Читать книгу The Dolce Vita Diaries - Cathy Rogers - Страница 29

Ingredients for 4 people

Spinach—400g

Olive oil—7 tablespoons

Garlic—3 cloves

Tomatoes—700g

Tagliatelle—500g fresh

Salt and pepper

Parmesan—freshly grated

Simple fresh ingredients. The three words that sum up Italian cooking. A wise woman once told me that, faced with a dish that didn’t taste quite right, a French chef would think about what ingredient they could add while an Italian chef would think about what ingredient they could take away, stripping the dish down its absolute essence. This is something that we make along Italian principles. It depends on finding flavoursome, robust spinach where you can almost taste the iron, not the watery, bland supermarket stuff. And, of course, the tomatoes have to be sweet and pert.

Wash the spinach well and place in a colander to drip dry. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan on the lowest heat you can get. Cut the garlic into thin slices and fry in the oil—the test is to cook it as slowly as possible (because there is an element of challenge to this dish blokes seem to like cooking it—that and it’s simple as pie).

Chop the tomatoes into decent chunks, cutting out the stringy stalks along the way.

Boil some salty water and cook the tagliatelle with a bit of oil. At the same time put the spinach in on top of the garlic and oil but turn off the heat.

When the pasta is cooked add this on top of the spinach, put the heat back on low, and stir everything together so the spinach is evenly spread. Season with lots of salt and pepper, add the tomatoes and stir once more. The tomatoes should not be cooked too much, just heated through. If it’s looking a bit dry add more oil and serve immediately with some parmesan.