Endive and fresh tomato pasta

Still clearing out the fridge. Tonight I knocked up 'amatriciana' pasta for the girls (olive oil, pancetta cubes, tinned toms, tomato puree, balsamic vinegar, red wine, garlic - could have added onions but couldn't be bothered). Let it reduce nicely. But you all know how to do that one or can look it up in a book. So here's one which was just another 'open the fridge door and see what we've got' melange.

I had:-

Fresh on-the-vine piccolo tomatoes (tiny and oh-so-sweet)
Some endive (or chicory, depending on whether you are French or English - think we call it chicory in UK, get very confused)
Onion
Garlic

Other ingredients:-

light olive oil for cooking
posh olive oil for dressing - basil infused (courtesy of jaqueshall.co.uk)
fresh basil
sugar
balsamic glaze
white wine
vegetable bouillon powder


I diced a small onion and fried it in some olive oil in a heavy based pan.
I thinly sliced the endives (sort of one and a half of them as I had used a few leaves to dip into houmous at some other point in my week)
I cut the tomatoes in half and added these and the endive to the pan at the same time.
I crushed a clove of garlic and added that.
Once it had all cooked through a bit I added a teaspoon or so of vegetable bouillon and a good slug of white wine.
I tasted it and decided it needed greater depth of flavour so added a decent squirt of balsamic glaze (Morrisons) and about a tablespoon of caster sugar.

Meanwhile I boiled a saucepan of salted water and added shell pasta (any would do, but as you know, I am devoted to De Cecco as the best dried pasta available) and cooked it until it was al dente (the joy of DeCecco is that it holds its structure even if you have gone away and forgotten about it - it will never go completely soggy if you get distracted and overcook it a little).

Once the sauce was nicely reduced and 'glazed' looking, I drained the pasta and returned it to the saucepan where I then dowsed it in the basil infused olive oil. I then quickly added some torn fresh basil leaves to the sauce before stirring it into the pasta shells, making sure that they were all nicely coated. A twist of salt and black pepper (and freshly grated parmesan if you feel like it) and we were ready to go. What you should have is a nicely balanced bitter-sweet, gently fully flavoured sauce for that catch-all pasta. Have a go.