Spaghetti all'aglio olio e peperoncini recipe with a twist

 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Cooking time: 20 minutes 

Total time: 30 minutes

What's the twist? Olives and capers! I remember seeing this recipe prepared on one of FoodNetwork's shows. I have searched high and low for the recipe finding only Pasta Puttenesca and Spaghetti all’Olio, Aglio e Peperoncini. In this dish you poach chopped garlic in olive oil for 15 minutes with red pepper flakes and either parmesan or romano cheese. Romano will make it saltier. You add capers and olives, nicoise or kalamata, with some of the juice, which bring more saltiness to the dish. Puttenesca uses tomatoes and does not poach the garlic. all’Olio, Aglio e Peperoncini doesn’t call for olives or capers. 

The proportions here are based on ½ a pound of pasta. As to the type of pasta, classic Italian cooking would call for spaghetti since this a “thin” sauce. But I enjoy it with rotini, or curly pasta, because the cheese catches in the ridges. I have also been happy using with rigatoni since it also has small ridges, and the sauce gets inside the tubes.

Ingredients:

½ pound of pasta

½ a head of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 cup of olive oil

½ teaspoon of red chili flakes

½ cup of parmesan cheese

12 kalamata olives, roughly chopped and 2 tbsp of the juice

2 teaspoon capers, roughly chopped and 1 tsp of the juice

(Note: the ingredients for 1 pound of pasta are listed at the end of this post)

Put the water for your pasta on a high heat and bring to a boil. Into a small sauce pan, add the olive oil, red pepper flakes and parmesan cheese. Turn the burner to the lowest heat. You want to poach the garlic for 15 minutes. I add the parmesan cheese now to avoid having fried cheese, rather than a silky sauce and stir occasionally during the poaching time. Getting the red pepper flakes in from the start infuses the oil with a nice bite. If you prefer less heat, add them around them at about midway point of the poaching. At 7 minutes add the olives, capers, and juices to the small saucepan.

Depending on the cook time your pasta, add 2 tablespoons of salt to the boiling water and drop your pasta in. When should you do this? When there is enough time to cook the pasta to a minute less than al dente. This way it will coincide with the end of the poaching time. So, if the pasta requires 12 minutes to cook to al dente, you want to get the pasta into the boiling water when there is 11 minutes left in the poaching time. Sounds tricky, but it really is not.

Before you strain the pasta, reserve 2 ladles of the pasta water, catching as much foam as you can since it has a lot of the starch that you want for the sauce. Strain the pasta and put it back into the cooking pot. Add one ladle of the pasta water to the poaching mixture and stir. Mix to bring the cheese to more of a creamy texture in the sauce. Add more of the pasta water as needed. Pour the sauce into the pasta and mix it so that all the pasta has sauce on it, like dressing a salad. Serve with cheese and dried red pepper flakes on the side.

The nuttiness of the parmesan cheese, the earthiness of the olives, the fruitiness of the capers and heat of the red pepper flakes hit all the right notes and make your tastebuds sing: Mangia! 

My version with Penne

If you are using a full pound of pasta, the main changes are the amount of garlic and olives you use, which follow the base recipe. Cooking instructions remain the same, but the ingredients are as follows:

1 pound of pasta

1 head of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

1 1/2 cup of olive oil

3/4 teaspoon of red chili flakes

1 cup of parmesan cheese

18 kalamata olives, roughly chopped and 3 tbsp of the juice

2 teaspoon capers, roughly chopped and 1 and ½ tsp of the juice

Reserve 3 ladles of pasta water

In the step where you add pasta water to the mixture, use 2 ladles first and then add as needed.