Spaghetti With Olive Oil, Garlic, And Olives is my favorite pasta dish by far! It's light simple yet so full of flavor. And if you love garlic as much as I do I'm sure you're gonna love this Spaghetti dish also!
About The Garlic
This healthy Spaghetti recipe is one of the quickest, easiest you can make. And is literally very garlicky. Since the garlic in this recipe is cooked lightly and has the strong flavor of almost raw. Plus, there are seven whole garlic cloves used in this recipe for about 2 servings of Spaghetti!
You can adjust the amount of garlic to your liking. By adding more or less. Or adjust the strength of the garlic flavor by cooking the garlic for a few minutes more. For example, in this recipe, the garlic is minced and cooked for no more than 2 minutes together with olive oil, olives, and some pasta water (water you have saved from the pot you boiled the pasta in). If you don't want the garlic flavor to be that overwhelming you can cook the garlic for about 4-5 minutes. This will bring down the heat of the garlic and it won't burn as much.
Olives And Olive Oil Used In This Recipe
Because this recipe is using very few ingredients, their quality will affect a lot the final flavor of the dish. So it is best to use extra virgin olive oil which has a strong taste and is also very healthy. You can read all about olive oil in this post. I've also included a tip on how to check if the olive oil you are using is pure and not fake.
Also, the olives play an important role in the flavor of this dish. The best olives to use are green olives slices that are chunky and meaty and also have a slightly bitter flavor and are not as sourish as Kalamata olives.
Other Flavors
This Spaghetti With Olive Oil is flavored with dried Greek oregano. Which gives an extra very aromatic earthy Greek flavor. And combines beautifully with the other earthy flavors of olive oil, olives, and garlic.
And since this Spaghetti dish is very similar to Italian Aglio e Olio another ingredient you can add to give a spiciness to this dish is peperoncino peppers or hot pepper flakes instead.
Recipe
Spaghetti With Olive Oil, Garlic, And Olives
Ingredients
- 250 grams / 8.8 oz spaghetti
- 7 cloves of garlic minced
- 45 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 50 grams / 1.7 oz green olive slices
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- grated Kefalotyri or Parmesan cheese to serve with
- freshly ground pepper
Instructions
- Cook the spaghetti two minutes less than what's instructed on its package leaving it very al dente. Also, make sure you season the water with plenty of salt. Once the pasta is cooked, save ½ cup (125 ml) of pasta water from the pot you boiled the pasta in.
- Add this water to a non-stick pan together with all of the remaining ingredients (except the spaghetti).
- Heat over medium heat. Once it starts to simmer cook for no more than 2 minutes.
- Then toss in the pasta and cook for 2 minutes more stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
- Serve with freshly ground pepper as well as plenty of Kefalotyri or Parmesan cheese on top.
Nutrition
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Not all cheeses are vegetarian. Parmesan is definitely NOT. Traditional kefalotyri isn't either, though I don't know if there are modern non-rennet alternatives. Feta depends on the brand - some use animal rennet, some microbial.
Very nice. Been doing this forever. I prefer lotsa of feta and a couple of minced Ortiz Anchovies in the small jars, packed in olive oil. Yes, they're Spanish, but good is good.