The late-night spaghetti monster will be tamed with this flavor-packed pasta that comes together quickly from pantry ingredients. The key here is making the most of the garlic.
We toasted a whopping 2 tablespoons of minced garlic in extra-virgin olive oil over low heat just until it cooked to a sweet and buttery pale golden brown. (Be careful not to let it go any darker or it will be harsh.)
Also, we cooked the spaghetti in just 2 quarts of salted water to ensure that the cooking water ended up loaded with starch; adding some of that starchy water back to the finished spaghetti gave our simple pantry sauce lots of body and texture.
Finally, adding a little minced raw garlic right at the end of the cooking time created a garlicky duality between the buttery sweetness of the toasted garlic and the fire of the raw garlic.
This is endlessly adaptable, depending on what you have in your pantry. (No Parmesan? Toast up some bread crumbs instead. No basil? Try parsley, or leave it out. If you’re really hungry, add a can of tuna at the end. And don’t forget about the variations that follow.)