My son would like to be a capo di tutti cappi when he grows up. He believes this is a matter of getting the accent right. His first words, learned from a Hugo’s guide, are: Davanti mia casa, ce uno piccolo giardino, dove coltiviamo ogni sorta di ortaggi — patate, cippole, cavolfiori ed altri cosi. Depending on the occasion, he can deliver these menacingly, petulantly, or apologetically. Considering that the statement is merely an Italian gardener’s list of vegetables growing in his backyard, all three deliveries sound quite absurd.

I now know that being a capo di tutti cappi is actually a matter of getting the pasta right. I also know now that all my pastas have been duds. Their oiling was inadequate, the ingredients poorly prepared, and the boiling incorrect, yea, even when I followed the minuti prescribed on the package. The Italian chef in my head whispers, Al dente, per piacere, meaning let it be slightly hard to the bite. So let us say it’s tagliatelle, and its 8 minuti, and the little chef timer application on the iPhone has just rung. You drain the pasta in a colander, but the first bite of the first piece tells you that it is still about a minuti away from the correct degree of dente-ness. What now? Does one plop the whole affair back on the fire — for 43 seconds more?

Predicament piles on to dilemma. While I prepare the ingredients, the pasta congeals in the colander. By the time I am ready to put it into the mix, it is one cold medusa-like clump. I poke it with chopsticks to loosen it but only make holes in the strips. I wonder if I should have dipped them into some boiling water, and then perish that thought. They would only have cooked themselves into pulp.

The final dish, prepared before I understood pasta fundamentals, is generally composed of oversoft and ragged pasta, living together but not in amity with all the other ingredients, which are either  done too well or not well enough. Without generous sprinkles of either Tabasco or Worcester sauce, the meal would not survive a cursory sampling. Because I serve it to people who are genuinely fond of me, they go out on a limb and say We must do this again.

THOSE DAYS ARE BEHIND ME. I downloaded Jamie Oliver’s nifty iPhone app 20-minute meals, and watched carefully as the master prepared his pasta, prattling in his cockney way about quantities and bob’s your uncle and happy days and how to do one thing while another was doing itself. It was a dish with bacon and peas and mini shell pasta, and if you are desperately curious you can get both a recipe and video of Jamie here.  Your humble narrator, meanwhile, observed the fine points of cooking with pasta, based on which he developed an original pasta dish to out-Jamie Jamie himself. The principles behind a good pasta meal, inferred from Mr Oliver’s performance, are —

1. Bacon is magical. Make it the first step. Chop some nice smoked bacon into small bits, and let it fry to a nice crisp pinkness, and release its oils. The rest of your dish, added to this, will carry the slight smoky crispness with it.

2. Keep everything chopped and ready — and start cooking right after you get the pasta into the boiling water. Most dishes can be compiled in the time it takes the pasta to become al dente. That way, you don’t have to keep the pasta waiting in the colander, where it could do its congealing trick, but add it hot and moist and al dente like god meant it to be.

3. Don’t throw away the water from the pasta. It’s starchy, slightly salty, and a cup of it into your pasta will keep it moist and glistening on its journey to the table.

4. Use a dollop of cream. It adds a dimensions of silkiness and body to the dish, not to mention bathing everything in a little sauce.

5. Grate cheese — preferably Parmesan, not Cheddar — directly on to the pasta, but just a minute or so before serving. Much longer and it could lead to either chewy cheese or unwieldy clumping.

This evening’s pasta is driven by eggplant rounds fried to a nice near-crispness. To prevent it getting lost in a jungle of linguini, you would prefer to use any of the smaller pastas — orchiette or ‘little ears’ would do fine, but even something smaller such as the bead pasta (acini) thrown into soups, or the short tubes of elbow pasta (gornito) is acceptable.

Ingredients (to feed 4)

Slender purple eggplants, 5 or 6, sliced into rings about 4 mm thick. Salt generously and let stand for 30 minutes to let the water drain out, and then pat thoroughly dry

Smoked streaky bacon or pancetta, about 10 slices, chopped small

Green olives, about 10, cut into halves

Fresh parsley leaves, roughly chopped

Parmesan cheese, about 150 gms

Any small pasta (beads, little ears, elbow shaped) about 400 gms

Olive oil

A little butter

A tablespoon of thick fresh cream

1 lemon

Dried tarragon, about 1 teaspoon

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Heat up about 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan, and when it is smoking, throw in the eggplant rings, lower the heat, and let it cook slowly. Stir frequently. When the rings are golden brown and crisp, the eggplant is ready. Drain it free of oil and keep aside.

2. While that’s going on, get water boiling in a pan, add a good measure of salt, and bung the pasta in. Stir it about a little. Note how long you’re supposed to cook it (usually written on the packet) and note the time on your watch if you dont have a timer.

3. In another saucepan, heat up a tablespoon of olive oil and add the bacon. By the time it is nice and golden, the eggplant rings in the other pan should have gone  crisp too. The bacon should release some of its lovely oils, which will presently cheer the pasta up considerably.

4. The pasta should be ready by now, so drain it in a colander, but reserve some of that starchy water.

5. Add the pasta to the bacon in the pan but don’t stir it quite yet. Turn the fire low.

6. Grate some of the lemon rind into the pasta, season with pepper and about a teaspoon of tarragon.

7. Add the fresh cream chopped parsley, olives, and fresh cream, and then grate the Parmesan over it. Add about a ladle of the starchy water in which the pasta was boiled, and stir the mixture gently.

8. When the mixture is bubbling happily at the base, and when you can see a little satin gravy when you look under the pasta to the pan, it’s almost ready to serve. Sprinkle the crisp eggplant rings over the dish, give it a quick stir, and take it to the table.

The dish should be eaten pretty quickly unless you don’t mind the eggplants losing their crispness. Goes wonderfully with a simple salad of cos lettuce and reddish radicchio leaves, sprinkled with salt, lemon juice, and a few drops of balsamic vinegar.

As you eat, repeat after me, with your mouth full: Davanti mia casa, ce uno piccolo giardino, dove coltiviamo ogni sorta di ortaggi — patate, cippole, cavolfiori . . . io sono capo di tutti capi.