Spaghetti Aglio e Olio: A Quick, Easy and Delicious Italian Go To Recipe

A Delicious And Deliciously Simple Dish

(Author's Note: After I finished writing this post I came across one of those articles on Buzzfeed wherein millennials vent their spleen about things that bother them. Turns out one of those things is “food bloggers writing their life story before finally getting to the damn recipe.” If you are one of those so offended, I apologize. I'm old and I can't help it if I have a lot of “life story” to tell, so please skip the next three paragraphs.)

My wife and I recently took some new friends to one of our favorite Italian restaurants. Typical of most “Italian” restaurants in America, it serves unrealistically huge portions of the expected Italian-American fare. The difference is the family that owns this place is right out of Napoli. Everybody has dual citizenship and they all make frequent trips back and forth. They are what you might call “real deal” Italian cooks, not just second or third generation Italian-Americans passing down their nonna's recipes. Sadly, they cook what they cook the way they cook it because they have to in order to stay in business. “If I cook like I cook at home,” the owner says, “people would just go to Olive Garden.”

They cook differently for me because, as they often say, I “appreciate the food” and I “get” what they are doing. They know that I know the difference, for example, between perfectly al dente pasta and the overcooked mush they have to serve to satisfy American palates raised on Chef Boyardee. And I don't get portions piled high enough to feed a football team. They don't serve me the same pizza they put out for other customers: I get crust and toppings like they use at home. And they take special care with other dishes, too, adding little extras and authentic touches. Such was the case with the spaghetti aglio e olio I ordered when we took our Olive Garden-loving friends for their first visit to a real Italian restaurant.

When I ordered the aglio e olio, my friend asked me what it was. Thought to have originally developed in Abruzzo, spaghetti aglio e olio is a delicious and deliciously simple dish popular all over Italy. Consisting at its most basic of pasta dressed in a light “sauce” of garlic and olive oil, aglio e olio is often found on Italian restaurant menus in America, my favorite place included. My friend decided to give it a try and I told him he was in for a treat because I knew the kitchen would do it up right for me and my guests. We were not disappointed.

Spaghetti aglio e olio is something you can easily make at home. It's one of those dishes that's perfect when unexpected company drops by or when you just don't feel like fussing with a more elaborate dish. As long as you've got the four basic ingredients – pasta, garlic, olive oil, and peperoncino – on hand, you've got a quick, easy meal. In a pinch, you can even do it without the peperoncino – aka dried red pepper flakes.

Here's what you need:

1 lb spaghetti

6 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 to 1 ½ tsp peperoncino (red pepper flakes), to taste

2 or 3 tbsp chopped fresh basil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Reserved pasta water, as needed

And here's what you do:

Bring a large pot of aggressively salted water to a boil and add the spaghetti. Cook to al dente, usually a minute or two less than the package directions recommend.

As the pasta cooks, in a large frying pan over medium-low heat, heat the oil and gently sauté the garlic until it is barely golden. Do not let it brown or it will taste bitter. Season with salt and pepper. Add red pepper flakes. Remove from the heat and set aside until the pasta is ready.

Drain the pasta when it is barely al dente, reserving about a cup of the pasta cooking water. Tip the drained spaghetti into the pan with the oil and garlic mixture, and cook together for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring well to coat with the sauce and to allow the flavors to marry. Add reserved pasta water as needed to further develop the sauce. Garnish with basil and serve at once in warmed serving bowls.

Serves 4 to 6

That's the recipe, now here are the notes.

Don't cheap up on ingredients. The heart and soul of Italian cooking is quality. If you buy cheap ingredients you're going to wind up with a cheap tasting dish. Spring for the De Cecco or Barilla pasta instead of the store brand or the dollar store stuff. There is a difference and you'll taste it. Same goes for the olive oil. Don't use “light” oil and don't use the stuff that comes in clear bottles and sells for five dollars a gallon. Invest in a decent extra-virgin oil and you'll get decent results.

“Aggressively salted” are words to live by when it comes to pasta. Don't drop a pinch of salt into a gallon of water and think you're cooking “healthier.” Pasta needs to absorb salt during cooking. It's the only way pasta has to get any flavor. And whatever salt it doesn't absorb will just pour off down the sink when you drain it. It's not going to go directly to your arteries and turn them to stone.Use at least two or three tablespoons of salt for a gallon of water.

Cook the pasta al dente. This means the outside should be tender but there should still be a little “bite” in the center. Sometimes when you're cooking pasta for a dish with a heavier sauce, you can get by with overcooking it a bit. Not here. This pasta is going to be nearly naked and you won't be able to hide the fact that it's badly cooked.

Chop the garlic as finely as you like it. If you don't mind little chunks, a coarser chop is fine. Otherwise, mince it down.

Peperoncino is an acquired taste for some people. My wife has never acquired it and I have to be careful when sneaking it into the dishes I serve her. It's a fairly important component in this dish, but adjust according to your tolerance for heat. You can leave it out altogether if you wish, but doing so will alter the flavor profile.

