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cupful of its cooking water.
    So, drain the pasta and add the butter to the hot pan and then tip in the capellini and toss well, dribbling in a tablespoonful or so of cooking liquid as you do so. Now add the grated pecorino and coarse black pepper and toss well in the residual heat of the pan – adding a little more pasta-cooking liquid if you need the lubrication – before tipping into warmed bowls.
    Serves 4 as a starter; or 2 as a main course.

SHORT PASTA WITH ASPARAGUS, LEMON, GARLIC AND PARSLEY
    If there’s anything you’re going to end up eating, sitting in the garden, throughout summer, it is this. True, new season’s asparagus, our own home-grown asparagus, is what you’d use ideally (and this is, incidentally, a very good way of making a relatively small amount of expensive asparagus go far without tasting of economy), but I don’t think it’s necessary to restrict preparation of this to the short time it’s in season. You wouldn’t want to eat this in winter when all you can get is thick and fibrous spears from far-flung places, but bits straggling in from here and there later on in summer is nothing to get preciously sniffy about.
    The simplicity of this is not just about ease of preparation, gratifying though this is, but about the uncluttered, perfectly balanced arrangement of tastes and texture.
    500g asparagus
    salt
    125ml extra virgin olive oil
    2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
    juice and zest of half a large lemon
    500g rigatoni or penne or any short, stubby pasta you want
    2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
    Snap the woody stems off the bottom of the asparagus, and cut the remaining stalk lengthways and diagonally at 2cm intervals, leaving the tip whole. If it is possible, find a large saucepan to cook the pasta in, that can fit a steamer on top. Bring the saucepan to the boil, add salt generously, and steam the asparagus for 2 minutes. Obviously, you can use two separate pans if you want, but there’s something pleasing about dovetailing the operation. And I know that steaming the asparagus means it will be no longer hot when you toss it in the pasta, but I don’t mind that; if you do, put it in the microwave for a few seconds – go slowly just till it’s warm, otherwise you run the risk of overcooking it – to reheat when you drain the pasta later.
    Put the oil in a frying pan and gently turn the garlic golden over a pretty low heat – you neither want the garlic to burn and turn acrid nor the oil to lose its robustness of flavour – then add the lemon juice, stir and take off the heat. Meanwhile cook the rigatoni, or whatever, in the big pan of water, and when it is al dente, drain and pour into the frying pan. Add the asparagus, toss everything about, sprinkling with the parsley and not-too-finely grated lemon zest.
    If you’re serving the pasta in a bowl (rather than just serving it straight from the pan – and there’s nothing wrong in that) remember to heat it first, and add the parsley and lemon zest only after the pasta’s been transferred.
    Serves 6 as a starter; 4 as a main course.

LINGUINE WITH MUSSELS
    You might label this shiny black musselled variation of linguine alle vongole, linguine alle cozze, but to be frank, this version is not very Italian-flavoured. It owes something to the French taste for moules marinière, and reaches Spainwards for a slug of sherry, in place of the usual white wine, to add oomph to the molluscs’ briney juices.
    It helps if you can get small mussels, simply because otherwise you get too much clattery shell per strand of pasta, but it’s not a life-or-death stipulation. Mussels that are sold in already cleaned and debarnacled bags tend to be reasonably sized. You do have to soak them in cold water in the sink (mussels that stay open at this stage need to be jettisoned, just as mussels that fail to open once they’re on the heat have to be chucked later), and you might have to scrape off a few bits of beard and barnacle that cling