A preparation to make one of the simplest and most popular first courses, pasta with garlic, oil and chilli pepper in a variant enriched with a touch of aromaticity thanks to parsley and chervil.
The recipe for pasta with garlic, oil and chilli
The essential feature of garlic oil and chilli paste is simplicity and speed, the ingredients of the original recipe are all listed in the title. A purist would tell you that it is good this way and you don't need anything else, especially if the oil is good. But what used to be a humble dish has become so popular that chefs have tried their hand at proposing small variations, touches of aromaticity by adding parsley and / or chervil as in this preparation, but there are also those who propose marjoram. Someone recommends adding some crushed peppercorns. Lately, creamy versions have been proposed, thanks to the addition of milk and in some versions eggs with which a garlic-flavored cream is created. For what counts in our opinion, these versions are a bit of a distortion of the garlic, oil and chilli paste, while the addition of aromatic herbs, in particular that of parsley, seems to have become predominant compared to the naked and raw version. In some recipes, however, it is recommended to use the cooking water of the pasta to make the oil with garlic and chilli pepper into a sauce, while others indicate that the drained pasta be seasoned with oil.
How to use our preparation for garlic, oil and chilli paste
Fry two tablespoons of our preparation in a large pan with plenty of extra virgin olive oil, taking care not to let the garlic and chilli flakes brown. There is no need to add salt. Once the pasta has been drained, sauté it in a pan over high heat and serve hot, perhaps adding a few leaves of fresh parsley.
The story of pasta with garlic, oil and chilli
Someone claims garlic and oil pasta to Neapolitan cuisine and the addition of chili pepper as a variant, but no one provides historical anecdotes about when this dish would have been born.
We know, however, that the first mention of the garlic and oil version (without chilli pepper) is in the usual "Theoretical Practical Cuisine" by Ippolito Cavalcanti, a treatise dating back to 1837, in which the "Uermiculi garlic and uoglie" that is vermicelli with garlic and oil. And yes, today garlic and oil rhymes only with spaghetti, but in the Neapolitan tradition it seems that vermicelli were also used, perhaps first. In the 1965 treatise "Neapolitan cuisine", the author Jeanne Caròla Francesconi raises some doubts and even claims that originally the format used was linguine.
In the face of the claims of other regions that claim the paternity of garlic, oil and chilli pasta, others prudently limit themselves to observing that there is no doubt that the origin of the dish should be sought in Southern Italy. I
Chilli pepper and extra virgin olive oil are very common ingredients in the south, in the north in the past they were not always easily available, since as we have said this is a quick dish , simple and economical, created to satisfy the characteristics of being cheap and preparing quickly with ingredients always present on the shelf, also for the characteristic of keeping for a long time, it is in Southern Italy that the recipe respected these characteristics.