My favourite dish of all time is whore's pasta (spaghetti alla puttanesca). The story goes that "working girls" could rustle it up in a flash from store-cupboard ingredients. For two:

Put two glugs of olive oil in your best frying pan. Low heat.

Add eight smashed-up anchovy fillets ( the ones in olive oil, drained). Fry gently until the anchovies are melting down.

Throw in half a teaspoon of crushed chilli flakes. Or more. Ask your wife. Throw in two finely-sliced garlic cloves. Fry gently but don't let the garlic colour. Two minutes.

Now you need some tomatoey stuff here. I hate making my pasta sauces too gloopy with loads of sloppy tinned tomatoes, so I make batches of quite intense tomato sauce with basil and garlic and freeze it. Failing that, half a tin of chopped tomatoes plus a handful of cherry toms plus a spoonful of sundried tomato paste will cut it. Chuck that in, then chuck in a big handful of slightly chopped pitted black olives. Get that lot simmering while you cook your spaghetti in well-salted water.

The spaghetti must NOT go past al dente. Drain it a minute before it's completely done. Throw the spaghetti into the frying pan with the sauce and stir it up. Do not add seasoning as the anchovies and chilli and olives and spaghetti water have already done that for you.

Serve in warmed bowls. Do not add Parmesan cheese. Anathema. Though a sprinkling of chopped fresh parsley is the coup de grace if you have any. If any whore employed by me fed me that first she'd be getting an extra twenty quid. And if she plied me with a glass or three of decent Primitivo as well, she'd have a quiet night.