I like basil in this preparation. Sometimes I add it to the oil to infuse the flavor and sometimes I just garnish with it. Sometimes I do both. You can leave it out altogether if you wish, but.......you know the rest.

Finally, as with any pasta dish, it is imperative to finish the pasta in the sauce. Don't try to dump the sauce over the top and stir it in. It won't work and you'll wind up with greasy pasta.

Spaghetti aglio e olio is a bel piatto perfect for any occasion. Try it tonight.

Buon appetito!

Getting Rid Of Garlic Breath

Science Has The Answer

Ah, garlic! The bulbous plant of the onion genus scientifically known as allium sativum. It is also known, like its close relatives onions, shallots, leeks, and chives, as stinky. Often called “the stinking rose,” the old joke goes that you should always eat garlic with someone you love – that way you can still stand one another afterward.

Stinkiness aside, garlic is good for you. Research says garlic may help lower blood pressure and may also help lower the risk of certain cancers. And there's the fact that garlic is simply delicious.

Back in less politically correct days, garlic was pejoratively called “Italian perfume.” That slur is based on the erroneous assertion that Italians are heavy users of garlic. They're not. In fact, a lot of Italians don't use it at all. In her seminal work, Essentials of Classical Italian Cooking, the late, great, Marcella Hazan states, “There are some Italians who shun garlic, and many dishes at home and in restaurants are prepared without it.” Indeed, garlic is mostly a Southern Italian ingredient. You'd be hard pressed to find even a trace of it in many Northern dishes. But the myth persists. And so does the issue of garlic breath.

Regardless of ethnicity, when somebody loads up on garlic, you can tell it a mile away. And even if you like the stuff, it can be an odor that is off-putting, to say the least. Despite my Northern Italian roots, I happen to like garlic. Give me a nice dish of spaghetti aglio e olio and I'm a happy camper. I use garlic in a lot of my sauces and preparations, but I also use it in very sparing and balanced proportions. Even so, because garlic can be an overpowering component, lingering garlic breath sometimes still occurs. So what can you do about it? Science, my friends, has the answer.

Body chemistry differs greatly and some people can process garlic quickly and relatively odorlessly. Other people, not so much. You've probably run into a few of those in elevators or on airplanes. It's not just a matter of your mouth; your stomach is involved, too. Since undigested bits of garlic in your stomach can continue to produce a “garlicky” smell for quite sometime, simply brushing your teeth or rinsing with mouthwash often won't do the trick. You've got to neutralize the volatiles in your stomach before they can make it to your bloodstream and into your lungs, to be unpleasantly exhaled as much as twenty-four hours later.

A small study conducted at Ohio State University and published in Food Chemistry and in the Journal of Food Science reveals that certain foods contain the chemical keys to neutralizing garlic breath. According to researchers, compounds and enzymes found in raw apples, raw lettuce, and mint leaves react with the chemicals that create garlic breath. Apples, lettuce and mint leaves are high in phenolic compounds, antioxidants that react directly with the volatile sulfur compounds that cause garlic breath. Those foods are also high in polyphenol oxidase, an enzyme that causes browning in fruits and vegetables. And they contain reductase, an enzyme that helps catalyze the breakdown of organic compounds. Indications are that the enzymes speed up the reaction between the phenolic compounds and the garlic vapors, thereby effectively neutralizing said aromatic vapors. Bye-bye garlic breath.

You've got to admire one of the co-authors in this venture. She really took one for the team. Rita Mirondo munched a whole clove of raw garlic for twenty-five seconds. That would have ended the study for me right there. Then she washed it down with a little cool water that served as the control treatment. She did this every day for several days, following the garlic with either Fuji apples (raw, juiced, or heated), iceberg lettuce (raw or heated), spearmint leaves (raw, juiced, or heated), and hot green tea.

Over the course of the subsequent hour, her colleagues employed a spectrometer to measured the levels of common garlic-breath compounds, such as diallyl disulfide and allyl methyl sulfide, and to test the effects of the various foods and drinks on her reeking breath. The effects of the raw apples and lettuce and the mint leaves were most dramatic. The microwaved test foods, the apple and mint juices, and the hot green tea did less for Rita's breath, but still had some effect. The theory is that the raw foods contain more active enzymes than the cooked ones.

So here's the trick: do as the Italians do and eat a lettuce-based salad after your garlicky main course. Or eat a dessert that contains raw diced or sliced apples. If you can work a little mint in there, so much the better. Or you can just munch on some after dinner mint leaves. Even a postprandial mint tea would help. Or snack on an apple.

The researchers involved admit this was a very small study and a lot of room remains for further exploration. For example, they're planning to evaluate different varieties of mint in the next round of testing. Eventually they are hoping to develop a pill for halitosis, which, if they are successful, should certainly qualify them for the Nobel prize. In the meantime, although an apple a day may keep the doctor away, it will certainly help keep everybody else closer after you've consumed a nice plateful of shrimp scampi or something.

Anybody up for a Waldorf salad?