This is a recipe for two. If there are more people just multiply up.

Put about five tablespoons of Olive oil into a medium pan. Add three quarters of a teaspoon of salt.

Cut three or four rashers of streaky bacon into small chunks using scissors. You cant cut bacon with a knife. It must be streaky bacon. The bacon taste comes from fat, the white bit, lean bacon wont work. Fry till brown. Add garlic towards the end as it may burn before.

Using a whole packet of vine ripened tomatoes and one beef tomato, the quality makes a difference, add the sliced tomatoes into the bacon and oil. Put on medium heat.

When tomatoes soften, use a potatoe masher to mash the tomatoes. Put on three quarters heat. Continue to cook and mash tomatoes till it starts to bubble and foam.

There will be a significant reduction in volume. You will be left with s gloopy syrup, it may appear you don't have enough but you do. You can add two pinches of basil if you want too toward the end, if you put it in too soon you will kill the taste.

Cook the spaghetti, if its 9 to 11 minutes in cook for seven. Using tongs add some spaghetti to the sauce. Using a table spoon, add three quarters of a spoon of butter too the spaghetti, then add the rest. You might use a whole tablespoon.

Then add a spill of the water from the cooked spaghetti into the pan. Some will be there already from the spaghetti. The water will contain starch which will cling the sauce to the spaghetti.

Mix, and cook for 30 seconds or a minute, the spaghetti will absorb the sauce. Tong the spaghetti onto a plate, cover with parmesan and pore any remaining sauce on top. Wipe the plate of spills.

Heaven in less than an hour.

You can do this without bacon, just basil.

Babushkas from Italy would cook tomatoes for hours or days to get the quality tomatoe sauce you get from mashing and a high heat. Its about reducing it to its constituent parts.

You can replicate this tomatoe sauce in lasagnes. This also applies to curries. If you use onions in curries which I do, ghee is a killer.

You must caramalise the onions. All this means is cook the onions for 30 to 45 minutes till brown. You can mash them too. Onions cooked for just a few minutes will be bitter, cooked properly they become sweet. The finer you can cut them the better. Caramalised onions in a lasagne makes the dish.


Snoopy of Clodig.