It's a summer pasta dish using fresh tomatoes, basil and parsley straight from the garden and a fresh cheese.
But the tomatoes have to be really good, very ripe, red and juicy. Bad tomatoes are starchy and pasty and just don't work the same.
Boil your pasta. Ordinary spaghetti works the best with this as it is very sensuous and silky the way it curls around and catches all the flavours.
Meanwhile, slice three or four tomatoes into fairly thin slices. Pick some basil and tear it into pieces, not too small; roughly chop parsley, a generous amount.
Slice a generous amount of cheese into thin strips. You can use any fresh cheese - I used mozzarella.
Drain the pasta, arrange it in a big serving platter, and quickly place tomato slices, basil, parsley and cheese on the pasta and either serve it like that or mix it through a little. The heat from the cooked pasta will warm the other ingredients, especially if you place a large lid over the dish for a couple of minutes.
Add cracked pepper upon serving. Eat with a nice white wine, maybe a semillon or a chardonnay. Anything really.
The acid and sweetness of the tomatoes contrasts with the creaminess of the cheese and the pasta, as the world's supreme 'carrier' ingredient - melds them together perfectly.
As I said, you need good tomatoes for this to work. If you've got bad tomatoes, use them for something else, I dunno, play cricket with them or something. That would be fun - wouldn't it?
When I was a kid we used to play apple cricket at the height of summer when the apple tree was full ... but that's another story.
But the tomatoes have to be really good, very ripe, red and juicy. Bad tomatoes are starchy and pasty and just don't work the same.
Boil your pasta. Ordinary spaghetti works the best with this as it is very sensuous and silky the way it curls around and catches all the flavours.
Meanwhile, slice three or four tomatoes into fairly thin slices. Pick some basil and tear it into pieces, not too small; roughly chop parsley, a generous amount.
Slice a generous amount of cheese into thin strips. You can use any fresh cheese - I used mozzarella.
Drain the pasta, arrange it in a big serving platter, and quickly place tomato slices, basil, parsley and cheese on the pasta and either serve it like that or mix it through a little. The heat from the cooked pasta will warm the other ingredients, especially if you place a large lid over the dish for a couple of minutes.
Add cracked pepper upon serving. Eat with a nice white wine, maybe a semillon or a chardonnay. Anything really.
The acid and sweetness of the tomatoes contrasts with the creaminess of the cheese and the pasta, as the world's supreme 'carrier' ingredient - melds them together perfectly.
As I said, you need good tomatoes for this to work. If you've got bad tomatoes, use them for something else, I dunno, play cricket with them or something. That would be fun - wouldn't it?
When I was a kid we used to play apple cricket at the height of summer when the apple tree was full ... but that's another story.
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