THE ART OF FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER

My go-to meal of 2020 is guaranteed to bring comfort and joy at the end of a difficult year

As we crawl to the end of this very strange year, I’ve been thinking about the meals I’ve cooked the most; the foods that have brought comfort and joy. There have been a lot of jacket potatoes with cold sour cream, spring onions and grated cheddar. There have been more eggs than I could count – softboiled with Marmite soldiers for quiet breakfasts, poached with roasted tomatoes, yogurt and herbs for lunch, or fried, shoved between two pieces of white bread with too much ketchup and eaten at 10pm when even dinner felt impossible.

There has also been a lot of pasta. Quick carbonaras, pans of slow-cooked tomato sauce, hearty ragouts and a fail-safe sausage and fennel number that gets rolled out every couple of weeks. The one that has had the most outings, though, is this very simple dish, which I first made last year and has been my best go-to dinner ever since.

It might be because it’s so soothing to make and eat. Onions are sweated until supersoft and jammy, then simmered with hot stock and lemon juice. The pasta is cooked in the sauce and the whole thing is finished with a lick of cream and nutmeg. You could add chopped parsley, a little pancetta, or make any number of other tweaks. On its own, it’s wonderfully simple and grounding, and the lemon gives it a sapling freshness that also happens to make this a great antidote to the festive fare coming up in the next few days.

This time next week, Christmas, in whatever form it eventually comes, will be under way – undoubtedly strange and different for many of us this year. Still, I hope it’s a happy one all the same. Merry Christmas, and see you on the other side.