The second thing I’ve always taken for granted is that zucchini is delicious. Zucchini has always been one of my favorite vegetables, and I attribute this primarily to the fact that, in my family, we ate zucchini in one way and one way only: bathed in garlicky olive oil and dusted extravagantly with parmesan cheese.

Only now do I realize that this was perhaps somewhat unusual. It appears many people I know were forced to choke down blandly steamed or (gasp!) boiled courgette, and an equal number of people associate zucchini with student-cafeteria-style vegetarian mush.

The poor zucchini clearly falls into the same camp as the leek: a wonderful vegetable in its own right, but one which is often misused or relegated to playing a bit part in dishes which don’t gain anything from it. Zucchini is delicate and watery, so it needs minimal processing and a careful choice of complementary flavors in order for it to shine.

That’s not to say it can’t stand up to herbs, spices, vinegar or even chilies. These ingredients just need to be used judiciously to bring out the best in this squash. Also, unless you’re trying to pad out your meal, I don’t see the point of throwing chopped up zucchini into a generic stew or, god forbid, a bowl of chili. It will probably go squidgy, it will probably not taste of anything, and it will probably not make zucchini-haters change their mind about this wonderful summer vegetable.

But maybe my family’s simple sautéed zucchini recipe will.

For two people (you can easily scale this up, and the amounts aren’t critical anyway), you’ll need:

• a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil
• a few small garlic cloves, left whole (or larger ones cut in half)
• a few medium zucchini, sliced very thinly (it’s easiest with a mandoline, but a knife works too)
• a pinch of flaky sea salt
• grated parmesan cheese

Heat the olive oil and garlic cloves in a large frying pan over medium heat for several minutes until the garlic becomes fragrant; it shouldn’t sizzle or turn brown, it should just start to smell really good. Add the sliced zucchini and the salt, and stir the zucchini to coat it in the olive oil.

The zucchini I ate as a kid was stewed in the olive oil until it was disintegratingly tender, but these days I sauté it more lightly for a shorter period of time. If you want the stewed option, cook the zucchini over the medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it’s very soft and mellow. If you want the zucchini to hold its shape and some of its bite, let it cook for only 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally, until it’s just starting to go translucent (you can bump up the heat if you need to, but you don’t want to brown the zucchini, you just want to soften it).

When the zucchini is cooked to your liking, serve it alongside some juicy lamb chops, a golden roast chicken or an assortment of other Mediterranean veggies, and top it with lots of freshly grated parmesan. Oh, and you can pick out the whole garlic if you like, but you’ll be missing out on a tasty treat.

However, some recipes are simply too good and too deserving of greater exposure to not write about, and one of those is the recipe for grilled flank steak with rosemary from Bon Appétit magazine in 1995.

My parents have used this marinade recipe for years, and their London broil (incidentally, that Wikipedia picture is their London broil) cooked outside on the barbecue to juicy, chargrilled perfection is probably the meal Jeremy and I request most often when we visit them. Here in Brighton, we don’t (yet) have a grill and don’t have ready access to flank steak either, so I use the marinade on regular steaks which I sear quickly in a griddle pan.

I think one secret to this recipe is the honey which, when it hits the hot grill, adds a fantastic caramelized depth to the already flavor-packed marinade. Combined with soy sauce, rosemary, pepper and garlic, you wind up with an umami-tastic taste which is sweet, savory, pungent and utterly addictive. I mean, just try to stop eating this steak once you’ve started.

To make enough marinade for a couple of good-sized steaks with plenty left over for drizzling and dipping, you’ll need:

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 1/2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 steaks (rump steak, sirloin, rib steak - anything you like)

Mix the marinade ingredients together in a glass or plastic dish, add the steaks and coat them well, then cover them and let them marinate for a few hours.

When you’re ready to cook the steaks, take them out of the marinade and brush off some of the garlic and rosemary so it doesn’t burn in the pan. Sear the steaks in a hot griddle pan or frying pan until they’re rare to medium rare, then remove them from the pan and let them sit a few minutes.

You can either serve the steaks in one piece or slice them thinly across the grain like you would with a flank steak. And if you want to use the leftover marinade as a sauce, bring it to a boil and simmer it for a few minutes. It’ll be super-concentrated and just right for drizzling over the cooked steak to add an extra flavor punch.

