TacoCat (kinda) Cooks! #45: Trying Chinese Aglio Olio?

taco.cat (67)in #food • 20 days ago

Hey Steemit!

We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some of the food we've been making at home since we've been cooking a lot nowadays! Both because it's cheaper and also healthier to cook for yourself compared to eating out. While I usually stick to the usual recipes I do like to try new ones once in a while and figured I'd share the new ones I've tried.

I came across a pretty simple pasta recipe on my instagram reels a while ago and I've been itching to try it! I think this is a trend of sorts but people have been making what they call Chinese style Aglio Olio, or Chili Oil pasta and tbh it looks really good!

Here's the video if you want to check it out.

I did my own version of this recipe, where I added a ton of vegetables in since it looks quite plain without any. These are the ingredients I used:

250g linguine
5-7 garlic cloves
red spinach
shiitake mushrooms
2 carrots
1.5 tbsp butter

Here are the ingredients for the sauce:

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp chili oil
2 tbsp sugar (to substitute the honey)

Here are the cooking directions for the recipe, but I'd be adding some extra steps for the vegetables.

Step 1: Chop all the vegetables and mushrooms.

I like to slice my carrots julienne whenever I'm making noodles or pasta so they're easier to pick up and eat with the noodles.

Step 2: Put all the vegetables and mushrooms in a pot of boiling water for at least 5 minutes.

Step 3: Mince the garlic cloves in the meantime. I use my small food processor to make things easier. It doesn't chop them very finely as well which is just right.

Step 4: Put the spaghetti into the pot of boiling water and after it's softened up make sure to press it into the pot to submerge all the pasta.

Boil the pasta for as long as the packaging indicates, or shorter if you want it al dente.

Step 5: While the pasta is boiling, prepare the sauce by mixing the chili oil, sugar/honey, and soy sauce with some pasta water and set it aside.

Step 6: Once the pasta is cooked to your desired doneness, take it off the stove and drain it.

Step 7: In a pan or wok, put in the butter and garlic and stir fry until fragrant or the garlic gets lightly browned.

Step 8: Add in the sauce and stir fry for about a minute.

Step 9: Add in the pasta and mix to combine.

And voila, the pasta is done! It actually didn't turn out as red as I thought it was going to be. It looks just like regular aglio olio just substituting the chili flakes for chili oil I guess.

Then it was time to serve! It looked and smelled pretty good at least.

I'm not sure if it was the amount of pasta I made but I couldn't really taste the chili at all. It tasted more sweet than I would've liked as well. Then again, I don't have much of a sweet tooth so it's hard to judge. But I definitely added more chili oil while eating this.

Honestly, it was still pretty yummy. The pasta was and vegetables were cooked well but it was definitely on the sweeter side. I think I would add twice the amount of chili and half the amount of sugar next time.

It was still a really nice meal though! A little plain too, but with more sauce and chili I think it would be more delicious. The recipe did call for some cheese so maybe I will add that next time as well.

This is an interesting take on aglio olio but I think I'll just stick to the regular recipe tbh. I did see a similar recipe to this but using udon noodles instead of pasta. Maybe that one would be better? We'll find out next time I suppose.

Thanks for reading!