It might surprise you to know that meat and tomato sauce are not essential components of a good pasta dish. Sometimes, good quality olive oil and fresh garlic are all you need.
When we cook pasta aglio e olio at home, we serve it either as a side dish or a main dish. If it’s meatless, it’s a side dish. But for a filling main dish, we like to add meat.
It’s still the very basic and very easy pasta aglio e olio. Two additions, though. I added mussels. And to give the dish a deeper flavor, I cooked the fettuccine in mussel broth.
The classic Italian spaghetti aglio e olio has only three basic ingredients: pasta, olive oil and garlic. In this variation, sun-dried tomatoes and fresh basil are added for more flavor and color.