Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino

It is the dish of improvised dinners, born in Roman cooking and loved all over Italy. Precisely because it is so simple, the result depends on the oil: here nothing covers its flavour.

Ingredients for 4

• 360 g spaghetti
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 fresh chilli (or dried, to taste)
• A handful of parsley
• 6 tablespoons IL CONTE (about 80 ml)
• Coarse salt for the water

Method

1. Bring plenty of salted water to the boil and add the spaghetti.
2. Meanwhile put the oil, the thinly sliced garlic and the sliced chilli in a wide pan. Turn on a gentle heat: the garlic should sizzle slowly and turn just golden, never dark, or it becomes bitter.
3. As soon as the garlic is golden, add a small ladle of pasta water to stop it cooking.
4. Drain the spaghetti a minute early, keeping a ladle of water aside. Tip them into the pan and toss over high heat for a minute, adding a little water at a time: the starch binds the oil into a creamy sauce.
5. Turn off the heat, add the chopped parsley and serve at once, with a drizzle of raw oil.

The right oil

Here the oil is the sauce. With the Blend the taste is rounder; with the Raggia single variety bolder, with bitter and peppery notes that suit garlic and chilli. Either way, the final drizzle of raw oil makes the difference.

Photo: matsuyuki, Wikimedia Commons, licence CC BY-SA 2.0.