosening the sauce if necessary. It wasn’t. I’d warmed the serving bowl; I tossed the pasta first with cheese, then with tomato sauce, and served it. I’m not sure what I expected. After well-behaved initial thanks, what I got was silence as Vincenzo and Carlo wound the spaghetti round their forks and ate.
This is a long story for a task that’s usually too obvious to mention, but it’s one that’s executed badly so often, by me at least. In short, pasta needs lots of water and space to cook correctly. Too little water and it’s sticky, overly starchy, claustrophobic, and quite simply the pasta won’t cook properly. The water must be well salted or the pasta will be sciapa (without salt), a mistake nearly as grave as scotta (overcooked) pasta. This brings us to al dente, which means “to the tooth” and refers to the firmness of the cooked pasta that is so desirable. Now, generally speaking, the farther south you travel, the more al dente pasta is eaten. Vincenzo is from nearly as south as you can go in southern Sicily and would ideally have his pasta so al dente that it’s as stiff as a Scottish guard and, to some, raw. I am an Englishwoman who, before moving to Italy, cooked my pasta in much the same way my grandma cooked vegetables: for too long. (I now cook my vegetables like my grandma did, but more about that later.) We have found a middle ground, and it’s usually a minute and a half before the end of the recommended cooking time, when the pasta has just lost its white chalky core, has bite, and engages the mouth, but not excessively.
Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino
Spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, and chile
This is what Vincenzo knocks up when he is alone, or very late back, or both: spaghetti with garlic and chile fried gently in plenty of olive oil, with a handful of chopped parsley. He calls it aglio e olio (garlic and oil) and thinks it is one of the best pasta dishes there is. I agree. It’s also a dish we often have on a Friday night when we finally admit that a large bag of crisps and a bottle of prosecco is not really a balanced supper, and need something else but don’t really want to cook. While Vincenzo makes this I might make a salad and open another bottle of wine. After all, it is Friday.
It seems counterintuitive to give quantities for a dish that is by nature unquantifiable and personal. That said, when I first started making aglio e olio I appreciated some guidance about how to make this mysteriously delicious dish. While the 4 ounces or so per person of spaghetti cooks in plenty of well-salted water, warm a couple of tablespoons of olive oil per person in a frying pan. Bear in mind that the oil should coat generously but not overwhelm the pasta. Add a garlic clove per person, chopped if you like garlic and want to keep it in, or peeled and crushed if you simply want to scent the oil, in which case cook it gently until the garlic is fragrant, then remove it. Add half a teaspoon of chopped fresh or dried chile per person, let it sizzle gently for a minute, then add the pasta and stir until each strand is gleaming. Remove from the heat, stir in some chopped parsley, and eat.
Fettuccine con burro e alici
Fettuccine with butter and anchovies
I make two versions of this dish: one with dried egg fettuccine, a standby can of anchovies, and a slice of whatever butter happens to be in the fridge door; the other with homemade fettuccine, Spanish anchovies that cost a small fortune, and butter I have bought especially. Obviously the first version is the one I make more, and the second is the one I enjoy more. Not that I don’t enjoy the first—even with dried pasta, the contents of an average anchovy can, and everyday butter, this is a completely delicious plate of pasta, gutsy and, like me after a few drinks, just a little bit loud. Loud, but then softening into a rich, salty, and rounded affair, especially with a glass of white with enough flavor to match the anchovies and stand up to the butter, such as a good Gavi.
serves 4
1 pound fresh (here) or dried egg fettuccine
10 tablespoons (1¼ sticks) butter
10 best anchovy fillets packed in oil, drained
Bring a large pan of water to a fast boil, add salt, stir, then add the pasta. If fresh, it will take just a few minutes to cook, so keep tasting.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large sauté pan over low heat and add the anchovies, prodding them gently with the back of a wooden spoon so they dissolve into the butter. The butter should foam very slightly, but no more than that.
Once the pasta is ready, drain it and add it to the pan, stirring so that each strand is coated with anchovy butter. Serve immediately.
The food mill
In an ideal world we would have given a complimentary food mill, mouli, or passaverdura away with every copy of this book, making it possibly the most inconveniently shaped purchase you would have made in a while. A brilliantly simple, old-fashioned device that consists of a bowl with a removable perforated plate and a crank with a curved metal paddle that forces the food through the holes, a food mill is a sort of souped-up sieve. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in an Italian kitchen that didn’t have one or three at hand. It does a job no other kitchen tool can: it purees cooked vegetables, fruit, legumes, fish, and other ingredients, separating out the skin, seeds, fibers, bones, and bits, the unwanted from the wanted. In fact, the action of the crank and the plate extracts flavor from the unwanted as well. This is particularly notable in the case of tomatoes, which we will come to shortly, the crank and paddle pressing the intense flavor from the skin, fibers, and seeds. What’s more, a food mill doesn’t entirely break and blast down the texture of the pulp as a blender or food processor would, but leaves it with the lively texture and distinct personality that’s so desirable for Italian soups, sauces, and purees.
I will, of course, give alternatives to the food mill, but I will also keep suggesting you buy one. It is without a shadow of a doubt my favorite and most-used kitchen tool.
