Despite the fancy name, Spaghetti Aglio e Olio is actually quite simple. So simple, in fact, that you only need 7 ingredients!  Aglio means garlic in Italian and Olio means oil. No prizes for guessing the main ingredients here.

If you want to make this at home, you're going to need the following :

Chop your garlic like this

1. A packet of uncooked spaghetti.
2. One or 2 bunches of parsley .
3. About 3/4 cup of olive oil. Again, preferably extra virgin.
4. One entire head of garlic. 
5. One lemon.
6. One spoon of chilli flakes.
7. Salt and pepper to taste.

As with every spaghetti dish, you want to start out by filling a pot of water about halfway, adding a generous amount of salt and then heating it to a boil. Next, get your garlic and peel it. If anyone has a better method for peeling garlic, put it in the comments below please - I'm sick and tired of slicing it gently and peeling each individual clove. 

Now is a perfect time to prep your parsley. Pull the leaves off the stem - we don't want any stem for this. Chop the parsley as fine as you can, the finer you chop it, the better. Not only will it taste better, it will look better, but that's subjective.

Dice your parsley as fine as possible

Once your garlic has been peeled, finely chop it into slices. Done? Get a pan and pour the olive oil into it and start heating it. Once the viscosity of the oil resembles that of water, and well before the oil starts smoking, toss all your garlic into it and keep agitating the garlic so you don't brown it unevenly.

Wait till your garlic starts to brown!

By now, your water should have boiled so put the spaghetti in and go back to your garlic. Keep agitating the garlic until it starts to brown. Toss your chilli flakes in there and take it off the heat completely. The garlic will continue to brown and the oil will absorb the flavours of the garlic and chilli. 

If you've timed this right, your pasta should done by now. If not, wait till it's done and put your olive oil back on the heat to warm it slightly but be careful as to not brown your garlic any more. Pour the spaghetti directly into the olive oil pan along with a quarter cup of the spaghetti water. 

Toss your parsley into the pan and mix thoroughly. You want an even distribution of parsley - no green spots. Once you've achieved this, squeeze the juice of your lemon into the pan, mix it in and season to taste. 

Mix it all together!

Now, I'm not going to lie - when I first saw this recipe, I was skeptical. Spaghetti with chilli? Lemon juice with garlic?  It's incredibly simple and on their own, the ingredients are nothing special. However, the final product was nothing short of spectacular. It went down an absolute treat with my brother and sister and they finished it all!

If you want, you can toss in an extra spoon of chilli flakes - it's the only thing I'd have changed when I made this dish. I put in a healthy amount of parsley and garlic but I was skeptical about the chilli. If you're making it, learn from my mistakes and toss that extra spoon of chilli in there. On top of the extra chilli, I wish I had some parmesan on hand. I think that some grated parmesan would finish this off quite nicely but I didn't have any with me. Next time!

On the off chance that someone does end up making this, let me know how it turns out! I love the idea of someone reading my posts and trying it out for themselves!

The final product. I ended up making it a second time, hence the difference in noodle type. 

I like to eat. I also like to write. As it turns out, you can combine these two and thus, my blog was born. It so happens that I also like to cook! I think you can see where I'm going with this...

To be honest though, I've actually been thinking about writing an entry or two about cooking for quite some time now. The main problem has always been that it's damn near impossible to cook in a hostel room, so I've been putting off such a blog post till I got home. Well, I'm finally home, so here we are!

I didn't want to start off with something too complicated, so I decided to make some spaghetti for dinner tonight. To make spaghetti the way I make it, you're going to need the following :

1. Half a packet of uncooked spaghetti
2. 2 small cartons of tomato puree (200ml each)
3. a small bottle of olive oil (around 100ml)
4. a few pinches of basil
5. 2 onions
6. 4 cloves of garlic
7. 1 spoon of sugar
8. half a stick of butter
9. 1 capsicum 
10. Parmesan cheese

To start off,  peel your onions and garlic. You also want to dice the onions - I'd advise you use swimming goggles to cover your eyes as onions sting. Slice your capsicum into slices and set them aside for later. Once you're done, heat some olive oil in a non stick pan. Ideally, you'd want to use virgin or extra virgin oil, but you can get by with pomace as well. 

Dice your onions and garlic like this

While you're heating the oil, take a boiling pan (or any pan that can hold a few cups of water) and fill it halfway with water and put it on your stove. Add a bit of salt as well. You're going to add the spaghetti to this once the water is boiling. The amount depends on the pot you're using, but you need enough to keep your spaghetti fully submerged. 

