Another one …

The Thanksgivikkah Dinner post received such a good reception that I thought I’d post this old comment from Jill’s blog on MyOpera. It’s a variation of a traditional Italian recipe called Olio e Aglio(Oil and Garlic).

Capellini in Olio e Aglio con Spinaci
Hokay, here ya go:
1) Pour about ¼ cup E.V. Olive oil into a frying pan … a smallish pan, so the oil has some depth.
2) Add anywhere from 3 to 6 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped (depending on how much you groove on garlic).
3) Add a pinch of dried basil, and if desired, about half that much dried oregano.
4) Hey, when has a little bit of onion hurt anything? Onion powder will do, if you don’t feel like cutting one.
5) A wee bit of salt … not much.
6) OK … swish all that stuff around so it’s kinda mixed, like, and set it aside … don’t start heating it yet.

Next, salt a bunch of water, and cook up what seems to be a reasonable amount of pasta … my favourite is capellini, but others like spaghetti or maybe fettucini. Hell, I’ve even made it with Polish egg noodles. With capellini, I use about a ¾” bundle of full-length noodles, maybe a touch more. (Is it possible to have too much pasta?)

While the pasta is cooking, put a thawed package of chopped spinach into a strainer, and squish all the water out, using the back of a big ol’ serving spoon. It shouldn’t be dead dry, but it shouldn’t be sopping, either. Set it aside.

Drain the pasta, and oil it very lightly. Sprinkle in a goodly amount of grated parmesan or romano (or both) cheese, and swish it around. Set it aside in a place where it won’t cool off too fast. Cover it.

Now, start heating the stuff in the frying pan, gently … a sort of sauté temperature. Keep it moving, and keep heating until the garlic is softened and golden. Stop heating … there’s nothing worse than burnt garlic. And don’t ask me how I know that.

Pour all the stuff from the pan and the strainer into the pasta, and stir like crazy, until it’s reasonably well-mixed.

Serve. It’s really groovy stuff, and even kids like it, because garlic and onion, when cooked, turn sweet. And the spinach is good for you, and you don’t even have to squeeze the can to open it, à la Popeye! Besides, I like spinach.

You have just made a variation of what the Italians call “Oil and Garlic”. I call it “Capellini in Olio e Aglio con Spinaci”!
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Well, I have a small addition to the recipe above … this is something that I hit upon when I was using a smaller pasta … this would work well even with the smallest sized shells (BTW, shells and cheese are better than macaroni and cheese, and obviously, anyone who’s ever eaten macaroni and cheese as the books tell you to make it, the cheese sauce MUST be “doctored” … I tend toward Italian herbs and spices, but other folk can do as they like, including ignoring this advice. Blech!). Now, back to the subject (I think) … I needed to make the spinach into smaller pieces, because the stuff, as frozen, is full leaves, or perty near. So, being a clever sort of chap, or “resourceful” as a boss told me once, just before giving me an insultingly inadequate raise, I bethought me of the kitchen shears that I keep in a drawer, under everything else, so no one will steal them and get them all gobbied up with glue and hair and stuff. I took the more-or-less dry spinach out of the strainer, and it held together nicely in my hand, so I went at it with the kitchen shears, cutting the”mat” of spinach into about ¼” strips. I used that, and, by Neddy Dingo, it worked!. I resolved to do the same thing in future. 
It was later, sitting and pondering, (idly, of course) that I remembered a curious shears that I had found in my late daughter’s effects: There were five parallel sets of shearing blades worked by one pair of handles. “Curious”, I thought, and assumed they were a cheap device for cutting up credit cards and the like … I tried them on an old debit card, and it was obvious that they were a desperate measure, at best, for that use, so I set them aside. Then, I thought of cutting up the spinach with them, went rooting about, found where I’d stashed them, and found them to be ideal for the task. I made a picture, so everyone would know exactly what I was talking about; they are the objects in the middle of the picture, regular shears are shown for comparison:

And then, making sure that these things could be purchased easily, I googled “five-bladed-scissors” expecting to be taken to office-supply sites. Instead, I was taken to kitchen-ware sites … it turns out the bloody things are called “Herb scissors”, and I had inadvertently stumbled upon the intended use. Amazon carries them, as do other places.