Every high school student should learn how to make a marinara sauce. It’s totally easy. It tastes a million times better than any jarred sauce. The ingredients are all in the pantry. It’s the best way to make a cheap meal. And once you’ve mastered a marinara, you can use it as the basis for another hundred dishes.

The Times has an article on marinara sauce with tips from Lidia Bastianich, my all-time favorite Italian cookbook writer. Chop your garlic, rather that using a garlic mashing tool. Use good olive oil and good canned tomatoes. Use a flat pan, not a sauce pan. Use fresh basil. Don’t let it cook all day, just 25 minutes. I always make mine with half an onion, too.

Once you’ve got this sauce down pat, you can play with it. Variations — Eggplant and capers, pesto and ground beef, chicken and rosemary, zucchini and sausage, tuna and olives.

And then you have to deal with pasta the right way. Cook the pasta in salted water (no oil). Drain it quickly so that there is still some water on the pasta. Never rinse the pasta. Throw the pasta immediately into the sauce and let it hang out there for a minute. You want the pasta to take in all that flavor. Never put a lid on the cooked pasta.