The pan is already hot. The garlic is sliced. The wine is open, and you've poured yourself a glass before any of it went near the cooking. This is a Tuesday evening kind of dish, or a Friday when you're tired and want something that feels like a small reward for getting through the week.

Prawn and chilli linguine arrived in British kitchens sometime in the nineties, borrowed loosely from the Italian south, and it never left. It didn't leave because it works. Because it takes fifteen minutes and uses one pan and a pot of water, and because the smell of garlic and chilli softening in good olive oil is enough to make whoever else is in the house wander into the kitchen and ask what's for dinner. That's the whole performance. You don't need more than that.

The trick, if there is one, is restraint. Good prawns, a decent chilli, garlic sliced thin enough to melt into the oil, and a splash of wine that lifts everything without drowning it. The pasta water does the rest, pulling the oil and wine and prawn juices into a sauce that clings to the linguine like it belongs there. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. If you've got a handful of cherry tomatoes going soft on the windowsill, halve them and throw them in. A few capers wouldn't hurt. But it doesn't need them. We're only making dinner.