The Italian Job

Hurrah! Thankfully there was no 'act of god' or natural disaster in my neck of the woods in the night so as promised here I am to get a post up.
Before I start I have to tell you about the amazing discovery I made yesterday. There I was flicking through my six quid bargain copy of Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, and O.M.G if the lady herself hadn't signed one of the title pages! I'm wondering if maybe there's some of her DNA on the page and maybe I could clone myself a Nigella.
Moving on.
In Brighton there's a FAB family run Italian called Donatello's. Its down the wibbly wobbly Brighton Laines and you can smell the waft of garlic ages before you see the actual restaurant. It's one of my favourite haunts and the Brucie Bonus is, is that they have gluten free pasta on the menu, hurrah!
As my friend SarahB likes to remind me, there was once a time when I couldn't even cook pasta, or anything else for that matter, but five years at uni made me quite a pro at pasta cooking, because it was cook pasta or starve. Spaghetti Bolognese was the first meal I ever cooked for The Boyf and it remains to this day, our anniversary dinner (none of that Claridge's crap for us).
What is so down-right-fan-dabby-dooby about pasta is its so quick and easy to make and there's so many variations on it that, no matter how fussy you are theres a pasta dish out there for you somewhere. Unless you don't like pasta. Oh.
My dad fancies himself a Heston Blumenthal type cook and makes all sorts of weird and wonderful pasta concoctions, but he gave me this great recipe and it turned out to be yum, and not so weird at all.
The recipe includes instructions on how to make homemade pesta which is included in the dish, although feel free to crack open a jar, but do be careful as not all pesto's are gluten free.
Pesto will until the end of time remind me of my flatmate at uni, Becky. she used to use whole jars in her pasta and the smell takes me back to days trying to cook on The Worst Hob In The World, in a kitchen which often reached temperatures hotter than the sun.
This recipe is grand if your a girl or guy on a budget and is also good if you have a lot of hungry gobs to feed. The pesto makes a fair amount, enough to bottle up and keep in the fridge for a few weeks so in times of economic strife it should stretch to a further two or three meals depending on how much you use.