The Easiest, fastest pasta you'll ever make!

I Almost three years ago when my husband and I were living in our little two bedroom townhouse I found a pasta recipe that called for four ingredients: pasta, 3 cloves of chopped garlic, 1/2 cup olive oil and 1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes. (Salt and pepper to your taste) 

I can remember my mother in law and I standing in our little tiny galley style kitchen chopping clove after clove of garlic because we had to triple the recipe! (My husband has a large family and I was still learning how to cook for one.) it turned out pretty good but I was looking for more flavor!  Since then I have doctored it up into the most delicious pasta!! 

Start by putting a pot of water on for whatever type of pasta you want. Add some salt (which will help the water boil faster) and cover the pot. (A watched pot never boils) 

Then, chop up some onion to your desired thickness (a whole onion is probably good if you're making one box/bag of pasta) and a couple cloves of garlic. (depending on how garlicky you want it you can always add more or less) 

Chopped onion 

Chopped garlic 

Coat a medium to large size pan with olive oil. You can always add more later but you'll want enough to cover the pasta with, it's like a sauce. Turn your stove top on to medium, medium high heat to get your olive oil hot. (You don't want to burn the onion so watch the pan to make sure it's not TOO hot.)

Once your olive oil is hot you can add the onion. I'd let the onion sauté up for a couple minutes and then add the garlic. You don't want the garlic to burn. You want the onion to be translucent. (almost see through) Once the onion has reached the translucent stage you can add the red pepper flakes (if you want it mild, only add a little, if you like it spicy, shake away!) salt and pepper to your desired taste. 

Once the pasta is finished strain it and add it to the pan. If you pan isn't large enough, that's ok! Put the pasta into a bowl and pour the olive oil, garlic, onion and red pepper flake mixture over it. 

Once again I forgot to take a picture of the food before we are but this was what was left over in the pot once we served ourselves. 

The fun thing about the pasta is you can add whatever you'd like to it! We have added mushrooms on more than one occasion. (You can cook the mushrooms before you add the rest of the ingredients and set aside.) You could also add spinach and/or red/yellow peppers to add a little color. The possibilities are endless! You could even add a protein to the dish and make it a meal! 

That's the fun thing about cooking!! You can take a recipe and turn it in to your own!! 

I hope you enjoy this dish as much as we do and change things up! Share here what you did to change things! You never know who's reading, they might want to try it too!! 

Recipe:

1 box of pasta

1 medium to large onion, chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic chopped

Start with 1/2 cup olive oil (add as needed)

A pinch (or a couple shakes) of red pepper flakes

You can also add:

Mushrooms

Spinach

Red or yellow peppers

Chicken or any other protein you'd like. Maybe tofu if you're a vegetarian.