Note: The original marinade recipe calls for salt in addition to the soy sauce which I (and most of the reviewers on Epicurious) find a bit excessive. If you’re that way inclined, you could throw a pinch of salt into the marinade—just be aware that smaller steaks will absorb more of the marinade than a big slab of flank steak, and if you boil down the marinade afterwards, it’s going to be really salty. But hey, taste is a matter of taste, if you know what I mean.

The broad (or fava) bean is one of the more intriguing and challenging veggies available in the summertime—intriguing to me because I didn’t know what a fava bean was before moving to England (Hannibal Lecter notwithstanding), and challenging because they can be time-consuming to prepare and their skins have a bitterness which may not appeal to everyone. But they are also one of my favorite fresh beans, so they appear frequently on my plate when the days turn warm.

The broad bean is an emerald green gem sealed in a milky green skin and nestled in a thick pod. You can eat really young broad beans whole, pod and all, but you’re unlikely to find such tender specimens in your average shop. When broad beans are somewhat older but still small, you just need to free them from their fuzzy sleeping bags and drop them into boiling water for a few minutes before consuming them skins and all.

But the older and bigger the beans, the tougher and more bitter the skins, so as broad bean season draws to an end, you’ll have to invest more labor in making them palatable. This means podding them, boiling them as above, draining them and then slipping them out of their skins individually (either just by squeezing them or by nicking the skin with a sharp knife and then squeezing them). Yes, it takes a bit of time if you’re cooking a lot of beans at once, but it’s also a comfortably meditative act: nick the skin, squeeze the bean, nick the skin, squeeze the bean…

Once the beans are cooked to tenderness, they will play nicely with a variety of other ingredients. You can keep it simple—a good dousing with butter or olive oil, maybe a twist of lemon—but I really like combining broad beans with something salty to balance out any bitterness.

Try tossing freshly cooked broad beans with feta or goat cheese and a glug of olive oil; the warm beans will make the cheese go creamy and slightly melty in a most pleasing way. Salty cured meat will achieve the same effect—think chorizo, pancetta or bacon sizzled until crisp, maybe with some onion or shallots as well, and then mixed together with the beans. And a handful of soft herbs (mint, basil, parsley) is never a bad idea either.

If a plate full of broad beans alone is too much for you, try combining them with other seasonal veggies. They pair wonderfully with peas, they add brilliant color to a salad made with new potatoes and sun-blushed tomatoes, or you can throw them into a light primavera sauce for pasta alongside asparagus, parmesan and tons of fresh herbs.

Broad beans aren’t as readily available in the States as they are here in Britain, so if you see some at a market or in the store, I’d encourage you to snap them up and give them a try. All the podding and peeling is worth it for the plate of bright green summer goodness you’ll have in the end.

I wound up in this predicament after making a batch of Bon Appetit’s raspberry-lemon heart cakes. It’s a really good recipe, but it leaves you with a bowlful of cake scraps which Bon Appetit suggests you use to make mini-trifles with lemon curd and whipped cream.

This got me thinking: What’s better than whipped cream? Well, obviously, whipped cream and mascarpone, that unctuous staple of classic tiramisu. I figured that by combining this with lemon curd, some fresh berries and a good splash of dessert wine, at best I’d have a sprightly summer dessert, and at worst I’d have a messy bowl of boozy cake, cream and fruit—which, let’s face it, isn’t such a terrible fate.

I’m pleased to say that I ended up with the sprightly dessert, and it was remarkably yummy. If you don’t have homemade cake sitting around, you can use purchased sponge or pound cake to make this (I recently used two loaves of McVitie’s lemon cake, which worked fine). Also, either fresh or thawed frozen berries are okay; frozen ones will make everything a bit juicier, but that’s no bad thing. And don’t get hung up on the measurements; you can make the dessert based on your taste and what you have on hand.

Incidentally, I’ve used American cup measurements for the cream, cake and berries—just fill a measuring cup to about the 240ml line to approximate an American cup.

