How to make the perfect tomato pasta

There are a thousand ways to make this and most of them are good. What follows is mine, arrived at over many years and many mistakes, and it is the version I make when I want to be reminded why I love cooking.

Ingredients

Serves 4. 500g good dried pasta; 800g ripe tomatoes, or two tins of whole plum tomatoes; 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil; 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced; a large handful of basil; sea salt and black pepper; parmesan, to serve.

Method

Put a large pan of water on to boil and salt it generously. It should taste like the sea. This is the single most important step and the one most people skip.

Warm the oil in a wide pan over a medium heat and add the garlic. Cook gently until it is fragrant and just beginning to colour, then add the tomatoes and a good pinch of salt. Let it bubble, uncovered, for 20 minutes, stirring now and then and crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pan.

Cook the pasta until it is just short of done, then lift it directly into the sauce with a little of the cooking water. Toss over the heat for a minute until the sauce clings to the pasta, then tear in the basil and finish with a glug of oil.

Salt the water until it tastes like the sea. This is the step most people skip

Serve immediately, with plenty of parmesan and more black pepper than seems reasonable. Leftovers, should there be any, are excellent cold the next day.