Use Fried Garlic for This Three-Ingredient Pasta Sauce
People tend to associate pasta sauce with a lot of boiling, seasoning, and tasting, but not all sauces have to be hard to work with, even if it’s a labor of love. If you start with a very tasty ingredient like fried garlic, you practically don’t need to do anything.
Recently, I have been overcome with the desire to smear everything with fried garlic. It’s easy to do, but the strands of pasta are too wiggly and brittle to withstand a stroke. The solution, obviously, is to take a whole bunch of soft, sweet, jam-like garlic cloves and mix them with a little olive oil (and a little water for the pasta) in the sauce. Season with a little salt and you’re done. (If this sounds familiar, this is because it looks a lot like aglio e olio , but has a deeper roast flavor and a creamier texture.)
The sauce also lends itself very well to amendments and additions. You can change the butter (try pistachio), or you can add parmesan, or fresh peppers, or chili flakes, or even some crispy pancetta, but the base sauce is good on its own and (by the way) turns out to be vegan. It does require a lot of garlic (multiple heads), but it’s convenient for me and most recipes never require enough garlic anyway. To make it you will need:
- 4 (very) large or 6 small heads of garlic
- 1 tablespoon olive oil for each head of garlic
- Half a pound dried spaghetti or angel hair
- Fine sea salt
Preheat oven to 425 ℉, remove excess paper from the outside of the garlic and cut off the tips of the heads to expose the cloves. Drizzle with a little olive oil, knock heads on the counter and wrap the garlic in foil. Roast in the oven until they are a pleasant amber color (but not burnt) and your kitchen smells divine. To test the color, gently peel back the foil starting at the 30-minute mark and repeat every five minutes or so until you’re done. (You can use a towel to avoid touching the foil directly, but I only use my bare hands; aluminum cools down pretty quickly.)
Remove the toasted cloves – a pickle fork is easy – and place them in a food processor along with one tablespoon of olive oil for each toasted head. Avoid adding burnt garlic chunks as this will make your sauce bitter. Add two large pinches of salt and stir until smooth. Try and add more salt if needed.
Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta according to the package directions. When the pasta is al dente (a little tasty), use tongs to transfer it to a large bowl. Toss the pasta with the garlic puree, adding water as needed to help everyone befriend. Once the garlic flavor is evenly distributed throughout the pasta, place it on bowls and garnish with whatever you want in your hungry heart. I love chili flakes and peppers, but next time I’ll try it with fried capers . I love fried capers.