I should probably write about 5,000 words of guff about my life among Sicilian lemons, childhood memories of sucking on lemons, and other lemon-linked keywords, before I get to the recipe. That seems essential these days to rank anywhere higher than page 300 on Google.

But I’m too impatient, and this is a recipe that takes 5 minutes at most, so I’d rather just get on with it.

I’ve always called this Vatican Spaghetti because I was taught the recipe by a trainee priest who took me to his digs in the Vatican and made it for lunch. Don’t ask me to explain how I got picked up by a priest. It was all very respectable, I swear. And the food was scrumptious.

Here’s the easiest pasta sauce imaginable!

Vatican Spaghetti, or Sicilian Lemon Pasta

Ingredients

You need

• 1 lemon per person.
• 1 piece of parmesan cheese about the size of the average rubber (that’s an eraser to you Yanks) per person.
• Spaghetti or tagliatelle. OK, you can use short pasta instead if you’ve got that. This is a very low-effort recipe.

Method

Finely grate the zest of the lemon and squeeze its juice. Then grate the Parmesan cheese and add that. Do NOT add any salt, because the flavours come from the sour but aromatic lemon, and the creamy, tangy cheese.

Cook your pasta and then stir this all over it while it’s still nice and hot.

That’s it, your Sicilian lunch is ready. Buon appetito!