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Garlic Pasta

We seriously never get sick of this tomato sauce, but once in a while it’s good to mix things up.

When this feeling hits, I bring back an old favorite - garlic pasta.

The garlic is front and center, but the richness of the sauce with strong notes from the Parmigiano-Reggiano coupled with the freshness of the parsley really bring this together into a satisfying dish.

One note on preparing the garlic, I discovered the concept of a garlic dish many years ago and aside from my knives, I would say this is one of my most-used tools in the kitchen.

The flavors that come out from shredding the garlic vs. chopping it are noticeable and add so much to this dish.

Also, general amounts are listed below, but I usually eye everything as exact proportions are not super important. This also allows for some improvisation which helps to develop the recipe further to your tastes in future repeats.

Ingredients

• 5-6 cloves of garlic (shredded)
• red pepper flakes
• olive oil
• 2-4 TB butter
• 1/3-1/2 bottle of white wine
• freshly chopped parsley

Directions

• Before starting the sauce, bring your salted pasta water to a boil and start cooking the pasta right before you start cooking the sauce; this way, both will be ready at roughly the same time.

• In a decent-sized fry pan (enough room to mix in the pasta at the end), pour in a few glugs of olive oil, the shredded garlic, pepper flakes, salt, and pepper and set to medium/medium-high heat.

• Keep a close eye on the garlic as there is a fine line between “toasted” and “burnt” here – you’re looking for a light-browning of the garlic so that the flavors will also be released into the oil.

• Once the garlic looks good, pour in the wine and bring the heat to high. You’ll want to boil off the alcohol and also reduce the amount of liquid by 1/3 to 1/2.

• Once reduced, lower the heat to medium and drop in the butter – mixing lightly while it melts fully.

• At this point the pasta should be about done – if you need more time, just set the sauce to low heat and mix infrequently, but otherwise, drop the pasta in and don’t worry about shaking off all of the water before transferring.

• I like to fold in the pasta with the sauce – it will seem too watery at first, but give it a little bit of time on low heat and the sauce will meld with the pasta pretty well.

• Toss in the parsley and serve immediately!