Chop the onion, crush and chop the garlic, drain the olives and if they are not pitted do so, drain the capers. 

Add the olive oil and chopped onion to a potjie and put it on the fire. The potjie does not have to be preheated as I prefer bringing the onions up to temperature gradually. Fry the onion until translucent.

Add the anchovies and garlic and fry for another 2 minutes, breaking up the anchovies with your wooden spoon until they dissolve into the oil. (If you don’t have a wooden spoon, buy one.)

Add the tomato paste as well as the paprika, sugar, chilli powder and pepper and toss around for a minute until things get sticky. Once things get stuck, add the white wine and use that to scrape all sticking things loose from the bottom of the potjie.  

Add the olives, capers, tinned tomatoes and oregano. Stir well and then gently simmer this sauce for 20 minutes with the lid on, stirring occasionally. We’re talking a gentle simmer, not a vigorous simmer. If things run dry, add a dash of water. 

When you’re about 10 minutes out from serving, start cooking the 333 g of pasta in 3 litres of water with 3 tots of salt. To get the water boiling takes time so start doing that even earlier; the pasta goes into the boiling water with 10 minutes to go. Cook the pasta to about 90%, so slightly underdone. Strain the pasta through a colander and always place a cup or mug under the colander so that you retain a cup of the pasta cooking water. When you tip the cooked pasta from the strainer into the sauce and toss it, the pasta will naturally slurp up a lot of the sauce and a very wet sauce will suddenly look perfect or even a bit dry. During the tossing with the sauce that is also simmering the pasta will naturally continue to cook a bit. That is why we start with a 90% cook so that it gets over the line without becoming soggy. 

Taste and season with salt if you think it needs that but anchovies, olives and capers all added salt and you boiled the pasta in salted water so salt is perhaps not necessary. If the potjie is too dry, add a little of the pasta water and if the potjie has too much liquid you’re wrong, it does not have too much liquid.

Tear basil leaves off their stalks and throw into the potjie, on top of the pasta. Dish up straight from the potjie.