The quickest and easiest pasta recipe in the world (and here's thenews...the kids love it!!!!)

Right, for as long as I can remember I've been doing this oh so simple, tasty cheesy pasta dish. To call it macaroni cheese is wrong, but I do because my nan would make this and she'd call it "macaroni cheese". So I call it my 'kinda' macaroni cheese. 

God knows where she got the recipe, or did she make it up? I'd like to imagine she'd got it off one of those 1970s gaudy coloured recipe cards, you know the ones that were kept in a plastic box with a clear lid, with an a-z of dishes from fish mousses for posh dinner parties to hearty beef stroganoff on a bed of rice. 

Well here it is. I knock this one up in around 10 mins flat. 

A few handfuls of dried pasta, macaroni is nice or spaghetti (that's what my nan always used, she used to break up the strands, as if to replicate tinned spaghetti?!) 

A drizzle of olive oil

2-3 large ripe tomatoes, skins removed by plunging into boiling water. 

A sprinkling of herbage of some kind, dried oregano or basil (she'd wouldn't use herbs in hers, I think it adds another dimension)

Salt and pepper

A couple of handfuls of grated cheddar 

A handful of white breadcrumbs 

So just roughly chop and cook down the tomatoes, add herbs and s&p. Should only take a few minutes.

Cook pasta till al dente, add to pan with tomatoes ("the pasta to the sauce, never the sauce to the pasta" as Gino Da Campo would say).

Add most of cheese, reserving some for the topping.  Add this point turn off heat and tip into a oven proof dish. Now put a mixture of breadcrumbs and cheese on top of pasta and place under grill until cheese melts and breadcrumbs go golden. 

Simple flavours, no onion, garlic or fancy ingredients. A nice strong cheddar will sing in this. It's kind of like a Welsh rarebit in pasta, pure comfort food. As I said, the kids love it, probably because of its simplicity/blandness. And it couldn't be cheaper to make. 

Anne