Photo by brody4Here’s another quick and easy meal my boyfriend and I cooked up while we were living in Tokyo. We were out of rice and feeling too lazy to spend the time on a more involved pasta sauce, so he suggested we do an olive oil base instead.
Pasta Aioli
Prep time: About 10 minutes
Cooking time: About 10 minutes
Serves: 2-3 people
We picked from the ingredients we had on hand, but there are all sorts of things you could put in this — olives would’ve been a really good addition.
-200-300g spaghetti
-1 medium tomato, diced
-1 cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut into half circles
-4 scallions, finely chopped
-Small handful of mushrooms (we used buna-shimeji again)
-1 egg
-About 4 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced (we used more because we love garlic, and because ours wasn’t very potent)
-2 tbsp. milk
-Olive oil
-Black pepper, parsley (dried), basil (dried)
The sauce won’t take very long to cook, so you can start heating the water for the pasta while you’re making it and throw in the dry noodles whenever the water boils.
For the sauce: heat a little bit of olive oil in a skillet, add the garlic and cook until fragrant, then add the scallions and tomatoes. In a separate glass or bowl, combine the egg and a generous amount of olive oil and beat with fork or whisk until completely blended. Add to the skillet with the seasonings and cook on lowered heat for about five minutes. (The heat needs to be low enough that the egg stays blended and doesn’t “cook itself out” of the oil.) Add the mushrooms and and milk, cook for a few more minutes, and you’re done!
