A simple pasta supper

Here is something that you start cooking and then leave for a bit while you get on with other far more interesting things. It's the sort of dinner that you could present in generous bowlfuls to a household, but it offers succour to a famished singelton, too.


It's just pasta and roasted peppers. Make that spaghetti or linguine, actually. If I tell you what I had on my own last night, just scale up accordingly.


Heat your oven to 200 or so and, while it's coming to temperature, get three big fat peppers -- yellow, red and green. I used half of each one, deseeded and cut into large chunks. They went into a wide oven dish with six cloves of garlic, peeled but not chopped, and two medium onions, again cut into good-sized chunks. Add a sprinkle of chilli flakes --or a whole red or green chilli, chopped; deseeded if you must. Now chuck in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, add some sea salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper, mix it around well  and put this in the oven to roast. It should take about half an hour, with perhaps just one toss from you -- but this isn't essential. The point is that the vegetables are to be sweet and caramelising at the edges. You may want to give them a little more time in the oven.


Now, allow time for some spaghetti to cook in lots of salted water. You know how much spaghetti (or linguine) you'll want to eat. I gather that, per person, it's supposed to be a bunch of strands enough to  fill the 'o' made by your forefinger and thumb. BUT I tend to expand on that a bit!


Hopefully, you'll have timed it so that your roasted vegetables are perfection just as your spaghetti is, but you CAN always put the vegetables to one side and let them re-heat a little later by giving them a good toss with the piping hot spaghetti. Then here's what you do: just drain your spaghetti and then add the vegetables, plus any juices from the roasting dish and don't forget to scrape in any crutsy little pieces from the dish, too. Mix it up well, taste for seasoning, add some roughly-chopped fresh parsley if you like and plus a generous grating of fresh parmesan. Or shavings of the same: use a mandoline.

That's it. Serve with a good glass of wine. I had some Merlot and it was, all in, a pretty satisfying supper. And, do you know, I ate this in my sitting room with the door open in the early evening with the cool autumn air coming in. Here's my sitting room, a little dark. No hall? No: it's a cottage and you learn to set upon muddy feet with eagle eyes.