Cooking Time: 15 - 30 mins
Serves: 4   

Ingredients

I always have a couple of boxes of cherry tomatoes in the fridge to make this incredibly quick and easy stand-by supper. If your tomatoes taste a bit bland and watery, you can liven up the flavour with a light sprinkling of caster sugar before putting them in the oven.

400g penne pasta
2 large boxes of cherry tomatoes
A few glugs of olive oil
A big packet of bacon lardons (or you can use snipped-up streaky bacon, or even pieces of chorizo)
75g pine nuts
A big spoonful of basil pesto - or more to taste
A big handful of basil leaves, torn, plus extra leaves to garnish
Plenty of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan oven) mark 7. Put a large pan of water on to boil. Cut the tomatoes in half and arrange them on a large roasting tray, cut-side up. Drizzle with olive oil and season with plenty of ground black pepper. Put the tomatoes in the oven and cook for 15min until they’re starting to collapse and caramelise. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook for 10-12min. Tip the pack of lardons into a frying pan (no oil or butter) and fry over a brisk heat until the bacon starts to turn crisp and golden. Add the pine nuts and toss about until they turn golden. Take off the heat.

Drain the pasta thoroughly and return to the pan. Stir in the tomatoes and all the juices that have escaped into the roasting tin, then stir in the crispy lardons, pine nuts and some of the bacon or chorizo oil for flavour (don’t add too much as it’s saturated fat). Stir in a generous dollop of basil pesto and throw in the roughly torn basil leaves. Stir well and season to taste.

Serve right away, showered with plenty of grated Parmesan and topped with a few more basil leaves.