While you're waiting for the water to boil, move back to your oil. Brown your garlic and toss the onions into the pan as well. Keep pushing the onions around to prevent them from burning. They should be nice and translucent before you move onto the next step. Once your onions are translucent, add the 2 cartons of tomato puree. 

Ignore the burnt garlic

Now, ideally, you'd want to use real tomatoes but I was in a bit of a rush and took the easy way out. Add the tomato puree and keep stirring the mixture. After a few minutes of stirring, add the spoon of sugar. I know this sounds counter intuitive, adding su
gar to a main course but stick with me. 

Your sauce should look like this

By now, your water should be boiling. Add the spaghetti, making sure that it's covered entirely by the boiling water. Don't cook them fully, cook them to about 80%. 

In the meantime, add your half stick of butter to the sauce. Let it melt and work it into the sauce evenly - you don't want any butter lumps. This will thicken the sauce and take the edge off the tomatoes. 

Here's where things get slightly unorthodox - once your spaghetti is about 80% done, add the spaghetti to the sauce along with half a cup of the spaghetti water. Mix it in nice and evenly and let the spaghetti finish cooking in the sauce. Most people cook the sauce separately but believe me, this extra step is worth it. 

Finally, add your diced capsicum and let it cook for 5 minutes before turning the heat off.  Truth be told, the capsicum is optional. The only reason it's in this recipe is I found it in the fridge as I was rummaging for ingredients and it was just sitting there all sad and alone. 

This here is our lonely pepper!

Once the heat has been turned off, sprinkle the basil onto your spaghetti and mix it in. To finish it off, shred some parmesan for garnishing and a little bit of salt if you used unsalted butter. 

As for how it came out? This is the first time I've seen my grandpa lick his plate, so I can honestly say it came out quite well. If you have some minced meat on hand, you can brown the meat in the pan at the very beginning before adding the garlic and onions, but at that point, you've just made spaghetti bolognese. 

Let me know if you've got any questions and if you do try this out, let me know how it goes and if you'd like to see more posts where I make something and attempt to write about it, comment/message me! I'd be more than happy to continue with this kind of blog entry!

Forgive the crappy image, this is the only shot I could get  before they finished the spaghetti!

   

I know I haven't done this in a while, I kept telling myself "I'll write a post this weekend" and here we are, a year later.  Anyway, lets get into it!

So, where did I go after a year long hiatus? Somewhere expensive? Somewhere fancy? The short answer? None of those. We went to Pizza Den, a place that prioritises cheap, filling food over ambience but you know what? That's perfectly ok. 

Not every dining experience has to be upmarket with fancy table pieces, mood lighting and prices that'll bankrupt a small country. Sometimes, it's ok to want to gorge yourself on comfort food and not be judged by the staff. 

As I mentioned earlier, Pizza Den is not the sort of place where you go for the experience - the waiters are dressed casually and don't interact much with you. They'll hand you a menu and saunter over when you signal that you're ready to place your order. The seats were comfortable, even if the fabric was badly torn. My age old complaint of sofas and tables still stands true though, while they're comfy to sit on while you wait for your food, and believe me, you'll be waiting a fair amount of time, they're not the best when you're trying to eat. 

We ordered 3 items - a chicken and cheese sandwich, a pizza and a platter of momos. The sandwich was grilled and served with a side of chips. The only thing I'd change would be the quantity. I'd have liked for a bigger serving. 

Our main course was a pizza called "Chicken I like you" and we opted for the cheese burst option. Despite the awkward name, I did end up liking the pizza - it was nice and heavy (always good when you're looking to stuff yourself) and full of flavour. The crust wasn't overly crispy, which is a welcome change from some of the pizzas I've had.  

The final dish we had was the platter of momos. This was definitely a let down compared to the rest of our meal for a few reasons. My first problem with them was the flavour. They left a strange aftertaste in my mouth, something I've never experienced before. My second problem was the sauce situation. If you're going to serve 2 sauces, please, for the love of god serve them in two dishes. Don't just dump both in a single bowl and serve it that way! How is this ok? On top of that, they spilt sauce on top of half the momos so if you're not a fan of the dipping sauce, you're stuck with spicy food that you're not going to enjoy. 

Thankfully, you don't have to go too far if you're in the mood for some cheese covered goodness - I took an Ola and the amount for one way was just under 120 rupees. The food itself was also cheap - we spent less than 300 per person, making pizza den a budget friendly option. 

If you're the sort of person who puts a lot of weight into waiters standing at the sidelines, ready to spring into action at your every whim, Pizza Den is not the place for you. Mind you, for what they charge, you really shouldn't expect that either.  However, if you've just bombed an exam or you're short on money, there are certainly worse ways you could cheer yourself up.