To make a giant bowl of triflemisu which will feed about 10 people (or, you know, 2 over the course of several days), you’ll need:

• 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 8 tablespoons sugar syrup (equal parts water and sugar)
• 1 tub (250g/9oz) mascarpone
• 2 tablespoons lemon curd
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 cup (240ml) whipping cream
• 6 cups cubed lemon or vanilla sponge cake
• 3 or 4 cups mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, etc.)
• a few spoonfuls of sweet wine (Muscat, Sauternes - optional)

Mix together the lemon juice and sugar syrup and set aside.

Beat the mascarpone, lemon curd and lemon zest in a bowl until smooth. In a separate bowl, whip the whipping cream to soft peaks, then fold the whipped cream into the mascarpone mixture.

You can assemble the triflemisu in one or several layers. For a single layer, line a wide bowl with the cubed sponge cake, pressing the cake slightly into the bottom and sides of the bowl. Drizzle the cake with the lemon juice and sugar syrup mixture. The cake should be moist but not sopping wet, so you may need more or less liquid depending on the dryness of your cake. Scatter the berries evenly over the cake. If you’re using a dessert wine, sprinkle a few spoonfuls of it over the berries and cake, then spread the mascarpone and whipped cream mixture over the top. To make a multi-layered triflemisu, just repeat these steps using only some of your cake/berries/cream for each layer.

Cover the triflemisu and let it chill in the fridge for a few hours. For extra attractiveness, you can scatter more berries and/or lemon zest over the top of the dessert or drizzle on some more lemon curd before serving.

Somewhat less dramatically, it was sheer laziness which kept Jeremy and me from ever making it to The Greys pub when we still lived across town in Hove. Despite being known as a great music pub, a great Belgian beer pub and a great food pub, we never summoned the energy to experience these things for ourselves. But as soon as we moved into Brighton proper, we resolved to get to The Greys as soon as possible.

Reliable sources had informed us that The Greys serves up the best steak in Brighton. Really good steaks are hard to come by here (I contend that Jeremy actually cooks the best steaks in town), so we were excited but also wary, having been disappointed too many times before by tough, under-seasoned, poorly cooked pub steaks.

Our wariness was misplaced. The rib-eye steak at The Greys—served with a generous portion of hand-cut potato wedges, a big grilled mushroom and grilled tomatoes—is scrumptious. It’s juicy, it’s tender, it’s cooked properly, it’s seasoned perfectly, and it has such a deep flame-grilled taste that Jeremy and I wonder if some chemical trickery is involved in the cooking (Liquid smoke? Or maybe they really do have a flame grill in the kitchen…). I think it rightfully deserves the title of Best Steak in Brighton (Except Maybe for Jeremy’s).

There is more to The Greys than steak, however. The regularly changing menu caters to seafood lovers and vegetarians as well, and while I’ve only indulged in meaty dishes myself, I’ve spied on other people’s plates of sea bream and risotto balls and thought they looked very good indeed.

As far as meat goes, I can confirm that the chef at The Greys knows how to cook a duck breast to perfection (crispy and salty skin, juicy pink meat, flavor-packed jus), and even a humble plate of meatballs with mustard mashed potato is elevated above the ordinary thanks to the quality of the ingredients used and the skill that goes into preparing them.

You can just pop in to The Greys for a pint of beer and a snack if you want, or you can enjoy a full three-course meal with a bottle of wine. The starters are comfortingly traditional and local: potted shrimps, South Downs partridge salad, pig’s ear goujons (that’s right, pigs’ ears—breaded and fried until they’re golden and crispy on the outside, tender and tasty on the inside). The desserts are all homemade with an elegant flair, and they even pair well with the fruity Belgian beers on offer; we finished our first meal at The Greys with a slice of orange and passionfruit cheesecake washed down with a sweet passionfruit beer, which was an unusual match made in heaven.

The Greys serves restaurant-quality food in pub surroundings. Maybe some people would call that a “gastropub”, but to me The Greys feels like a normal local pub which just happens to serve great food. It’s comfortable, unpretentious and affordable. It’s also very popular, so if you’re intent on having dinner there, you’d probably be wise to book a table. Food is served Tuesday through Thursday and on Saturday, and they do Sunday roasts as well.

