New Year's Resolutions and the Ministry of Food

The new year has got me cooking from the Ministry of Food, Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook. I’ve never been much of a Jamie fan, but I must say that having tried the Italian based recipes from the latest cookbook, he’s got something good going on there with the easy to make, train the idiot style of food that actually tastes halfway decent and relatively similar to what you might get at a restaurant for slightly less trouble but a lot more spend.

I’m actually quite impressed by the shortcut aglio olio'esque recipe, and it’s a great book to start with if you’re not really familiar with cooking, or if you are and just wanted to know a quicker way of doing things without compromising tastes.

Foolproof Aglio Olio (as adapted from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food)

Ingredients:
Olive Oil
Butter [Ed: apparently a North Italian trick, and it's one that works! Whatever you do, do not skip the butter!]
Loads of garlic, sliced
Balsamic vinegar or lemon juice
Pasta
Water & Pinch of Salt

Method:

1. Put a pan of water to boil with a pinch of salt for the pasta. Add the pasta and cook per pasta's instructions until al dente.
2. Put another large pan on medium heat. Note the medium heat is important, err on the low side as you don't want to burn the oils. Glug olive oil, garlic, and a spoonful of butter per person to melt on the pan. [Ed: On the heat, it should take a couple of minutes to sizzle the garlic, I've found that by soaking the garlic in the oil, the garlic takes longer to release it's fragrance, giving you more time to transfer the fragrance from the garlic into the pasta where you want it to be.]
3. When you start to smell the garlic, pour balsamic vinegar or lemon juice in about equal proportion to the oil used into the pan. Stir in the pasta. [Ed: One of the tricks I've found out to avoid that oily taste that usually turns up in an aglio olio done badly is to put equal parts of acid (lemon juice or balsamic vinegar) to the oil. Jamie did a very good trick using cherry tomatoes - slightly out of season ones with extra zing work especially well - and balsamic vinegar to get just that right combination of creamy/sour in the sauce.]
4. Add a little of the water from boiling the pasta to cream the sauce. Stir, taste and add a bit of crushed black pepper if needed.