Spaghetti with Olive Oil and Garlic

Pasta with olive oil and garlic is made with good-quality store-bought spaghetti. Most people get used to one or two brands and know exactly which pasta suits them, how to cook it and for how long. Don’t experiment: take spaghetti you know well. One serving usually takes about 80-85 g of pasta. By the way, a standard 500 g pack makes six servings.

In winter, fresh herbs used to be hard to find, although we kept them successfully in the fridge. A small bunch of fresh parsley is always available. Put the herbs in cold water beforehand so they become crisp. I recommend taking a few cloves of market garlic, which is more aromatic and easier to work with. The amount of hot pepper is to taste, though I added more than the recipe says.

Cooking spaghetti with oil and garlic is two parallel processes: heating olive oil with sliced garlic, hot pepper and parsley, and boiling the pasta. Bring 2.5-3 l of water to a boil in a pot, adding salt at 7 g per 1 l of water. Add the spaghetti to the boiling water and cook until done. The pasta package states the cooking time at which the manufacturer guarantees al dente. Drain the cooked pasta in a colander.

While the spaghetti boils, you can prepare the fragrant oil that serves as the sauce. Since the dish cooks quickly, it is best to have the parsley, garlic and hot pepper prepared and chopped. Pull the leaves off the parsley sprigs and discard the stems. Chop the herbs roughly with a knife. Peel and chop the hot pepper. By the way, most of the heat comes from the seeds and the white inner membranes. If you want the pasta less spicy, remove these parts thoroughly. Chop the garlic fairly coarsely or slice it into thin plates.

Pour the olive oil, the best you have, into a saucepan or frying pan. Heat it, then add the garlic and chopped hot pepper. Fry the garlic and pepper in the olive oil over low heat. It is important not to overcook them: gently bubbling oil will fry the pepper and garlic in a few minutes. You can go by the color of the garlic: as soon as it starts to change color, it is enough.

Add the chopped parsley and season with a pinch of salt. There is no need to fry the herbs: just stir the oil with the parsley and take the saucepan off the heat. By the way, pasta with oil and garlic is often made a little differently. The garlic is crushed and fried in olive oil together with the hot pepper. While frying, the oil takes on flavor and mixes with the substances the vegetables release. So fry the garlic and pepper whichever way suits you best.

Add the boiled spaghetti to the hot flavored olive oil and toss gently. I advise seasoning the pasta lightly with black pepper, grinding the peppercorns right before. A special large spoon with vertical teeth along the edge is handy for tossing spaghetti, and for serving it too.

Arrange the spaghetti with oil and garlic on plates, piling it up. If any oil is left in the saucepan, drizzle it over the pasta before serving. This dish is not sprinkled with grated cheese, as is customary in many pasta recipes. You can garnish it with a sprig of parsley.

If the garlic and hot pepper were fried in the oil and then removed, you can garnish the finished dish with a small pepper before serving. If you like, replace the spaghetti with another long pasta, or even make it yourself from durum wheat flour, semola di grano duro. The main thing is to serve spaghetti with oil and garlic hot.