New York Times Cooking Recipe Dupe (with ease): Midnight Pasta

If there is anything we love, it is someone else handing us a wonderful recipe. Most of the time though, we take out the grunt work, cut some corners, and tailor it to fit our palette, lifestyle, and schedule.  Sure, some people would say we are eradicating the art from cooking, but if we are going to be preparing food at home, there is no way we are going to spend hours doing it. Most of the time, we are making recipes meat-free, nut-free (due to Shannon’s anaphylactic tree nut allergy), or a little healthier.

This week, we found the New York Times Cooking’s recipe for Midnight Pasta, or aglio e olio pasta. Why is it called that? Get this! It’s called that because after a late night of drinking, you can throw it together fairly quickly with a few kitchen staples. That is music to our ears, however, the recipe that the New York Times published, had us roasting our garlic, adding about 40-50 minutes. Um, no thanks. As much as we adore fresh produce, we also prefer having more time on our hands, not to mention the fact that we did not have any fresh garlic on hand, nor fresh parsley, so we opted for the parsley flaked from our spice cabinet. Our version took about 20 minutes from start to finish to make. Feel free to click the link above, if you want the full New York Times Cooking Recipe, or if you want the shortcut, keep reading and join us.

Midnight Pasta- Arner Version

Serving Size:

4

Time:

20 minutes

Difficulty:

Easy Peasy

Ingredients

• 3 tsp garlic powder
• Salt (we use sea salt to add to our water for the pasta)
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 pound spaghetti
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• Black pepper to taste
• Freshley grated parmesan
• Parsley flakes for garnish

Directions

1. Cook the pasta, al dente.
2. Drain pasta.
3. Save 1 cup of the water used to boil the pasta and add the olive oil.
4. Add garlic powder and cook that mixture for about 5 minutes on medium/high.
5. Turn to low, then add red pepper, and black pepper to taste.
6. Add your drained pasta and a little olive oil (because, why not?!) to that mixture.
7. Mix it up, and plate.
8. Grate parmesan to the top of each serving (as much as you want).
9. Shake parsley to the top of each serving.
10. Shake a tiny amount of red pepper to each serving.
11. Enjoy…buono!!!

*We paired a light salad to this meal and ate off of the pasta for a few days. Yummy, and easy!