Off Topic: Jon's Amazing Roast Tomato and Pancetta Pasta

I'm quite a fan of getting into the kitchen. When you manage cook up something that really hits the mark it's very satisfying. It's similar to the feeling you get when you finish painting a miniature you're particularly proud of. I came up with this recipe on the spot while wondering the aisles of the supermarket with an urge for roasted tomatoes. I say "came up with," but to be honest it probably just got lodged in my brain after watching some random cookery show or other on the telly. It's tasty stuff though, so I thought I'd share it.

It should take about 30 minutes to cook, fridge-to-plate, and quantities are listed per-person.

What You Need

1. 125g cherry tomatoes (or some other small variety)
2. 50g diced pancetta (you can use bacon instead)
3. A large clove of garlic
4. A nice handful of fresh rocket
5. Olive oil (the more virgin the better)
6. Salt and pepper to taste
7. Grated parmesan 
8. 125g dry spaghetti (or some other pasta)
9. A ceramic oven dish, the sort you'd cook lasagne in. It should be as small as possible, while still fitting all the tomatoes in a single layer
10. A large saucepan for the pasta
11. For those of you in strange foreign lands who flaunt the International System of Units and insist upon outdated imperial measurements, you might need Google to help you convert the quantities.

How to Make It
First things first, get the oven pre-heating. You want to get it up to about 180°C before you stick anything in there. This baby needs a good blasting to ensure crispy pancetta and well done tomatoes.

While the oven gets up to speed, you can prepare the oven dish and it's delicious contents. Cut the cherry tomatoes into halves and lay them out in a nice compact layer in the dish, one half-tomato thick. I like my tomatoes roasted until they collapse in on themselves in a juicy mess, and cutting them down helps this happen quicker.

Chop off the "root" end of the garlic clove, and crush the bastard under the flat of your knife, using the the palm of your hand. The skin should then slip off nicely. Chop it up and sprinkle evenly over the layer of tomatoes. A bit of salt and pepper over it all at this stage goes well.

Next up, add a layer of the diced pancetta over the tomatoes. If you're using bacon, cut it up first - roughly 2cm squares should about do. Similar to the tomatoes, you want a nice even layer, about one piece thick. Give the whole lot a good douse of olive oil, and you should end up with a sort of pig-and-tomato-cake that looks something like this:

Throw your dish-of-awesome into the oven, towards the top at the back where it's nice and hot.

At this point, fill your saucepan to the top with water, add a good dash of salt, and fire it up on the hob. Remember you want a good amount of space in the pan for the pasta to move about in when it cooks. This helps prevent it sticking together or to the bottom of the pan.

The water will take about ten minutes to get boiling, so now's a good time to grab a beer.

Once the water is at a good rolling boil, throw in the pasta. It will take another ten minutes or so for the pasta to cook, so if you've finished your beer it might be a good time to get another.

Give the pasta a good stir every few minutes to help prevent it sticking. Keep an eye on the dish in the oven too - don't let it burn. Towards the end of the ten minute mark, start testing pasta from the pan to see if it's cooked. You want it firm, but not hard - al dente as they say. You certainly don't want it soggy and limp. Once it's done, drain the pasta and put it into a large bowl. Throw in the rocket and mix it up with the pasta (it's easier to do this now).

You can now extract the dish of roasted awesome from the oven (watch your fingers, it's hot!). The pancetta should be cooked through and a bit crispy, and the tomatoes should have started to collapse. The whole lot should be sitting in a nice pool of garlic, olive oil and tomato juice soup. A lot like this in fact:

Throw this lot in with your pasta and stir together, ensuring the juicy oily goodness covers as much of the pasta/rocket as you can. Serve it up and you're done!

Well, almost done. No pasta dish is complete without parmesan cheese on top. And as a parmesan lover, this means "add parmesan until you can't see the pasta anymore." That's it. Grab another beer, put your feet up and dig in.