Three ingredients which you might find lying at the back of the cupboard long after you've forgot you put them there, when friends turn up unexpectedly, or for when you suddenly decide to stay in instead of going out.
I usually just specify 'pasta' in recipes and leave it up to the reader to choose the kind of pasta they like. Here I say 'spaghetti' but I'm not insisting. It's just the kind I usually use for this recipe, but other kinds of pasta will work. And since I'm touting this recipe as an emergency plan for times when you hadn't been meaning to cook anything, I think we have to say that any kind of pasta will do just as well as spaghetti, in order to retain an element of flexibility.
In another departure from tradition I'm going to specify the quantities of ingredients on a per-person basis. Just for a change.
Ingredients
90-120g of pasta per person
5 or 6 pieces of sun-dried tomato p.p.
About 10 pitted green olives p.p.
A small clove of garlic p.p.
A few pinches of dried oregano
Olive oil
Salt
Cook the spaghetti in some boiling salted water and while it's cooking, roughly chop the tomatoes, olives and garlic. When the spaghetti is ready, drain it and lay it in a wide, flat serving dish and sprinkle with dried oregano. Turn on the heat under a large frying pan containing some olive oil and when it is hot, throw in the chopped garlic followed, about twenty seconds later, by the tomatoes. When the garlic is just beginning to turn golden, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the chopped olives, then pour the mixture over the spaghetti.
If you are not limited to ingredients from the back of the cupboard, I would recommend serving this dish with a succulent green salad. Throw in a baton of garlic bread and a bottle of dry red wine. If you're really working out of the back of the cupboard, where fresh lettuce and bread are obviously rather scarce, I would recommend simply upping the quantity of red wine. Either way, you'll be looking at the makings of a very pleasant evening.