Today, I’d like to write about a recipe almost everyone made at least once, often without knowing it had a name at all: pasta alla checca. Possibly the greatest improvised summer dish out there, its sauce is barely a sauce at all, and nothing, really, gets cooked but the pasta itself: ripe little tomatoes (ciliegini, datterini, or the sweet ones from Pachino) cut small; cubes of mozzarella and a little caciotta romana; basil torn by hand, a good oil, salt, a turn of pepper, a pinch of oregano if the mood takes you.
That is the whole of it. You boil the pasta, mix everything together, and the warmth does the rest, loosening the cheese just enough to bind it all into something fresh, light and, somehow, more than the sum of its parts. Let’s be honest, on a blazing August afternoon, when the last thing anyone wants is to stand over a hot stove, it is close to perfection.
