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militating against any recipe?
    150g spaghetti
    Maldon salt
    3–4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
    1 fat clove garlic, or 2 smaller, peeled and sliced thinly lengthwise
    1 dried red chilli pepper or fat pinch dried red chilli pepper flakes (or to taste)
    chopped fresh parsley (optional)
    Put a pan of water on the heat to boil for the pasta. When it’s come to the boil, add salt and then the spaghetti. When you’re about 3 minutes away from the pasta being ready, add the oil and garlic slices to another pan, crumble in the dried chilli pepper and cook over low to medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon. Once the garlic has taken on a light golden colour, which will hardly take any time, add a couple of tablespoons of pasta-cooking water, stir well with your wooden spoon and turn off the heat. Tip in the cooked, drained spaghetti and toss well so that it’s well slicked by the garlic-studded, chilli-flecked sauce. Sprinkle with Maldon salt and some freshly chopped parsley, if you have some to hand, and eat.
    Serves 1.

LINGUINE WITH CHILLI, CRAB AND WATERCRESS
    You know, I’d eaten this a couple of times and made it myself (throwing in handfuls of peppery watercress as I did so) a few more before I realised it was, give or take, the River Cafe’s recipe – by which I mean to say that although the amounts and full list of ingredients vary, it is an English seaside version of their fabulous original. I suppose that’s how you know something’s become a classic: it just seeps its way into the culinary language.
    Crab is, I think, hugely underrated – so much better than lobster, and much cheaper. You can use frozen crab meat for this, but it’s best to get a fishmonger to cook and pick out the meat for you.
    Don’t let the fact that a pestle and mortar is indicated put you off: this is fabulously easy to make.
    2 cloves garlic
    1 scant tablespoon Maldon salt
    1 large red chilli
    1.25kg undressed crab, to give you 200g white meat and 100g brown meat
    125ml extra virgin olive oil
    juice and zest of 1 lemon
    500g linguine
    handful fresh parsley, chopped
    handful watercress leaves, roughly torn
    Put a large pan of water on to boil for the pasta.
    In a large pestle and mortar pulverise the peeled garlic cloves with the salt, so that it makes a smooth paste. Then add the chopped and seeded chilli and crush again until you have a gloriously red-tinged mixture. Tip in the crab meat, breaking it up gently with a fork, and pour in the oil. Zest the lemon into the mortar and then add the juice.
    Using a fork, beat well to mix, and then you are ready to cook your pasta. So do so, and then drain the pasta and tip into a warmed serving bowl. Immediately pour over the crab sauce and toss the pasta about in it, then throw in the parsley and watercress and toss again.
    Serves 6 as a starter; 4 as a main course.



CAPELLINI CON CACIO E PEPE
    This is another gloriously simple, intensely flavoured pasta, best eaten quickly and hungrily under a warm sun though the deep heat of the pepper is gratifyingly warming on cold winter nights. I list pecorino here, rather than parmesan, simply because, in the first instance, that’s how I came across it (in Rome, many summers ago) and, in the second, because I love its sharper, sourer edge. Sometimes, though, I use the parmesan I always have hanging about, with the zest of a lemon, or half of one, grated in alongside.
    You need the black pepper really quite coarsely ground here (though not quite so coarsely as to induce a coughing fit) so if you can’t adjust your pepper mill, bash some peppercorns about in a pestle and mortar instead.
    300g capellini
    salt
    15g unsalted butter
    10 tablespoons (about 50g) freshly grated pecorino Romano
    1 tablespoon black peppercorns, coarsely ground
    Put a panful of water on to boil for the pasta; once it’s come to the boil, add salt then the pasta and cook according to the instructions on the packet. Just before you drain it, though, remove a coffee