The Family Cookbook - Aglio Olio

Background

Our children's God Mother, Theresa, was born in Sicily and as you can imagine was a pretty good cook. One of the recipes she tried unsuccessfully to teach me was a simple little olive oil and garlic oil sauce for spaghetti, she called Aglio Olio.

Of course, being Irish instead of Italian I immediately changed the recipe. Who knows maybe you'll like it.

Ingredients

• Olive oil
• Garlic
• Flaked (crushed) Red Pepper
• Pitted Black Olives
• Pine nuts

Optional Stuff

• Mushrooms
• Sliced tomatoes

Putting It Together

Slice (as opposed to dicing) up the garlic into reasonably thin wafers. The amount of garlic you use is only limited by your taste. We like a lot.

Chop the olives however you like. If you're adding mushrooms you'll want to thoroughly wash them for obvious reasons and cut them up however you like. When we add tomatoes we usually quarter them at least. The pine nuts don't require anything.

Cooking It

Start your spaghetti first - bringing the water to boil will take the longest. We usually add a few drops of olive oil to the water to prevent sticking later. Six or seven minutes before the spaghetti is ready start your olive oil.

Depending on the olive oil you use, you might want to heat it until it "puffs" or gives off a very slight brief puff of impurities. Be careful if you do this because it's easy to overheat the oil.

Put in the olives and mushrooms first (they can handle a little longer cooking time). Then add the pine nuts and garlic. If you're going to use tomatoes add them last because you don't want to over cook them.

Heat until the pine nuts and garlic begin to brown.

Pour the spaghetti into a colander and quickly rinse with hot water and drain. Pour the spaghetti into a bowl. Take the aglio olio off the stove and pour over the spaghetti. Hint: Some people just cover all of the spaghetti at once while others prefer to add the aglio olio separately to each plate.

Serving It

This is one of those dishes that's got to come together correctly. If you can manage, it time your spaghetti so that it its steaming hot when you pour the aglio olio over it. Give it a splash of crushed red pepper and/or some grated cheese and dig in!

Don't forget the wine - we a chilled Pinot Grigio or Zinfindel, but I think Theresa would have preferred a simple Rose' at room temperature.