Wanted to post this last night, but was so enthusiastic about my dinner I finished it before I remembered that I was supposed to take a picture of it.

This is how it occurred. On holiday in Sydney, one evening while waiting for dinner to happen, I was sitting in front of the tele and was watching this English and Italian guy (middle aged blokes who seem content on life and look the part) getting drunk at night and cooking meals during the day. It was supposed to be a cookshow of sorts I guess. They prepared a number of things, including s Corizo sausage sandwich, which had too many ingredients that I just looked on in eagerness. What I did remember though, was a pasta recipe by the Italian (of course).

It’s a simple pasta with exotic ingredients and here is how it was made. Well, my variation of it anyway, I memorised the basics of it. Now this is probably the one and only recipe I recall from scratch having seen it once.

You prepare a few cloves of garlic, capers, olives, canned tuna, anchovies and tomatoes (skinned and the semi dried ones).

So here’s the very efficient process I have worked out. Put a pot of water on boil and start chopping up your garlic and capers. Set them aside and your pot of water should be boiling by now. Chuck the pasta in and heat up your saucepan (or whatever you use to cook). Throw in the garlic. Let it brown a bit, and put the anchovies in. You mash those up into a paste, then you pour the capers and olives in. Stir it up a bit, then you add in the tuna. Mix that up a bit before adding in the skinned tomatoes (I used canned ones, as the fresh ones have a sour taste to it, unless you want to add sugar) and semi dried tomatoes. Season with paprika, pepper and parsley. Add a dash of oregano (not sure if you need this, as the previous ingredients give the dish an identity of its own already). Mix everything up.

By now, the pasta should be ready. Drain it, and mix it into the pasta. I saw this on tele, and the Italian guy flipped the pasta along with the sauce to mix it up (something I’ll force myself to learn, even if I have to spill food all over the place). Serve hot.

Here’s how it looks like.

Being the Chinaman that I am, I eat pasta with chopsticks!