Confit Tomato Pasta to Combat the Sweat

PLUS The Interviews are BACK with Gina Tonic

Hello! Today I bring you a recipe that’s the kind of hands-off and low-maintenance dinner that is needed when the weather is boiling, or you’re feeling overwhelmed, or both. It’s Confit Tomato Pasta – boasting all the briny, juiciness needed to refresh you in such times. I’m also very excited for today is the return of THE INTERVIEWS with the one and only Gina Tonic – culture and sex writer from South Wales, and author of the excellent Greedy Guts memoir. We talk Paris Rosina, working the bar at the Grand National and cooking advice for teenagers.

Tomatoes are good aren’t they? When really ripe or slowly cooked, their natural glutamate (MSG) is quite addictive to me. I feel like they are the edible equivalent of a Pocari Sweat on a hot day. In its ability to replenish your sweats, today’s recipe has similar qualities to Portuguese Tomato Rice, I think.

It’s a dinner that can be prepared in minutes, and then time does most of the work. You reap the rewards later, in the form of a tomato-infused butter that, when mixed with our pasta water, creates a briny, emulsified sauce. This lovely little liquor – full of brothy flavour from the tomatoes – collects in the crevices of your pasta with gloriously revitalising results. Something about the words ‘tomato liquor’ really appeals to me.

I took influence from Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato and butter sauce here, with the two main ingredients being butter and tomatoes, but we’re using summer’s finest cherry tomatoes here.