The tomatoes were late; the second month of autumn and finally green turned to red almost in synch with the autumn leaves. I bought the seedlings one sunny hopeful Saturday morning in November from that community garden behind the Uniting Church in central Coburg where they write the variety on icy-pole sticks 1950s-style.
It was worth the wait. The still-warm tangerine tomatoes lying on the preparation board were big and fat and perfectly round, like tangerine wooden beads on a 1970s hippy’s necklace.
I sliced them into thick discs along with some baby bocconcini about the same size as the tomatoes.
The fresh linguine was writhing in a big pot of well-salted water to which I’d added a good dash of olive oil, which seems to help stop the strands sticking together both in the water and after draining. The oiled water also adds an unctuous texture to the cooked pasta.
Meanwhile, I had gone out to back garden where the mint tries to break out of its quadrangle (one half of an old concrete washing trough) and picked some basil from the other half; five or six good healthy sprigs, also still warm and, once inside, shredded them roughly.
Pasta drained and arranged on a large serving platter, I scattered the red and white discs of tomato and cheese over the top , decorated the lot with basil shreds, showered the platter with fragrant fresh-ground black pepper and, finally, scattered shaved parmesan to finish it off.
Half an hour later the platter was a wasteland of basil shards lying in little eddies of olive oil. Dinner done for another night.
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