A spaghetti incident (or two)

A friend recounts her initial encounter with spaghetti. She is, as she likes to point out, taga-bukid or from the mountains, a term suggesting not so much geographic elevation or social isolation as naïveté, not unlike that of a promdi (Pinoy shorthand for “from the province” — which I am, technically speaking). In fact, a taga-bukid is the promdi’s promdi. (Hey, we have our prejudices too.)

But back to that spaghetti. My friend had looked at it, and thought: Oh mother, that pancit’s red!

How about that. Just the other day, someone shot me an are-you-kidding-me? look because my spaghetti wasn’t red. You can very well see for yourself. I actually wanted it — craved for it — that way, after all the tomato-ey dishes of the holidays. Besides, I had enjoyed the bare-bones spaghetti served during my best friend’s birthday party, tossed simply with garlic-infused extra-virgin olive oil and dusted with strong cheese. It looked easy enough to replicate, and it was.

The catch to making the dish is that there are so few ingredients, if they’re not of good quality, you’re screwed right out of the gate. Think oil and cheese. If you’re not too crazy about your olive oil, consider that your pasta will be skinny-dipping in it. Eden cheese? Not to be a snob, but you need one with more heft, like Pecorino (or Parmesan), to add some umami to the dish (Eden is too mellow).

Then there’s the pasta. Make sure that the water you cook the pasta in is salted to taste. It sounds straightforward enough, but just eyeballing the amount of salt you put into the water can leave you with a dish that tastes either flat or wickedly salty. If you leave the seasoning for later, chances are that the salt won’t dissolve in the oil.

While the pasta cooks, put a pan over medium heat, pour in a few tablespoons of oil (feel free to use more, but I like mine on the dry side), then add some minced garlic, seeing to it that it doesn’t burn. Some people actually remove the garlic, but I like to leave it in and even prefer it grated with a zester rather than minced. Turn off heat and pour infused oil over cooked (drained) pasta and toss. Garnish with ground black pepper, chopped parsley (if you have some), and a generous amount of cheese. Serve with more cheese on the side.

And there you have it: spaghetti et aglio e olio. If you’ve been here before, you might have noticed how enthusiastic I could be when encountering a familiar food/fruit/veggie in a “new” color. This time I ambushed one of the help for a taste-test. It took some convincing for her to give it a try because it was, in her words, “not spaghetti.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “It’s not red?”

That was when she gave me that look. “Is this a prank? Because the laundry’s piling up.”

No prank, I assured her. How did it taste? Was it any good?

“Well,” she said, “it tastes like… like pancit. I don’t get it.”

Well, same here. There’s more to spaghetti than some stupid color, you know. Don’t they know that? And there they are. And it’s a beautiful day.*

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* Sorry, I couldn’t help channeling Marge Gunderson. I’ve always felt that Fargo should have ended with that scene, on that note. Just sayin’. «