Lightly On The Elusiveness Of Aglio E Olio

Imagine this after a hard night of hitting the piss

I’ve always loved eating pasta, but only recently have I started to treat it with the reverence it deserves. Like a lot of people, I used to overcook it, and then pile on a shitload of whatever sauce might be accompanying it, leaving a soupy mess at the bottom of my dish long after all the pasta is gone. Now I buy a decent brand (most places stock de cecco or barilla), cook it about two minutes shy of the package instructions in heavily salted water and then finish the cooking while tossing it with the sauce, using some of the pasta water to bring everything together. The starch from the water, helps the sauce cling to the pasta, leaving none of that soupy mess I referred to before.

For whatever reason, whenever I see Andrew he always manages to bring up the dish spaghetti aglio e olio. Our conversation could be going in any direction, but somehow he always brings it back to this simple Roman pasta. “Yeah the food at such and such a place is good and all, but what I could really go for is a good aglio e olio”, he might say, as he stares off into space, mentally recalling all those perfect pastas of time gone by. He often laments the fact that he can’t find a good version of this minimalist dish in Vancouver, something I think he discussed in his review of Italian Kitchen [ed notes: actually, it was Mon Bella...CinCin's wasn't right either. If I recall correctly, Italian Kitchen's was pretty bang on. Alvin at Campagnolo can make a good one, too, but it isn't on the menu].

Don't burn the garlic...

Start your Spaghetti in plenty of heavily salted boiling water. While it cooks, chop some garlic (about a clove per person I’d say). Heat a pan with a generous amount of olive oil, and when you figure the pasta is about two minutes from being done, fry the garlic until it just starts to brown. Add a few pinches of chili flakes to the oil near the end. Drain the pasta and toss with the oil in the pan. At the last second, throw in a little chopped parsley and serve.

"Is that what you're talking about Andrew?" Yes, Owen...it's the requisite "puddle" - lovely stuff

A dish this simple, is filled with many pitfalls, so be careful. Like I said earlier, use a decent brand of Italian pasta – none of this Catelli shit. Good, freshly chopped garlic is crucial, as the second it is peeled, it is going downhill fast. The oil is the sauce in this dish, so don’t use the safeway dregs – a nice flavored, modestly priced extra virgin olive oil will do just fine. The most important step though, is the cooking of the garlic: too much and the dish will be bitter and acrid, too little and it will be pungent and overpowering. Just do it perfectly, as Hawksworth used to say to me.

Enjoy!

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Owen Lightly is a boy from a small island in the Gulf of Georgia. After attending cooking school, he moved to Vancouver in 2002 to start a career in the restaurant “biz”. His website, Butter On the Endive, was created for sharing and caring.

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