So, you’re back from a weekend away and there’s hardly any food in the house, but never fear, if you’ve got a box of sweet, ripe cherry tomatoes to hand you can always make this – the quickest, easiest and scrummiest pasta dish you’ll ever taste. 

I first ate this one New Year’s Eve in Naples when staying with my Neapolitan relatives there.  It’s the perfect quick lunch for one person, but also so delicious I serve it all the time for friends.

Suffice it to say, we’ve eaten quite a lot of this this week.

Spaghetti with Cherry Tomatoes

Set the water boiling for some long thin pasta, such as spaghetti or linguine. 

Take a punnet of sweet, very ripe cherry tomatoes – thin-skinned ones work best – and cut each one in half (a serrated knife is always best for tomatoes, I sometimes use the bread knife). That’s the most work you’ll have to do.

Put the pasta on to cook before you start the sauce (yes, it’s that quick).

Take a large frying pan and heat up a generous splosh (about 1tbsp) of good olive oil. Peel a clove of garlic, halve it and fry it in the hot oil until it turns golden brown. Remove the clove of garlic.  If you have garlic-infused oil use that instead and skip this step.

Get the flavoured oil really hot on the highest heat and add the halved tomatoes.  Take care as they will sizzle and spit at this stage.  Keep frying them on a high heat until they collapse and melt down into sauce, prodding with a wooden spoon helps. Stir occasionally to stop them sticking.  Season with salt, pepper and half a teaspoon of granulated sugar unless the tomatoes are very sweet.  If they’ve turned into a sauce before the pasta is ready keep cooking the sauce over a gently heat to keep it warm but don’t overcook. If you’re feeling fancy stir in a handful of chopped Italian parsley at the end and give it time to wilt.

When the pasta is ready stir it into the fried tomatoes adding a tablespoon of the pasta cooking water.  Add another generous slug of olive oil (not garlic oil this time).

And that’s it.  It doesn’t need cheese and you really mustn’t remove the skins.   They’re the best bit.

Recipes are returning to the mirrormirror blog because Helen and I have decided to stop writing the Year of Living Gorgeously.  

It’s made us really sad to do so, but we’re both just up to our eyeballs with other projects now and we couldn’t keep it up to the standard we wanted. It’ll stay up there for some time and eventually I’ll move all my recipes and stuff over here. For those of you who are readers of both blogs thanks for all your support and comments and I hope you’ll stay and play on both our personal blogs.