Spaghetti Aglio-Olio, my way

This dish comes out of hard times in Italy, and is made with simple, inexpensive ingredients -- garlic, olive oil, and optionally chili peppers, bread crumbs, parsley, and anchovies. In my version I splurge a little on the garlic. Not in the American way of just adding more, but in a way inspired by other Italian dishes, in particular bagna cauda which I have covered elsewhere.
The result is a rich, hearty pasta dish with roasted garlic flavors.
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Recipe: Serves 2 as appetizer or 1 for main meal
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100g spaghetti
5 cloves garlic
a generous amount of olive oil
2 anchovy filets (optional)
some red chili pepper (optional)
Parsley could be added but I didn't this time
Bread crumbs for topping
Peel the cloves without smashing (twisting in the skin to loosen and then peel the skin away). Add the anchovy filets to the oil and heat up. You can also add the garlic while the oil is still cold i fyou like.
Gently fry the garlic in the oil until it is just starting to brown. Then stir in the red peppers if using and the start to mash the garlic (a potato masher works wonders here). Once the garlic is mashed you must keep a small amount of water in with the oil to keep it from getting too hot and burning the garlic.
Once your spaghetti has lost its crunch (but should be harder than you would eat it), mix it in with the oil and add a little more pasta water (maybe half a ladle at a time, aiming for about half a ladle of water in the pan). Vigorously stir until the oil and pasta water mix into a sauce.
Serve and top with bread crumbs and optionally more parsley.

[@kevinm761]

What an interesting version. I do multiple versions of Aglio e Olio. I always like to cook my garlic in the oil, pasta water mixture for probably like 10 mins before i even boil the pasta. it will be lovely and salty. Usually when doing this version I use 8 cloves to overpower the garlic on purpose. For another version, probably my favorite I am using 1-2 cloves and a whole bunch of parsley including the chopped stems. I am letting it cook for 10 minutes too. It really gets a wonderful herby flavor. And there is such a difference with flat and normal parsley! The normal one makes it intense and earthy and the flat parsley makes it very delicate and it has almost a buttery flavor. Of course i am making the “normal” version too. Sometimes i add a tiny knob of butter to it ( really tiny, otherwise you have the butter flavor too strong) and sometimes i really add pecorino, which makes it creamy and changes the taste completely. (Vincenzo is a sinner of this too, so i don’t have a bad feeling. Lol!) You need to try these versions. It’s really cool how different it is. Thats why i am eating it twice a week, always changing the versions. And of course I always create an emulsion with the water.

[@WorldTravelerCooking]

How do you add the pasta water before you boil the pasta? Do you save pasta water in your fridge?

[@kevinm761]

@@WorldTravelerCooking No. It is just hot salty water from the saucepan where i cook the pasta at the beginning, which is ok because the water just needs to avoid that the garlic burns in the oil. I boil that mixture constantly with medium heat. The water always evaporates and i put more water in. The starch comes in later when the pasta is boiling. That way, there will be quite a lot starch which forms the emulsion in the pan when the pasta is not even in it yet. But be careful with the salt. put less into the pasta water, because you’re constantly putting it into the oil. it could get too salty. 😀 Basically I never boil something in just the oil. There is always water in it. Initially just saly water which gets the starch over time when the pasta comes in.

[@WorldTravelerCooking]

@@kevinm761 Ah ok. Yeah that's part of the reason I put the garlic in whole (it doesn't burn as easily that way).

[@geertboer7548]

Good recipe. Thank you a lot. Are you living in the new to build Capital of Indonesia ?

[@WorldTravelerCooking]

Nope. I am in Jakarta, the current capital and largest city.
I am glad you like the recipe. I really like tgis dish this way. Hope you do too!