Spaghetti with garlic and oil: This is perhaps the first thing I ever learned to cook from scratch. It’s about as simple as you can get (unless you count plain pasta with butter and grated cheese), but as with all Italian cooking, simplicity is an art. My parents felt that as long as I could at least make this, I’d never starve. And they weren’t wrong.
When I was about 16 years old, I went on a bike tour through Nova Scotia. We mostly camped out, and ate what we could cook over a campfire (I still remember waking up early to pick wild blueberries for breakfast). As the tour was coming to an end, we found ourselves in a larger town (Halifax? Yarmouth?), and a local church graciously allowed us to “camp out” in their assembly room and use the attached kitchen. I don’t remember now whether they had the ingredients on hand, or whether I went foraging at the local market, but in any case, I soon had a pan of oil and garlic simmering on the stove. The aroma was intoxicating after two weeks of instant potatoes and hot dogs, and the other campers crowded around. I invited them to dip a bit of bread into the pan, which they did enthusiastically. When I started cooking the spaghetti, they were a bit confused, because they thought the oil was just for dipping bread! They were even more enthusiastic when they tasted the final product.
Here’s the basic recipe. So now, you’ll never starve.
Print
What you need
Olive oil
Garlic
Spaghetti
Butter (optional)
Dried oregano, basil, red pepper (optional)
Grated cheese (optional)
Parsley (optional)
Anchovy (optional)
How you make it
- Pour some olive oil into a pan. How much? I don’t know—I never measure, but enough to thinly coat the bottom.
- Chop up one or two garlic cloves (a bunch of garlic is called a “head,” and the individual pieces are the “cloves”) and add them to the pan along with a pat of butter (to prevent the garlic from burning).
- Add a sprinkle of dried basil and oregano if you have it, as well as a bit of salt and pepper.
- Simmer over low heat until the aroma fills the kitchen and the garlic just starts to brown.
- Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to boil and add the spaghetti. Remember to stir it when you first put it in—otherwise, it’ll clump, and turn out awful. If you’re just cooking for yourself, maybe about a quarter or a fifth of the package. Check the cooking time on the box, but don’t rely on it. You really need to grab a strand and taste it to see whether it’s cooked right (careful not to burn your tongue!). Err on the side of undercooked (“al dente”). Pour the pot of spaghetti into a colander and let it drain for just a second or two—don’t let it sit there too long.
- Pour it into the pan with the oil and stir it around. Did you burn the garlic? No problem—just fish it out with a fork before you add the pasta. It’ll still taste great. You can leave the burner on while you stir, but only for a few seconds—you don’t want to fry the spaghetti.
- Add some chopped parsley if you have it, and top with a bit of grated cheese. A dash of crushed red pepper is also nice.
Pro tip: add a tiny bit of mashed anchovy or anchovy paste along with the garlic. It will dissolve in the oil and add a richer flavor. Also, you don’t need to use spaghetti—a thinner noodle such as capellini also works great (but stay away from shapes such as rigatoni or farfalle—this really needs a long noodle).
In fact, I typically use capellini when making school lunches, as it cooks fast, and I don’t have a lot of time in the morning!
Buon appetito!
Recent Comments