Food #ICook | Spaghetti Mushroom Aglio e Olio with Garlic Bread and Red Coral Salad with Dried Cranberries in Vinaigrette Dressing

I made this meal during Raya month (Eid in Syawal) a couple of times once when my sister's friends came to raya (celebrate Eid) at our place and once for our break of fast meal (an optional addition of 6 days of fasting in the month of Syawal after Ramadhan).

It's my first time ever making it and I can tell you it was the bomb if I say so myself ahahaha :D. Seriously, it was damn good even I was surprised.

Aglio e olio means garlic and oil in Italian. I made this just by following my hunch based on all aglio e olio that I've tasted in restaurants and the cooking shows I've watched. Of all these, my favourite has to be the one I frequent at Tappers Cafe. It even beats the ones I've had in upscale places too.

Because I'm just a regular home cook, I eyeballed everything =D. The measurements below are just as guidelines.

I used:

Half pack of spaghetti noodle (good for 4-5 pax)

2 very red medium sized tomatoes, diced medium.

1/2 cup of Sunflower oil as alternative to olive oil - for this dish, oily is good ;)

2 large cloves of garlic, chopped

1/2 large white onion or any kind, chopped.

A pack of Japanese Bunashimeji mushroom, halved.

Red chili flakes, dried/fresh herbs of any kind but I used mixed ones and salt to taste 

Grated parmesan for garnishing

Japanese Bunashimeji mushroom

Cooking it:

1. Heat the oil in a pan. 

2. Tomatoes in first. I purposely used a flat frying pan instead of a wok because I didn't want my tomatoes and mushrooms to clump together down the bottom. I want them to stay apart in the pan, get a good sautéing and not steam up into a mushy mashy soup. Well, this is just my thought hehee.. based on what i picked up in one of Jamie Oliver's TV shows. I remember he said this when sautéing some mushrooms. As Malaysians, we use the wok a lot as our cooking vessel.

3. Add garlic and onion into the pan when the tomatoes started to soften and cook until they look somewhat melted into the oil. I love this part when the tomatoes melt away. I picked it up from the show Extra Virgin on Food Network; except they were cooking french beans (kacang buncis) and tomatoes then lol :P

This is what I meant by the tomatoes melting away in the oil; at this point I added the mushrooms

4. Mushrooms in, stir a little and followed by chili flakes, herbs and salt. Give a good stir until you can smell your chili and herbs which wouldn't take long.

5. Pour in the cooked spaghetti and toss around until even.

6. Sprinkle some grated parmesan and some herbs on top for garnishing

It should take you only around 10-12 minutes to cook this excluding prep time.

A pasta dish wouldn't be complete for me without garlic bread - a lot of them hehee.. sometimes I like to scoop up my pasta using these bread or dip in the pasta sauce yummmm..

You can add some chicken meat if you like, I did but I didn't like it as much as when I used only mushrooms.

For this meal, I had my aglio e olio with garlic bread and red coral salad with dried cranberries dressed in vinaigrette. Dead simple to make. If you'd like to see the recipes, read here.