Spaghetti alla Trapanese

Sometimes the simplest and shortest recipes with the fewest ingredients are the most finicky and take much more time than you anticipate at first reading. Spaghetti alla Trapanese falls into this category but it's well worth the extra effort.

It's a mid or late summer dish when fresh ripe tomatoes are at their finest and bursting with flavor. Like some of our other favorite summer recipes (Pasta alla Checca for example or Pesto Genovese) the main ingredients other than the pasta are not cooked so this is a warm rather than piping hot dish that is perfect for lunches or languid summer evenings.

Ingredients for 4-5 people:

1 cup blanched almonds

1 kilo large ripe tomatoes (Cuore di Bue or Canestrino are ideal)

1 or 2 cloves of garlic

2 cups fresh mint

Extra virgin Italian olive oil (the best you can find)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

The objective with this dish is to eliminate the skin, seeds and much of the juice from the tomatoes and be left with the rich ripe flesh so the resulting pesto is pure and not too watery.

Also, to faithfully recreate this dish from Trapani in Sicily you shouldn't use a blender because the ingredients are meant to be gently crushed not blitzed into a smooth paste.

1. Toast the almonds for a few minutes in a dry pan with no oil. Remove when light brown to avoid burning and then chop coarsely with a sharp knife.

2. Chop the garlic and mint and put into a large mortar & pestle with the almonds and pound them all together with a little olive oil. Remove and set aside.

3. Cut a small shallow cross on the tomatoes and immerse in boiling water for about 20 seconds and then quickly into cold water.

The skins should peel off quite easily and then remove the seeds and core, leaving the soft flesh and a little of the juice.

4. Crush softly in the mortar adding salt and pepper. If there's too much juice from the tomatoes, drain some away and retain in the fridge for another use like Gazpacho soup.