Are you hungry, lazy, and can't cook to save your life? You could order pizza again, add hot water to yet another cup of instant noodles; or you could just follow this recipe to exchange 15 minutes of your life for a filled tummy with 50% less self-loathing!
'Aglio e Olio' may sound like a made up word, but it's actually a real word from a made up language known as Italian. All it means is spaghetti with garlic and oil, but that doesn't sound as fancy to you so I'll stop calling it that now.
I know cooking is intimidating to a lot of people, but this dish is so simple anyone can do it. Tons of other recipes claim this, so feel free to leave an angry comment here if you found it was somehow the exact opposite of cheap, easy & delicious.
What you'll need:
For two people, or one very hungry person.
Core ingredients:
- Salt to taste
- 250 Grams of pasta
- 1/2 Bulb of garlic
- 1/2 Cup of extra virgin/regular olive oil
Optional, but I'll make fun of you if not used:
- 1/2 Cup of grated parmigiano-reggiano (or any good cheese)
- 1/2 Of a lemon's juice
- A few sprigs of parsley
- Chili/Pepper flakes
You like roasted tomatoes:
- 125 Grams of cherry tomatoes
You don't like roasted tomatoes:
Preperation
This might look like a ton of garlic, but we're going to cut and cook them in a way that infuses most of its flavour into the oil. Use less if you're afraid, but I think you'll regret it.
Do not chop or mince these! We want to slice them thinly across to make them into 'garlic chips'. You don't have to be precise, but try to keep them uniform so they finish browning at roughly the same time.
Next, rinse the tomatoes and cut them however you want, I just halved them down the middle. We're also going to salt and pepper them before we wring out the pan.
Let's cook
Now we're going to set a pot of boiling water for our pasta, while we roast our tomatoes. Skip straight to the toasting of garlic if you don't have the tomatoes, but you'll obviously still need to heat a pot of water. What's great about this dish is that if timed right, the pasta will be finished cooking the moment we're done with the 'sauce'. These both take about the same duration and thus, can be done side by side.
Heat a bit of regular olive oil to medium-high heat. Then, add your tomatoes and cook them for 3 to 4 minutes or until they begin to blister. I usually let them go a bit longer until their skin is smoky and charred but that's my personal preference; cook them however you like!
Remove and reserve them for later while we add our garlic and oil to the same pan we used. Regardless of whether you use regular or extra virgin olive oil, we want to toast these on medium low heat. At the same time, don't forget to start cooking your pasta in your now hot and ready pot.
Be patient. We don't want to burn these, we don't want to fry them; we want to slowly bake every ounce of garlicky goodness into our oil. Once they start bubbling a little, toss in your red chili/pepper flakes.
The box on my pasta says 8 minutes, so we're going to undercook it by a minute to make it 'al dente'. This means I'll take them out after 7 minutes so the pasta finshes cooking in the sauce instead of being overcooked or soggy when we serve them.
Laugh at my pasta scoop all you want, its teeth are actually really helpful with picking spare strands of noodles up. Anyway, regardless of whether you have this amazing tool, we're going to drain our pasta and more importantly; save a 1/4 cup of this starchy pasta water we have.
Just on time, 6 minutes later our garlic is right where we want it to be. Add in the aforementioned pasta water, this will not only give our sauce more cohesion, it'll stop the browning process and prevent our garlic from burning.
Regardless, please be watchful of them; if it's too dark, it starts getting bitter but we also don't want them to be too light. We're looking for a nice golden-brown, which is another reason we kept the heat moderately low.
Now unanimously dump your pasta in, along with the tomatoes and chopped parsley if you have them. Don't forget to also squeeze in the juice of half a lemon before giving it a good toss.
This should go without saying, but taste and adjust for seasoning. Mine was perfect but yours might need another pinch of salt, maybe a bit more acidity from lemon juice or simply more starchy pasta water.
Time to eat
Here I tried to plate up another nice portion of pasta, before giving up and just eating the rest straight out of the pan. I also somehow ended up making this at 6 in the morning so I'm forced to finish all of this by myself. Hooray!
If you don't believe me how tasty this is, go eat or make it yourself sometime. It's one of those dishes where every ingredient comes together so perfectly and you're left with a synergized flavour that has you chomping down these carbs like no tomorrow. Despite it's simplistic nature, there's a good reason it's one of the most commonly eaten pastas in Italy.
Thanks for tuning in my friends, I hope you'll give it a try sometime soon. Buon Appetito to every pasta lover out there!
Maybe I'll have another recipe for something else in the future....
