This is a recipe which I learned from my friend Simon a long time ago. Simon is one of my best friends. We met the first day of botany classes at university when we were about eighteen. I was sitting beside another long time friend, John who, unfortunately, I've since lost touch with, and Simon was sitting opposite. We three kept giggling and taking the piss while everyone else listened intently so it seemed only natural for John and I to strike up a conversation with the new bloke at the tea break. Simon, it turned out, wasn't really sure why he was studying botany either and was much more into the 'good times at the student union' aspect of university life. We became friends immediately and although John and Simon were soon to fall out over a woman, Simon and I went on to be thrown out of university together, experiment with heavy drug abuse, dabble in petty crime and many of the other things that contribute to a rounded education at the university of life. We had a few battles, stitched each other up occasionally and sometimes we hated each other, but remarkably we've managed to maintain our friendship over all these years. It's something which is very special to me and which I would rate as one of the most precious things I've got out of life up to now.
I don't see Simon much these days. He has a good career, a wonderful wife and beautiful children now. He's 'getting it together' in other words, and I feel it's only fair to limit my intrusions into his life and the consequent chaos which ensues, to 'once in a while'.
To get back to the pasta recipe, I should tell you about the time when I turned up at Simon's flat unexpectedly, having been chucked out of my own flat by my partner at the time. As usual we hadn't seen each other for ages and a lot had changed. Simon was married and his wife was heavily pregnant with their first daughter. They both made me very welcome and invited me to crash on the sofa. Simon cooked pasta for dinner and cracked open a bottle of lovely Bunahabhain malt whisky and I had a bit of hashish which we smoked after Barbara had gone to bed (the house, quite rightly, being a no smoking area while she was around).
The next morning we got up early to a beautiful sunny day, packed the rest of the pasta in a plastic tub and drove down to the sea, picking up a couple of canoes from Simon's mum's house on the way. I hadn't seen Simon's mum for over ten years but when I first met her I was very impressed. I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen and when I met her this time she had hardly changed.
We left the hash in the car so we wouldn't be tempted to smoke it out on the sea but once we were out on the cool, calm water with the sun beating down and seals popping their heads up right beside us, we wished we had brought it - which is, of course exactly why we left it in the car. To this day though, I still regret never having been stoned in a canoe.
Here's the recipe for Simon's pasta dish. I think Simon used tagliatelle but I've made it with other kinds and it worked.
Ingredients
500g pasta
1 litre of white sauce (go look at the recipe)
A couple of large handfuls of watercress
1 cup of shelled pistachios
Salt
Black pepper
Cook the pasta (if you don't know how, you'll find instructions here. Chop the watercress roughly, chop the nuts finely and add both to the sauce with some salt and pepper. Be careful with the salt if you started with salted pistachios. Mix the sauce with the drained pasta and bung it all in some kind of oven dish. Put it in a fairly hot oven for about half an hour.
If you don't have an oven you could skip the last part by bubbling the sauce on a medium heat for a few minutes after you add the cress and nuts, then mixing it into hot pasta. It won't be quite as good but it will work. The same goes for cauliflower cheese, by the way.