Rustic pasta with roasted chicken, mushrooms, avocado, cherry tomatoes and peas.

What makes it rustic? asked someone when I pretentiously named the dish I had just cooked.

Unrefined and straightforward, yet warm and inviting, rustic (cuisine) is typically based on old-fashioned preparation techniques, ingredient availability, and specific cultural/culinary influences, I should have replied; but not wanting to sound like an AI chatbot, I just muttered something about using what was in the fridge.

There had been half a roast chicken and a tub of peas, thanks to the chicken shop where Tom now works after school. Run by an enterprising husband and wife originally from Iran, the shop is not one of those dreadful franchises, so Tom has neither to wear a red uniform nor serve at a drive-through window, and the owners overwhelm him with generous take-outs at the end of shifts, and he comes home redolent of charcoal and spices and carrying bagfuls of delicious chicken roasted and stuffed with some unique blend of breadcrumbs that carries a faint rumour of exotic Persian spice, potato salads in thin tart mayonnaise and scattered with parsley, or baked potatoes sandwiched in creamy cheesy sauce. Why would anyone want to work at Red Rooster or KFC?

Rustic creamy pasta with roasted chicken, mushrooms, avocado, cherry tomatoes and peas.

I chopped half an onion and a clove of garlic and sweated these in olive in a pan until soft, and then sloshed in half a cup of white wine.

Meanwhile I cut the cold roasted chicken into bite size pieces, bisected twenty cherry tomatoes*, sliced half a dozen button mushrooms and diced the flesh of a medium-ripe avocado.

The whole lot went into the pan and sautéed along with a tub of cooked green peas followed by a small jar (is a 350ml plastic bottle a jar or a tub? i or is it a just a bottle?) of thickened cream.

The pasta - bucatini - was already boiling and as soon as the sauce had reduced I poured it over the pasta in a large common serving dish in the middle of the table and scattered with chopped parsley and shaved Parmesan cheese.

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Derby’s Rooster, 173a Derby St, Pascoe Vale.

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Kitchen Hand’s review: There are 55,000 KFC stores in the world and at least 345 Red Roosters in Australia - this store offers better chicken, fresher salads and creamier potato side dishes than any of them. (Disclaimer: review conducted on two separate occasions before Tom started working at the store.)

*Twenty of one thousand: story soon.