Whether you live in Brighton, in Hove, or somewhere else entirely, I recommend making the steep trek up Southover Street for a pint and/or a meal at The Greys. It took Jeremy and I ten years to get there ourselves, but now that we’re hooked, we’re certainly making up for lost time.

The Greys, 105 Southover Street, Brighton BN2 9UA, England, +44 (0) 01273 680 734

Italian sweet-and-sour mixtures—or agrodolce—are typically based on vinegar and sugar and can be used for everything from grilled vegetables and fried fish to hearty game stews. The contrasting tastes add an interesting dimension to otherwise simple dishes. For instance, griddled zucchini is nice, but griddled zucchini sprinkled with fresh herbs and dressed in a garlicky agrodolce is vibrant.

The same applies to the humble pork chop. When pork chops are thick and juicy and fatty and flavorsome, you don’t need much more than salt, pepper and a hot grill to make them into a tasty meal. But to elevate them from “tasty” to “awesome” with minimal effort, I recommend trying the recipe for sweet and sour glazed pork chops published last month in Saveur magazine.

As originally written, the Maiale in Agrodolce recipe calls for cooking Frenched pork chops (i.e. with the fat trimmed from the bone) on a barbecue while basting them with the sweet and sour glaze. Since it’s not quite barbecue season here—and we don’t have a barbecue yet anyway—I cook the chops in a frying pan and it works just fine. Also, instead of making the glaze separately, I whip it up in the frying pan I’ve used to cook the chops. That way you get to scrape up the yummy brown bits from the pan and you don’t have as many pots to wash. Also, don’t worry about the “Frenched” bit; a little fat on the bone never hurt anyone.

For two people, you’ll need:

• 2 big bone-in pork chops (Frenched or not)
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 2 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 sprig fresh rosemary
• 2 tablespoons butter

Rub the chops with olive oil and season them well with salt and pepper. Heat a heavy frying pan over medium-high heat and cook the chops until they are nicely browned on the outside and every so slightly pink on the inside (it will probably take about 15 minutes total).

Remove the chops from the frying pan and keep them warm while you make the agrodolce sauce. Lower the heat to medium, then add the vinegar, honey and rosemary to the pan. Simmer this mixture until it is reduced slightly—and don’t lean over the pan to take a big sniff of the sauce unless you want boiling vinegar fumes to sear your sinuses (I speak from experience). Whisk in the butter and watch the glaze turn thick and glossy—it’s like magic!

Finally, pour any juices from the resting pork chops back into the glaze, remove the sprig of rosemary, and drizzle the agrodolce over your waiting pork chops. With a side of stewed sweet peppers and maybe some spicy, garlicky broccoli, you’ll have a simple but impressive meal to remember.

Incidentally, this sweet/tart sauce with its savory hint of rosemary is delicious on duck breasts as well. Give it a try—your taste buds will thank you.

Some recipes for griddled asparagus would have you parboil the asparagus first. This is an unnecessary complication which, to me, defeats the whole purpose of griddling the asparagus—that purpose being to not boil it. Griddling alone is fast and easy, and it gives the asparagus a lovely chargrilled edge which really brings out their flavor.

All you need to do is snap off the woody ends of the asparagus and brush the stalks with olive oil. Heat a heavy griddle pan over medium heat, lay the asparagus in a single layer in the pan, and cook them for about ten minutes, rolling them around now and then, until they are tender enough to pierce with a fork. They should still have some bite to them when they’re done, and ideally they’ll have rather attractive (and tasty) grill marks on them too.

Griddled asparagus need nothing more than a pinch of sea salt and maybe a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, and then they will sit comfortably alongside a nice piece of lamb or some fresh grilled fish. But asparagus and cheese are close friends, too, so if you want to get swanky, you can scatter shaved parmesan or crumbles of goat cheese or feta over the spears. It looks pretty and it tastes great.

A vinaigrette is another nice accompaniment to griddled asparagus. Olive oil and balsamic will do the trick, but for something a bit different, try a Spanish-inflected dressing like the one I found in The New Spanish Table, a gorgeous cookbook packed with amazing recipes. To dress about a pound of asparagus, whisk together a tablespoon of good extra-virgin olive oil, a tablespoon of sherry vinegar (ideally aged) and half a teaspoon of honey. Season the dressing with coarse salt and pepper and toss the asparagus in it. It’s simplicity itself, but when you start with something as delicious as griddled asparagus, you don’t need to do a whole lot to make the dish shine.

