Happy Valentine's Day!

with sweet doggies! and delicious food. they wouldn't have it any other way.

When Jake lived on earth, he and I often fulfilled a childhood ambition of mine: to eat spaghetti together, at a little red and white checked table, re-living the scene from Lady and the Tramp. Jake was always so patient with me: look at his little face.

It didn’t need to be Valentine’s Day. Jake and I, eating spaghetti, we were so happy! I could almost hear the Neapolitan love songs that Tony’s serenaded the doggies with in the film. Here, in our kitchen, I was Lady and Jake was the Tramp; sometimes we switched. Jake was always amenable as long as it meant he would soon eat spaghetti.

And if I spilled a little sauce on the floor, Jake would lick it up. What a Valentine’s Day lover he was.

I think this means that this Valentine’s Day I need to share with you our favorite/favourite recipe for spaghetti with tomato sauce. It is the most romantic dish I know: especially if you both start at different ends, then suck up that last string of pasta, and end with a sauce-splashed kiss!

Spaghetti al Pomodoro

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce

In Chelsea Market and in Naples on the seafront, Giuseppe di Martino, pasta maker extraordinaire from Gragnano, offers chic pastabars, a sort of wonderland of pasta dishes, some quite fantastical, yet all anchored by this: Devotion.

Devotion is reality, is authenticity, is that last forkful of pasta, the soul-sustaining spaghetti with tomatoes. From the heart. And that is what love is. And Valentine’s Day is about love.

Anyhow, Giuseppe’s Devotion is this: one beautiful forkful of spaghetti with tomato sauce. You always have room, no matter what else you have eaten. Its almost like dessert. Or a French cheese course. Or a kiss. Try it: you will come away with the taste of Naples, the taste of tradition and nature and joyous food-life on your tongue.

Serves 2, plus Jake

1/2 small onion, chopped, OR 1 whole, crushed garlic clove

Olive oil, about 4 tablespoons

Small pinch dried red pepper flakes

1 cans (about 14 oz/400g each) tomatoes, whole, diced, or pureed, as you desire; the important thing is that they come from Italy. Trust me on this. I adore the San Marzano DOP, which comes in 28 oz cans; you can use half a can and save the rest for tomorrow’s pizza.

Salt to taste

Pinch dried oregano leaves, optional

8 oz/ 1/2 lb/ 250g spaghetti, preferably spaghetti from Gragnano, chewy, high protein, irristable in all ways (remember: this is for Jake! He deserves the best). (so do you).

A nice handful of fresh basil leaves

Warm the onion or garlic—not both, not for this sauce, we are feeling authentic, because: Valentines Day: love is authentic—in the olive oil, along with the red chile flakes.

When softened a bit, add the tomatoes. Season with salt and oregano. Cover and cook, slowly, for about half an hour, stirring every so often to keep it from burning on the bottom. Or cook uncovered, higher heat, and quickly. The first way will be richer and deeper, the second will be brighter and fresher.

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to the boil, then add spaghetti and cook until only this side of al dente. Undercook rather than overcook.

Drain, reserving about a cup of the cooking water.

Add the spaghetti to the warm sauce, toss over a low heat, adding a little of the cooking water as you go. Cook together, a minute or two, then serve, topped with handfuls of torn up basil leaves.

If you are eating with your beloved, I suggest you share the same plate; individual forks but you can feed each other as you go. I won’t object if you eat spaghetti with your fingers, it once was, after all, the traditional Neapolitan way.

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Jake lives in heaven now, but he left behind his daughter, Lambchop, to be my best friend and eat spaghetti with. But Lambchop is less a spaghetti girl and more a buttered crumpet kind of girl. This is a photo of her stealing a crumpet from a plate I was trying to photograph.