With decent basic ingredients and a bit of taste and talent you can't go wrong, but with great - or at least very good - ingredients, the difference can be spectacular. Good, virgin Italian oil; fresh semolina pasta (sorry, Janet - I'll admit that I rarely use it myself, and you have to watch it carefully or it cooks so quickly you just have a glutenous mass - but it does make a difference); young garlic or, even better, a head that you've brushed with butter and roasted; fresh parsley from the garden; coarsely ground salt and pepper. And a few chopped up anchovies - loose, from a tub in the Italian grocery, not tweezed out of a tin - won't do any harm. (Throw in some capers at that stage, and you've got a simple putanesca.)
(If we've already had some sniping and snarling about something as dweebish as the villanelle, just think of the passions that can be aroused by a genuine food fight!)
[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited November 20, 2006).]
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