Easiest Pasta Ever (Fettuccine Tapenade)

This is, really, the easiest pasta dish I've ever made. Barely more effort than packet pasta, really, and easy enough to accomplish when tipsy!

It's not even a recipe, really. It just sort of went like this:

• Boil up water for pasta.
• Throw in a good pinch of salt and about 200 g of fettuccine (aka "a good handful").
• While the pasta comes back up to the boil, roughly chop up some capicola found languishing in fridge. Haphazard chopping is okay.
• Toss capicola into nonstick skillet over medium heat, and let it frizzle a bit. Dump about half a cup or so of good quality black olive tapenade over capicola.
• Scoop al dente pasta out of boiling water and dump it on top of the tapanade. Give it a good stir. Add a clove of crushed garlic, if you're feeling fancy, and if the mixture is tight you can loosen it with a glug of olive oil.
• Top with a fair bit of freshly chopped parsley, to give it a bit of a lift.
• Dish up and devour.

This is going in the "Oh yeah!" pile of easy recipes. The cucumber on the side (barely visible) is a bare nod to the notion that olive tapanade doesn't really qualify as a vegetable, nor does parsley (except when used in tabouleh quantities).

I confess that I did a second version of this without the capicolla, but instead with some sauteed yellow and green zucchini and red peppers, and tossed it with tortellini. Slightly more effort, true, but a more well-rounded meal. You could easily make it a vegetarian or vegan dish, as it doesn't need (or want) any cheese atop.