All That's Solid Melts into the Olive Oil

Jamie Oliver's recipes are always full of both extraneous detail and approximation. Makes for fun reading, but sometimes a little hesitation once I start cooking-- a "large handful of pine nuts," a "glug" of olive oil. Clearly he wants home cooks to relax--just a glug--whatever, don't worry about the amounts so much. Instead, here I am anxiously wondering, is Jamie's glug bigger than mine? How about his wine glass, since the primary liquid in the pasta con accughe e pomodoro [pasta with anchovies, pine nuts and raisins] is "a large wine glass of red?" As in, filled to the brim, or just a few good glugs' worth? 3/4 of a cup seemed a bit much, but (OK, point Jamie) it also seemed not to matter. And the anchovies truly did "melt" away into the olive oil and if you had a decent exhaust-fan for the cooking you could probably even serve this meal to the anchovy-phobic. Perfectly delicious with half the pine nuts and twice the anchovies, if there are truly 24 fillets in that tiny can. But if you've only thought to check after dumping into the sizzling oil, you can't count them once they're there, because they melt.