Sugo di pomodoro
Tomato sauce
This is our standard tomato sauce, based on the one made by Vincenzo’s Sicilian grandmother, who would have called it salsa di pomodoro. It’s simply tomatoes, oil, garlic, and salt, and in summer, the most irritatingly likeable of herbs: basil. It’s a rich, smooth sauce, thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, but not so thick as to stunt the flow. It’s the sauce we use most often on pasta, in baked pasta, around meatballs or beef roulade. It can be made with either fresh or canned tomatoes. It really requires a mouli or food mill, although you can use an immersion blender to reduce the tomatoes to a smooth consistency. You’ll need 3¼ pounds tomatoes, fresh or canned in juice, which you’ll need to prepare.
With fresh tomatoes
Cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise, put them in a saucepan, and cover with a lid. Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes, then lift the lid and squash the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon to release some of the juices. Replace the lid and cook for another few minutes, by which point the tomatoes should be soft, collapsing, and surrounded by juice. Set your food mill, fitted with the largest-holed disc, over a bowl and pass the cooked tomatoes and their juices through the mill in batches.
With canned peeled tomatoes
Set your food mill, fitted with the largest-holed disc, over a bowl and pass the canned tomatoes and their juices through the mill in batches.
To make the sauce
Peel and crush 2 garlic cloves with the back of a knife or the heel of your hand. Put the garlic and 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil in a large frying pan over low heat and cook the garlic gently until it is fragrant and lightly golden. Be careful not to burn it, or the sauce will taste bitter. Remove the garlic. Add the tomatoes to the pan, along with a pinch of salt and a sprig of basil. Reduce the heat and let the sauce cook for 20–40 minutes, or until it is visibly thicker and reduced and the oil is just starting to come to the surface. To test it, if a silky spoonful placed on a flat plate no longer emits a large watery halo around the dollop, it’s done.
Rough fresh tomato sauce
In contrast with the smooth sauce above, there is also the rough, which is possibly my favorite sauce of them all. I say rough, but actually “textured” would be a better description, in that you peel 2¼ pounds tomatoes, but rather than milling them you chop them roughly, seeds and all, then fry them in about 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil scented with garlic until it is visibly thicker but the pieces of tomato are still distinct. I only make this in high summer when the tomatoes are at their best and most plentiful.
Roasted tomato sauce
This is the simplest of the lot. Put 2¼ pounds tasty small tomatoes (cherry, plum, the Piennolo Vesuvio variety, ideally on the vine) in a roasting pan, sprinkle with salt, pour over plenty of olive oil, and bake for about an hour. I might open the oven door and prod the tomatoes halfway through the cooking time, and they often squirt. They’re done when they’re a big oily mess, some squashed, some whole, all sitting in a pool of red-tinted oil. Vincenzo picks the vine out while I cook the pasta. It’s then drained and tipped straight into the roasting pan, which also acts as a serving dish. If you like, you can pass the roasted tomatoes through a food mill, which gives you a smooth, intensely flavored sauce with a smoky, oven-baked aftertaste.
Rich tomato sauce with canned tomatoes
A rich, thick, and almost burgundy-colored sauce made with a soffritto of onion, carrot, and celery, canned plum tomatoes, and a glug of red wine. It can be served with just about any shape of pasta or with a gently poached egg and some bread. This sauce is decidedly Italian, but I learned to make it in un-Italian circumstances. That is, in the old kitchen in my parents’ house in Harpenden. I imagine my mum drew her original inspiration from a recipe by Elizabeth David or Jane Grigson, but the need for the printed page had long since passed. I watched keenly as she chopped the vegetables, then gently cooked the harlequin heap in lots of oil, added a big can of imported plum tomatoes and a slug of wine, then let the sauce bubble away on the stove for a good long while. I watched even more keenly as she poured a glass of red wine for herself, drank some, and turned the music up. A little later, while the sauce simmered, Dad might have spun her round in a tiny kitchen dance, which I found both reassuring and mortifying, so I focused back on the sauce.
I spurned this sauce when I first came to Italy, enchanted by the simpler, fresher versions and sheepish about my anglicized Italian cooking. It took a few years and much obsessive questioning about how Italians make their tomato sauce to discover that this sort of hearty sauce made with a soffritto is typical all over Italy during the darker months. One difference, though: Italians (at least the ones I know) nearly always pass this sort of sauce through a food mill so that the texture is smooth. I rather like it chunky—you could say that makes it more of a ragù than a sauce—but I’m also extremely happy to go smooth if that’s the general consensus.
I imagine you know the routine as well as I do: peel and very finely dice onion, celery, and carrot and cook them gently in as much olive oil as you dare for a long, slow sizzle; slide in about a pound of canned chopped plum tomatoes; glug in some red wine to meet the tomatoes; then keep it at a slow, burping simmer for 30–40 minutes, stirring from time to time. Don’t be afraid to add a little more wine or water if the sauce is looking dense but still needs cooking for a bit longer. Season as you see fit and add a little sugar if it seems acidic. If you prefer a smoother sauce, pass it through a food mill or a sieve. This will make enough sauce to dress 1–1¼ pounds pasta, which will feed 4 people.