On Sunday I rolled busiate for six people at the kitchen table, and for the first time in a year I got them all the same length. My mother never measured. She cut a rope of dough with the side of her hand and said that was the right size, and she was always right.

The dough is only flour and water. The flour is the fine durum, semola rimacinata, and you knead it harder than you think, for a full eight minutes. When it is ready it springs back a little when you press it. Rest it under a cloth for half an hour and it will roll without fighting you.

The shaping is the part people fear, and it is easier than it looks. You wind a short rope around a knitting needle, press, roll it back and forth and slide it off. The first six are bad. After that your hand knows.

The sauce is not cooked. Tomatoes, almonds, a little garlic and basil, crushed together and loosened with oil. It is what we eat in Trapani when the tomatoes are good, and it takes ten minutes while the water boils. Next Thursday I will write about the lemon tree in the courtyard, which is heavy again this year.