Everybody must have a favorite version of this easy supper for a hot summer night. Here’s mine:

Tomatoes fresh from the garden
Basil
Generous amount of olive oil, maybe about 1/3 cup
Salt & Pepper
Linguini or spaghetti

Optional: minced garlic added to tomato mixture, crumbled Feta or fresh mozzarella cubes as a topping before serving

Dice the tomatoes into a bowl. Add a generous amount of torn fresh basil leaves. Add salt (this draws juices from the tomatoes and makes part of the “sauce”). Add a generous amount of olive oil — it becomes the second part of the sauce. If you are using it, add the minced garlic.

Let this sit on your kitchen counter for a couple of hours to exchange flavors while you sip iced tea in front of the fan.

When you are ready to eat, cook the pasta and drain, then stir hot pasta into the tomato mixture. The heat from the pasta warms the sauce and releases the fragrance of the basil.

For a more substantial meal, crumble feta or toss fresh mozzarella cubes on top of the pasta.

Early this morning, Elizabeth Coleman was in her plot picking cherry tomatoes and basil and getting ready for a trip to North Carolina. When I happened by, she gave me a favorite recipe from her mother which she planned to make the first night at the beach. It sounded so good and so easy that I made it for lunch today.

* Pesto (Elizabeth makes her own, but you can also buy it ready-made from Claudio in the Italian Market)

* Pasta (I got something called “festoni conditi” from Claudio’s, which is a big beefy pasta full of nooks and crannies and colored with tomato, spinach, beet, and squid ink powders, but almost any pasta would work. I’m not sure what kind Elizabeth uses — she didn’t say)

* Cherry tomatoes

Cook the pasta till al dente and drain. Melt a generous dollup of pesto into the hot pasta and sprinkle with lots of halved cherry tomatoes. When I tried it for lunch today, I garnished it with a bit of fresh basil from the garden and some toasted pine nuts. It was delicious.