So, I decided to start off gently. The advantage of this recipe is that... I already knew how to make it. Awesome.
Ingredients
- Olive oil
- Half an onion, chopped
- One clove of garlic, chopped
- One tin of chopped tomatoes
- A small amount of dried thyme or whatever; basil seems more traditional, but does Sainsbury's Local have that? Buggered if I could find it.
- Pasta
Method
Easy peasy. Heat some oil in a saucepan, add the onions and stir until they're more or less transparent (supposedly, although I'm sure I just make them turn brown). And add the garlic shortly afterwards.
When you get bored of watching onion cook, add the chopped tomatoes and herbs. Thus begins phase 2, involving bubbling rather than sizzling.
After about ten minutes of that, boil water in a second pan. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Once it is al dente, the pasta sauce will be about ready as well. Drain the pasta and stir into the pasta sauce. Serve.
Evaluation
And lo, it was good. I think the browning of the onion was due to too high a heat in the initial stages; it's better taken slow.
The total cost of the sauce was somewhere less than £1; this compares favourably with ready-made sauce. In fact, this was a ridiculously economical meal.
At the same time as doing this, I set up a new housemate with wireless internet access, and got a beer and £5 in return. Bizarre, but he insisted. Then I had to fix his DNS settings, which someone at his previous accomodation at hardcoded to something weird... and wrong. This was the first time I'd ever had to tackle Windows XP's network settings in Hungarian.