Spaghetti Aglio e Olio
- Assumption:
I grew up eating Spaghetti con Aglio e Olio, but I never thought about its origin. I knew it was Italian, but I never looked deeper into the reasoning for the simplicity of its ingredients. After being in Eatalians and doing some research of my own, I have come to understand that the 3-6 ingredients that can be used (depends on preference) are because that is all the creators of the dish could scrounge up. This means that the creation of this dish is to be credited to the poor peasant class, who used the most basic and common ingredients they had in order to make something as timeless as Spaghetti con Aglio e Olio.
2. Dish:
The dish I chose is spaghetti with oil and garlic. The name is pretty self-explanatory. The dish calls for pasta – usually spaghetti, and for garlic to be sauteed in olive oil. Once the spaghetti is boiled, the pasta is added to the pan with the oil and garlic, along with some of the pasta water. Red pepper flakes, parsely, and parmesan are all optional additions to the recipe.
3. Chemical Analysis
Olive oil is one of the three main ingredients to this dish. Olive oil is mostly monounsaturated fat. It is 85% cis unsaturated and poly unsaturated while only 15% saurated. This means that it is a liquid at room temperature. Its purpose is to be sauteed with the garlic. The process of sauteing something in oil is to caramelize it, or break down the sugars with heat which makes the garlic softer and slightly sweeter. Without sauteing the garlic in the oil, we would be stuck with bitter, crunchy garlic, which definitely does not taste as good.
4. Cultural Analysis
Olive oil has always been a part of Italian cuisine, even before Italy was a country. In Roman times, olive oil was one third of their most popular food items, the other two being wine and bread. Considering its fundamentionality in the Italian diet, it is something that is always around, even if you are poor. Even the slaves in Roman times were given Lampante (bad olive oil used for lamp fuel), but they still had it. So when even with the bare minimum of ingredients and resources, even the poorest people had access to it. This is how the dish was born. With only three simple ingredients, peasants could make a tasty dish out of almost nothing.
5. Integration and Reflection
When I first learned to cook for myself, spaghetti with garlic and oil was one of the first things I ever made. Considering there are only three main ingredients, there was not much for me to mess up. They were really easy to obtain because in my Sicilian household, those three things are always fully stocked. It was so simple and took only a few minutes to cook. The basic ingredients and easy execution is similar to olive oil’s chemical role in the whole thing. The role olive oil plays in this dish is to soften the garlic through sauteeing it, which brings out the flavor by breaking down sugars. With this procedure, the whole dish comes together. Just as without one of the three ingredients, it would not be much of a meal, but the combination makes it so good.
