Sardine and Tomato Pasta

There's a kind of evening, usually midweek, when the fridge offers little and the ambition offers less, and you stand in the kitchen wondering whether it's worth cooking at all. This is the meal for that evening.

Two tins. A head of garlic. Some dried pasta. It sounds like a concession, like something you'd apologise for when putting it on the table. It isn't. Sardines are one of the most undervalued things you can eat: rich, savoury, full of the kind of depth that takes hours to build in other dishes and comes here already done, sealed in a tin for less than a pound. Good tinned sardines in good olive oil are a proper ingredient. Treat them that way.

The tomatoes cook down quickly into something thick and sweet. The garlic goes in sliced, not crushed, because you want to find it on the fork. A pinch of chilli. A squeeze of lemon at the end. The pasta water does the rest, pulling everything together into a sauce that clings and shines. Fifteen minutes, start to finish. I wrote it down in the notebook once: sardines, tomatoes, Tuesday, rain. It needed no more than that.

We're only making dinner. But this is the kind of dinner that reminds you the cupboard is more generous than you thought, and that cooking well has nothing to do with spending well. A warm plate, a glass of something rough and red, and the quiet satisfaction of having made something real from almost nothing.