If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll know that it’s quite unusual for me to prepare a dinner which only required opening a box of pasta, opening a bottle of wine, and serving dinner in 12 minutes. Nonetheless, that’s the story tonight. Naturally, my choice was not a box of Ronzoni macaroni.  The pasta involved is called Tartufissima; it’s tagliatelle with truffles, which I bought at Eataly in Boston.

It took four or five minutes to boil the pasta in salted water, and I heated up a tablespoon of butter in a pan and left it warm on the stove, then added the cooked pasta to the butter, plus some grated Parmigiano cheese, and served it for dinner. A few glugs of Ligurian olive oil helped it all slide down smoothly, The wine was, of course not an ordinary wine; it was a 20-year-old Refosco from Venezia Giulia. It was an amazingly good wine, and one that had been lounging in my cellar for many years.

It took just 88 grams of dried pasta, a little butter, salt, and pepper, and two glasses of wine for the perfect dinner.  Quick and easy does not HAVE to be anything less than delicious.