Far from the only example, just the one that I am choosing today. It’s also the one I’m most familiar with, and it’s so easy and so enjoyable to eat, I need to share with you.

The recipe, such as it is, is the very definition of simplicity:

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, put Spaghetti in. Grab tongs or a strainer for later when you remove the pasta from the water.
  2. (optional) Finely chop a small handful of flat leaf parsely.
  3. Slice a few cloves of garlic thinly
  4. Sautè over medium low heat in a reasonably high quality extra virgin olive oil. You want something that has a good flavor if you can swing it here, but you are cooking with it, so don’t waste your highest end oils on this. If desired, and I’d argue you should desire it, add a pinch of red pepper flakes. Adding it now helps add flavor to the sauce, not just random hot spots later.
  5. When the garlic just begins to brown, begin adding the spaghetti straight from the pot using the tongs or a strainer. We want there to be some cooking liquid in the pan; the startch and salt in the liquid helps to emulsify the sauce. Your pasta should be mostly done but not quite. For American Pasta companies I like to take dry pasta out of the cooking liquid at least 1 minute below the package suggestion. E.g. most packages will say 7-9 minutes for regular spaghetti. I’d take it out around six
  6. Turn the heat up to finish cooking the pasta as you toss to coat, about a minute. This sounds crazy, but you will “hear” when the spaghetti is ready. If you chose to include chopped parsely, add it now.
  7. Plate and serve.

And that’s it!

You get richness from the oil and garlic; you balance that against the starch in the pasta and the heat of the red pepper. The dish is properly seasoned because of the salt in the water. If you chose parsely, you get some color too. The principle in a lot of Italian cuisine is a balance of flavors using the least technical and least cost requirements.

Which leads to my overarching point: Americans just add too much shit to most food.

We add cheese where it doesn’t need to be there(1). We add too much sauce. We add ketchup to anything other than french fries, and we eat too damn many of those.

We’re blessed with abundance but forget that there is such a thing as excess.

This is cultural, not an issue of palates or even taste. Americans just love to over do everything. We’re obsessed with the most, when we can’t even do basic things correctly. We’ve entirely forgotten the definition of “subtle” (“Laid back and shit, right?”).

Our most macho and materialistic would be wise to remember the example of Theodore Roosevelt - as wealthy and as harty a man this country has ever produced. Not only was he a brute, but also a man of letters and our nation’s greatest conservationist (2). He’s often remembered for the admonishment to ‘carry a big stick’, but we forget that’s proceeded by the more important admonition to ‘walk softly.’

Walk softly, people, and just be concious of the ingredients you’re using.

(1) - Don’t add cheese to this. If you want cheese, stay tuned for my Cacio e Pepe recipe. (2) - TR wasn’t a saint, and I’m not pretending that he was. Don’t put words in my mouth.