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Thursday, May 23, 2024

Weekly Cooking Report May 23: Pasta with Garlic and Oil

OK team, I've been holding off on the super-simplicity of "just make pasta" but this week we're dipping into a non-traditional pasta sauce to surprise and amaze your family. 

Yes when I made it I had chicken cutlets and chopped veggies on the side; YMMV
Shopping for this couldn't be easier - a pound of spaghetti, some (6 tbs.) extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup minced garlic (the recipe has a count of 30 small, 20 medium, 10 large, or 5 extra large cloves but just use the jar of minced you should already have), some red pepper flakes (1/4 tsp. to 3/4 tsp. to taste), 3 tbs. chopped fresh parsley, and 2 tsp. juice from a lemon. Most of this you probably already have in the house. 

Step 1 is put a heatproof bowl in the oven on a lower rack and set the oven to warm/200F. The make the pasta per the box instructions, adding 1.5 tsp of table salt (don't use the kosher for this, you get more salt from table salt because it's smaller crystals). Save 1/3 cup of the cooking water, and then drain the pasta.

While the water is heating, combined 3 tbs. (half of your total) with 3 tbs. of garlic (there will be 1 tbs. left), 1/2 teaspoon of table salt in a skillet (nonstick 10" if that matters to you) and cook over low heat for 10-12 minutes, or until the garlic foams, turns straw colored, and gets sticky. It's nice when the food has several ways to tell you its done! be careful with the heat - low heat is needed because minced garlic can burn quick. Take it off the heat and add the rest of the raw garlic, the red pepper flakes, the parsley, lemon juice, an 2 tbs of the cooking water. Stir it to keep it from clumping.

Once you drain the pasta, set it in the warmed serving bowl, add the remaining oilve oil and the rest of the reserved cooking water, tossing it around to keep the pasta loose and oiled up. Add the garlic mixture, salt to taste (they recommend 3/4 tsp of table salt), and toss well to combine. serve immediately to a grateful family. If you have parmesan cheese having some of that grated for people to add would be a nice add. 


1 comment:

  1. Yum. Reminds me of my low cooking, low money pasta meals when I was a poor-but-not-starving college student -- pasta, garlic powder, black pepper, olive oil, serve. Sure, it's nothing fancy but it's tasty enough and will put calories and fat in you which can be very useful.

    This is obviously more involved than that, but aside from using yummy fresh garlic, not that much and that's great, becasue garlic is amazing.

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