636. Spaghetti Aglio e Olio

Spaghetti aglio e olio is one of those classic Italian dishes which I’ve often heard about but never tried before. Spaghetti with nothing but olive oil and garlic just sounded kind of dull to me, and also really heavy if you’re having all that pasta and olive oil with very little else to lighten the dish up and cut through the stodge. I decided to give it a go for my lunch though so I heated up the olive oil with a couple of cloves of sliced garlic and mixed in the spaghetti. I found that my suspicions were at least part right. Surprisingly it wasn’t too heavy, the garlic seemed to be enough to give it a kick and cut through the oil; it was dull though. The first couple of mouthfuls were lovely, the strong garlic flavour really came through, but after that I was just craving for there to be something else. Some other flavour or texture to mix it up a little. I think perhaps this would be nice as a side dish, but I wouldn’t have it as a bowl of pasta on its own again.

636 down, 1160 to go

511. Quark

I haven’t had a chance to go through my vacation pictures yet, so in the meantime I’ll carry on posting a few older things that I haven’t got around to writing up yet. Quark is one of those foods which I’d heard of before doing the list but never tried because it didn’t sound all that exciting. I’m glad the list has led me to it though because it’s actually really pretty tasty and a nice healthy alternative to using sour cream or mascarpone or something. So far I’ve used it a few times in different pasta dishes - this one was a baked spaghetti which had crumbled sausage, peppers, tomatoes, the quark, and then mozzarella on the top.

511 down, 1285 to go

411. Durum Wheat Spaghetti

Of course I’ve eaten spaghetti plenty of times since I started this challenge, but I wanted to wait until I had something exciting with it to post it on the blog. I’d seen this posted on tumblr a few times - where the spaghetti is threaded through 412. Frankfurters, and so I decided to give it a go as it looked a bunch of fun. It was. And tasty too. I made the sauce out of red pesto and clamato. Damn good.

412 down, 1384 to go

372. Chicken Parmigiana with 373. Spaghetti Marinara is one of my absolute favourite meals. It’s not really a British thing so it’s been one of those meals that I’ve always made sure I have every time I go to the USA. I need to get my chicken parmigiana fix. The chicken, breadcrumbs, tomato sauce and cheese are just a perfect marriage; kind of a pimped-up, extra awesome pizza. So I decided that I would have a go at making it at home. It was really pretty simple as it was just combining things I make anyway - tomato sauce and breaded chicken. I am now having massive cravings for it all over again.

373 down, 1423 to go