When we returned home from our holiday last week, my empty fridge, which I was so pleased with when we were leaving, became a bit of a bleak dinner prospect. I couldn’t face going food shopping so I rummaged through my cupboards and decided to make something out of what I had: a sad onion, some garlic cloves, a jar of Indonesian chilli paste, 2 tins of plum tomatoes, a bag of capers (which I buy in almost wholesale quantities 😉 ) and pasta.
It all sounded pretty workable, but in need of some pazzaz. Then I remembered that a friend gave me some Greek saffron a while ago and I haven’t yet had a chance to use it. That’s exactly what I needed to ‘lift’ the sauce a bit. As Greece is a bit ahead of everybody else in Europe in terms of weather, pretty decent tomatoes started piling up in my local veggie shop so I also tried making the same dish with fresh tomatoes. The sauce was even nicer! The beauty of this dish is that it’s pretty straightforward. Apart from some quick chopping, all you need to do is to give the sauce a bit of a stir now and then. It doesn’t need too much ‘babysitting’ and comes together in about one hour. It goes really well with some fresh parsley and a cheeky glass of red won’t go amiss either 😉 .
handful pine nuts or walnuts, toasted nutritional yeast (this is the brand I use) fresh parsley or basil, to garnish 320 g / 11 oz rigatoni pasta (gluten-free for GF version)
