I’m told that ‘aglio e olio’ means ‘garlic and oil’ in Italian and there’s not a whole else besides in this dish. I found the recipe in a vegetarian cookbook, but I’m sure its one of those that can – and has – been amended according to taste and availability of ingredients.
My version was simple: pop enough pasta to feed our clan in a big pot of boiling water. In a saucepan, fry up one long red chili, one onion,two cloves of garlic and two anchovies* in two tablespoons of oil. Once softened, throw in breadcrumbs (I toasted up two slices of normal bread and then blitzed them to crumbly texture), keep cooking until that is golden. Turn off the heat and when the pasta is done, strain and add to the crumbs along with a half cup of flat leaf parsley, mixing as you go.
Serve with Parmesan on top (optional).
Delicious.
This is week twenty-six of the 1 recipe a week for a year ‘living list’ challenge. (26/52). The halfway point!
* I thought the inclusion of anchovies in a vegetarian cookbook was a little surprising. Or is it one of those foods that falls in a grey zone of classification? How can that be? They’re fish? That’s a meat?
