We’re still cranking out pastas on our extruder, and recently we decided it was time to try our hand at some spaghetti. It was fun watching these long, thin strands of pasta come out of our stand mixer, but since spaghetti is such a well-known and often-made type of pasta, we knew we had to make something interesting to pair with this very familiar noodle. So we cracked open the cookbook by Missy Robbins that’s been guiding us on this pasta journey, and we discovered a very cool recipe that she recommends for spaghetti. It uses lots of garlic – and by lots we mean several dozen cloves – so you’ve got to really love garlic to make this. Luckily we do, and we enjoyed making our whole apartment smell like the kitchen at an Italian restaurant, so if all this sounds intriguing to you, we’ll show you how to cook this up.
You’ll need:
- Semolina flour
- Garlic
- Olive oil
- Green garlic
- Red pepper flakes
- Parsley
First, to make your spaghetti, follow the first two steps here, except set up a spaghetti die on the pasta extruder and set the mixer’s speed to a 10. As your noodles come out, cut them to 9-inch lengths.
Twist each set of strands around into a horseshoe shape, then lay these bundles on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper that’s been scattered with semolina and let the spaghetti dry for at least 3 hours.
When you’re ready to cook, measure out 1/4 cup of olive oil into a very large pan and warm over low heat. Add in 25 whole garlic cloves and cook, stirring them frequently and making sure none of them overlap, for at least 15 minutes, until they start to turn a light brown color. Fish them out and set aside.
Now take 10 garlic cloves and slice them very thin. Add more olive oil to your pan until there’s about 1 cup in there, then place in your garlic slices and cook carefully, stirring occasionally, until they turn light brown and become crispy. Take them out of the pan with a slotted spoon and place on a plate lined with paper towels to drain.
Next, take 5 stalks of green garlic and slice the white and light green parts, plus thinly slice 7 cloves of garlic. With the same olive oil as you’ve been using, turn the heat up slightly to medium-low and add the green garlic to cook for just 2 minutes, until it’s softened.
Add in the garlic you just sliced and cook for 1 minute more, then immediately take your pan off the heat.
You can cook your spaghetti now in a pot of salted water – it should take 5-6 minutes of boiling until your pasta’s done. Use a ladle to place about 3/4 cup of the pasta cooking water into the pan with the olive oil and garlic, place the pan back on the stove over medium heat, and use tongs to drop the spaghetti in as well. Add in the whole cooked garlic cloves and a sprinkling of red pepper flakes, then use the tongs to gently mix everything together. Chop up some parsley and combine that in as well.
Now you can serve up bowls of spaghetti, topped with your crispy garlic slices.
It’s probably best not to plan any romantic activities after eating this pasta, because it’s a lot of garlic (42 cloves, if we’re counting correctly). But we love the stuff, so this was a really unique way to cook up spaghetti. We also got a chance to try green garlic, which we’d never had before but were able to find in a nearby farmers market. Overall, besides the excellent garlic flavor, we also liked the way this looked and all the different textures that come together: you’ve got soft whole garlic, sautéed slices of regular and green garlic, and then crispy bits of garlic on top, held together with a olive oil sauce that’s infused with all this flavor. This spaghetti turned out far from boring, so if you want to try your hand at homemade noodles and a new sauce, garlic is the way to go.