Day 159: plumes of comfort

When hot pasta hits cold sauce, a soft cloud of fragrant steam billows up and hits you in the face. This is one of my favourite things about tipping a tangle of spaghetti into the sauce it’s destined to marry. True, any hot pasta does this, but I mention spaghetti specifically for two reasons: 1) it’s my favourite pasta, and 2) today’s lunch was Nigella’s Spaghetti with Tuna, Lemon & Rocket.

I’m not doing too well at progressing through my How To Be A Domestic Goddess/Demonic Entity line-up, but I find baking a task I prefer doing - at this moment in my life, anyway - during the weekends, or when I have an afternoon off during the week. I think a little scone-making needs to occur this weekend! I also have a fruitbowlful of red onions and should probably make the Supper Onion Pie, too. I re-read the recipe for it yesterday and the inclusion of cheddar makes me want it even more!

Nigella’s Spaghetti with Tuna, Lemon & Rocket

And for this particular lunch, those plumes of comfort carried the smells of a holiday in the Med: lemon, fish, garlic and extra virgin olive. I could eat this daily - and never tire of it.

The recipe suggests draining the tuna; as the jar of tuna I had was in extra virgin olive oil I felt it would be a bit of a waste to throw it so I used a couple of spoons of it in place of the additional extra virgin olive suggested. Of course, if the tuna was in regular olive oil/brine/spring water/sunflower oil then, yes, I would also recommend draining it; it’s that earthy, slight bitterness, from extra virgin olive you want in this dish, not the greasiness of a flavourless, albeit slightly fishy, oil.