Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 28, 2021

I’m well aware that most of my comfort foods are carb-heavy and depressing. I’m also quite aware that me chronicling my comfort foods might suggest I am, as they say “going through some stuff”. All this combined with the fact that we’re in the pit of winter during the plateaus and troughs (the “peaks” part of “peaks and troughs” didn’t seem to apply here, hence the “plateaus”) of a pandemic makes this whole series quite grim.  

So, to perk things up a bit, I’ve decided to chuck in a recipe that is significantly less concerning than me trying to convince you that of a mug full of cereal for dinner is not the culinary calling card of someone who has lost their way, but the evening meal for the gal on the go who never says no to a fibre boost. 

This is an actual (well, kinda) recipe. It has more than five ingredients and none of them are butter. There’s more action required than pushing down the lever on the toaster. And this actually requires you to get up, put on shoes and go to the grocery store.

I make varied mutations of this pasta regularly, but I’m going to go off the most recent strain – which came into being after a deep conversation with my townhouseguest that ended in us vowing to spend more time listening to the timeless classics of Simple Plan and Avril Lavigne. She went off into the night and I drank some red wine, made myself some pasta, and settled in to watch The Red Shoes. 

Here’s what I did:

I warmed some garlic infused olive oil in a frypan and added a few anchovy filets from a jar. Now, pop culture would have you believe that anchovies are disgusting, in the same way we’re told that Brussels sprouts and broccoli are disgusting. But, to quote one Darryl Kerrigan, it’s what ya do with it, darl. If you’re given a piece of broccoli that’s had the arse steamed out of it, you’re going to think that all broccoli is a watery mush of misery. And if you’ve only ever had the crusty rust scrapings of anchovies on a soggy pizza, you’re going to assume that all anchovies are bad anchovies. But anchovies are like people – most are intrinsically good, they just need a little love and some gentle guidance.  

And after spending a lot of time with Nigella Lawson (which is to say, after obsessively reading her books and watching her reruns) I’ve learned you can use anchovies as a salty base for a pasta sauce. 

All you do is warm it gently in oil and squish it around with a spatula and eventually the fillets will start to disintegrate into a paste-like, flavourful substance. Then you can add in more of the good stuff. 

At this particular juncture in my life, I had an obscene amount of sundried tomatoes, given to me by a friend. I could estimate the weight, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I have a couch cushion case full of sundried tomatoes that need to be used, so I chucked a handful in. Then I added about a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes and half a tin of diced tomatoes and the thick goo in which they’re suspended. 

Then, because the garlic oil wasn’t enough, I grated a fat clove of garlic into the mix and added a splash of red wine, just for fun. 

I then realised I hadn’t cooked the pasta, so I had to turn the frypan off, hastily heat a pot of water and boil the pasta. I used pappardelle, which is probably my favourite form of pasta because it allows you slurp it up like spaghetti, while having the comforting flat wideness of a lasagne sheet. 

During this time, the sauce I’d made had solidified into a thick paste, which looked like a failed attempt at gravy (a sight I am very, very familiar with). But I’d had enough wine by this point not to mind so much. 

I tipped in the pasta with a splash of the cooking water into the frypan, then threw in about three quarters of a bunch of flat leaf parsley, grated the sharpest cheese I had in the fridge over the top and added the zest of a lemon I had sitting on my counter for decorative “oh yes, I often cook with fresh lemons!” purposes. 

I mixed it up in the frypan then tipped the whole thing onto a single plate, earnestly believing I could eat it all in one sitting.