Eleanor STEAFEL

My rule of thumb with dinner parties is that only one of the dishes should require any real effort. I tend to cleave towards a table laden with good nibbles, then a standout main and an assembly pud – at this time of year I might stretch to vanilla ice cream with poached cherries and chopped dark chocolate, or throw together a summer trifle (who doesn’t want to see out the end of a meal in a blaze of trifle?).

This week, though, with friends coming for dinner, I became obsessed with the idea of making Gill Meller’s recipe in the Telegraph for a custardy blueberry and thyme clafoutis. It’s the perfect dessert for a summer’s evening, served warm with cold double cream. I decided it required something equally sunny and light to precede it and briefly toyed with making seven different Ottolenghi dishes. But my rule is: one dish that requires proper cooking, one you can make with your eyes shut. Pasta, then, was the only way to go.

I had been meaning to try frying whole slices of lemon, figuring that if tossed in a little too much nutty browned butter they would caramelise but still retain some of that tart freshness. They made the perfect base for this heavenly sauce, which comes together rather like cacio e pepe.

Green olives bring a welcome salty kick. Use any soft herbs, but include some parsley if you can – it has a way of rounding out all the other flavours. I happened to have a surfeit of ends of bread, so I made crumbs and fried them until golden and crispy to scatter over the finished dish. It’s just as good without crumbs, though, and exactly the sort of simple main you need when you’ve worked hard(ish) for dessert.