Spaghetti Trapanese

You know how difficult is to make a dish that everyone in the family loves. These dishes are very rare and once you find one you keep it like a treasure. One of those dishes for my family is Spaghetti Trapanese, a summer dish that is best when tomatoes are in full season. It is a pesto-like cold sauce and has only a couple of main ingredients. Those should be of the best quality that you can afford.

Spaghetti Trapanese
(Jamie Oliver)
serves 4

• 1 pound dried spaghetti
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 5 1/2oz / 150 g  almonds, skins on or off
• 1 clove garlic
• 4 large handfuls fresh basil, leaves picked
• 5 1/2 oz / 150g  freshly grated pecorino or Parmesan cheese
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 pounds tomatoes, halved
• 
  

Warm the almonds a little in a dry pan, then smash them up in a pestle and mortar or whiz them in a food processor until you have a coarse powder consistency. Put them into a bowl. Bash the garlic and the basil separately in the mortar and mix with the almonds, adding the pecorino or Parmesan, a good glug of olive oil, and some salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes and really scrunch them with your hands into the almond mixture until they have completely broken up. Loosen with a little extra olive oil and toss with your hot drained pasta. Check the seasoning, divide onto 4 plates, and spoon any sauce that remains in the pan over the top.