Pasta with Garlic and Olive Oil

This is by far my favorite pasta. I had it while on a trip to the Bavarian village of Leavenworth in Washington state. We were there in December of 2012 to enjoy the heavy snowfall up in the cascade mountains.

Just after having this great pasta at an Italian restaurant in Leavenworth we started heading back towards Seattle. This is when things started going South. Due to heavy snowfall trees started falling down all around us in Stevens Pass. Falling trees while driving in 0 visibility at 60 mph is not a pleasant experience. However, we managed to get through the pass and just after that US2 closed for over 2 weeks, the longest in 30 years. Thankfully we didn’t get stuck in Leavenworth. However, looking back it wouldn’t been such a bad thing as I could’ve had the pasta every day :).

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb. spaghetti
• 6 cloves of garlic thinly sliced
• 8 tbsp. + 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 tsp. red chili flakes
• 1/4 cup fresh Italian parsley (I used the dried one)
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper powder
• 6-8 mushroom thinly sliced
• 100 gms chicken breast cut into cubes
• Few leaves of baby spinach
• Salt to taste

Procedure

Cook spaghetti according to the package direction. Lightly drain spaghetti, don’t shake it dry in the colander, as you need to retain a little of the cooking water.

Take olive oil in a pan and add garlic slices to that cold oil. Put the heat on to medium and as soon as it starts bubbling immediately lower the heat. Keep sautéing for another five minutes. It helps infusing the garlic flavor in olive oil without turning it much brown. Add chili flakes to it and mix well. Turn the heat off.

In another pan take 2tbsp. olive oil and add chicken cubes to it. sprinkle salt and black pepper powder. Cook it on low heat till the meat is tender. Add mushroom slices and baby spinach leaves to it and sauté everything together for another two minutes. Transfer this content to the garlic flavored olive oil and give them a nice mix. Return this pan to the heat, add boiled spaghetti and parsley and toss to coat. This garlic flavored oil should coat each strands of spaghetti.

Taste for seasoning and serve.