Som tam, or spicy green papaya salad, is ubiquitous in Thailand. I first had it on a street corner in Bangkok, and it was a sweet, sour, salty, spicy and utterly delicious wake-up call for my taste buds. I fell in love with the dish there and then, and for the rest of our time in Thailand, Jeremy and I sampled as many som tams as we could, from rooftop restaurants to street vendors (the street vendors were invariably the best).

Much of our time in Thailand was spent on the island of Koh Tao, where we were lucky enough to take part in a Thai cooking class at Charm Churee resort. Som tam was one of the dishes we made, and I now use the Charm Churee recipe to make som tam at home.

This isn’t the canonical recipe for som tam; different recipes call for adding the ingredients in a different order, and most recipes include dried shrimps, which this one doesn’t. But som tam is a very customizable dish, so feel free to add dried shrimp, leave out the peanuts, use more chilies, use less sugar—make it the way you like it.

For two generous portions, you’ll need (see below for a note on equipment and ingredients):

• 1 or 2 (or more!) Thai chilies (aka bird’s eye chilies, aka prik kee noo)
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• 1 cup long beans cut into inch-long segments
• 4 cups peeled and julienned green papaya
• 1 julienned carrot
• 5 tablespoons lime juice (about 1 medium lime)
• 2-3 tablespoons fish sauce (to taste)
• 2-3 tablespoons palm sugar melted in 1 tablespoon warm water
• 1 or 2 small tomatoes cut into bite-size wedges
• 1/4 cup chopped unsalted roasted peanuts (optional)

Pound the garlic and chilies to a paste with a mortar and pestle. Add the beans and pound them lightly to bruise them, then add the papaya and carrot. Pound and stir so that the vegetables are slightly softened (not ground into mush!) so that they soak up the chili and garlic.

Add the lime juice, fish sauce and sugar, pound lightly and stir, and check the taste, making sure you have a good balance of sweet, salty, sour and hot. Adjust the seasoning if you want to, then stir in the tomatoes, bruising them lightly so they meld with the other ingredients.

Pile the salad in a bowl or on a plate, sprinkle over the chopped peanuts and you’re good to go. In Thailand, this is often served as part of a set with sticky rice and grilled meat, but it makes a great snack or lunch all on its own. And while nothing can compare to eating searingly hot som tam out of a plastic bag on a sweltering afternoon in Thailand, it’s incredibly delicious even when consumed sedately at a dining room table in England.

A note on equipment and ingredients: The ideal way to make this is with a big Thai mortar and pestle; they’re widely available online if you can’t find one locally (my search for a mortar and pestle is what took me to Unithai for the first time). But if all else fails, you could use a big bowl and a something like a wooden spoon to pound the vegetables.

I julienne the papaya with a little peeler gadget we bought on the street in Bangkok. I’ve seen them here in Asian shops, and they’re dead cheap. If the peeler is too much of a hassle, you could grate the papaya on the large holes of a cheese grater. Or if the peeler is too much of a cop out, you could use a big knife like the pros.

All of the ingredients should be available from a well-stocked Asian food store, though admittedly the green papaya can be tricky to come by. The Internet will give you plenty of suggestions for green papaya substitutes, but I can’t vouch for them. Some easier substitutions are green beans instead of long beans, light brown sugar instead of palm sugar, and cashews instead of peanuts. But I wouldn’t go messing with the lime juice or the fish sauce; these are two of the quintessential flavors of Thailand, and without their tang and pungency, som tam just isn’t som tam.

And yet, cauliflower can be so much more. The thing about cauliflower is that it’s innocuous enough on its own, but it really likes hanging out with some edgy characters: spicy curry powder, salty capers, sour lemons and smoky meats.

Also, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with steaming or boiling it, cauliflower really shows its stuff in the oven. Roasting cauliflower eliminates its wateriness, deepens its flavor and highlights its alluring nuttiness. It also gives you yummy, crispy, caramelized bits to snack on, which is always a good thing.

