Pasta

You need to wait for the water to boil, but you can lessen the overall time by buying fine egg pasta, which doesn’t take very long to cook. Some butter, cream, parmesan and a few drops of white truffle oil make a wonderful sauce. Or don’t even bother about the truffle oil. People shy away from cream and butter so much that, when they taste them, just as they are, warmed by a tangle of slippery-soft pasta, it comes as a surprise how transportingly good they are. And don’t get anxious about the artery-thickening properties of such a sauce: you don’t want to drench the pasta, just lightly cover it. I sometimes think that butter alone, with a grating of fresh nutmeg, is the best dressing for pasta.