Taking an apartment in Italy this summer? Here are three simple recipes

Some years ago, I had a summer job working as a private chef on the small Italian island of Elba. Every day, I was required to prepare first a simple lunch and then a more elaborate dinner for my employer - an American professor - and the ten or so guests staying with him. As cooking jobs go, it wasn't especially demanding. Italian cuisine is not hard to master. Most dishes, I found, consisted of cooking a few staple ingredients together in a pan, either very briefly or for a long time.

The simplicity of Italian cooking no doubt explains why so many of its dishes - pasta, pizza, risotto - have become popular outside Italy. Yet this is a shame, because Italian cuisine does not travel well. I have never been quite certain why. The cuisines of other countries - whether Thailand, China or France - do not seem to suffer from the same problem.

Yet the implications are unfortunate. The millions of people in Britain and elsewhere who tuck in to pasta on a regular basis, thinking that they are eating Italian food, are in fact consuming a pale imitation of the real thing. In order to learn what Italian cooking is really about, nothing beats going to Italy and trying it for yourself. As such, the following three amazingly simple and delicious pasta sauces, which I learned during my stay in Elba, are meant primarily for those taking holiday homes or apartments in Italy this summer. By all means try them out in Britain - if you use high-quality ingredients, they will still taste good. But I guarantee they will taste better in Italy.

Cold tomato and basil: Cut up several juicy tomatoes into medium-sized chunks. Toss in a bowl with lots of finely chopped garlic, olive oil, roughly 50 torn basil leaves, salt and pepper. Chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Then pour on to freshly cooked fusilli. The coldness of the sauce combined with the heat of the pasta works wonders.

Oil and garlic: Chop several cloves of garlic very finely, and combine in a small pan with several tablespoons (probably six or seven) of olive oil and half a teaspoon of salt. Cook at the lowest possible temperature for between 15 and 20 minutes, until the garlic has become golden, then pour over spaghetti.

Courgette and mint: Cut a few courgettes into rectangular shapes the size of chunky chips and fry them at a medium temperature in olive oil until just tender. Mix the chunks in a bowl with a little extra virgin olive oil, a tablespoon or so of white wine vinegar, finely chopped garlic, several leaves of finely chopped mint, and salt and pepper. Marinate for half an hour or so, and then combine with fusilli or penne.

NB: The absence of parmesan from these recipes is no accident. In Italy at least, where the flavours of the other ingredients always seem that much stronger, most pasta dishes don't need it.

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