When we got a head of cauliflower in our veg box this week, I slipped it into the fridge next to a package of chorizo, looked at the two things together and thought, “Hmm…”. And thus the roasted cauliflower and chorizo dish was born.

You’ll need:

• 1 medium head of cauliflower, broken up into smallish florets
• olive oil (preferably extra virgin)
• about 1/2 cup spicy Spanish chorizo, sliced into chunks
• 1/2 medium red onion, sliced thin
• 1 small clove of garlic, sliced thin
• sea salt and black pepper
• squeeze of lemon juice (optional)

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F. Spread the cauliflower florets in a single layer in a baking dish.

Heat a generous glug of olive oil over medium-high heat in a frying pan, then throw in the chorizo and saute it for about a minute, releasing its juices. Add the sliced onion and cook it with the chorizo for another minute or two, then toss in the garlic and saute it briefly until it’s fragrant.

Pour the onion and chorizo mixture over the cauliflower, being sure to get all of the tasty olive oil in there too. Season the cauliflower with a good grind of black pepper and a sprinkling of sea salt (but bear in mind that chorizo is quite salty). Toss everything together well so that the cauliflower is coated in the olive oil, then slip the tray into the oven and roast for about 25 minutes, stirring once, until the cauliflower is tender, browned and sizzling.

When the cauliflower is cooked, taste it for seasoning and squeeze a bit of lemon juice over it to brighten the flavors. Then tuck in! This recipe makes enough to serve two generously as a side dish, but it could also be served alongside other small dishes as part of a tapas spread. Or a single individual (ahem, such as myself) could sit down and devour nearly the entire bowl of it for lunch. That’s just how good cauliflower can be.

But say the words to an American, and one thing will spring to mind: plump links of coarsely ground pork, seasoned with fennel and possibly chili flakes (depending on whether the sausage is “sweet” or “hot”), and probably grilled and served in a bun with peppers and onions, or stewed in a rich tomato sauce to accompany polenta or pasta.

Much like the smoked sausage needed for red beans and rice, the American version of Italian sausage is hard to find here in the UK. This frustrated me until I realized that just a pinch of one key ingredient—fennel seed—can transform a plain old pork sausage into something approaching an Italian sausage as an American would know it.

This is the tactic I use when making pasta with sausage ragu, my go-to recipe for chilly weeknights. You can make this with almost any type of herby or garlicky sausage, and of course you don’t have to add the fennel if you don’t want to, though I’d highly recommend it.

Also, instead of simply slicing the sausages, you can create a really thick and clingy sauce by squeezing the sausage meat out of its casing. It’s a bit of a slippery job, but it takes all of a minute or two and it’s worth it for the final product: a heaping bowl of pasta with spicy sausage morsels nestled in every nook and cranny.

For two people, you’ll need:

• olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 or 3 plump pork sausages (Italian, garlic, herb, etc.)
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• pinch of chili flakes
• pinch of fennel seed
• pinch of oregano, basil and/or other Italian herbs (optional)
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste (tomato puree)
• 1/4 cup wine (red or white)
• 1 can chopped tomatoes (400g)
• salt and pepper

Heat a good splash of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté the chopped onion for about five minutes, until it begins to soften. Squeeze the sausage meat out of its casing into the skillet, then break up the sausage with a spatula. Cook the sausage with the onion until the meat is browned, scraping up any crispy bits from the bottom of the pan as you go (crispy bits are good). If your sausage is quite fatty, you may want to drain off some of the fat as you cook it.

When the sausage is browned, add the garlic and as much chili, fennel and other herbs as you like; I generally use a small pinch of chili flakes and a bigger pinch of everything else. Stir in the tomato paste and then douse everything with the wine. After the wine has sizzled down, add the can of chopped tomatoes, stir everything well and bring it to a simmer. Check for seasoning (salt, pepper, maybe more herbs or tomato paste) and then let the sauce bubble away for as long as you like—at least until your pasta is cooked, though you can leave it on the stove for ages and it’ll just get thicker and better.

Serve the ragu over rigatoni, penne or similarly shaped pasta which will cradle all the lovely meaty bits. You’ll also want some crusty Italian bread to mop up any extra sauce and a glass of spicy red wine to wash it all down.