Italian food

#1189: Aglio e Olio

RECORD STORE TAILS #1189: Aglio e Olio

Growing up in an Italian family, we ate a lot of pasta.  Usually it was the tried and true spaghetti and meatballs.  Even though she’s not Italian, my mom makes a mean lasagna.  These were always treats and delights to have for dinner, but as far as pasta went, nothing topped my Aunt Maria’s aglio e olio.

It’s very simple yet requires knowledge and the perfect touch.  Aglio e olio is simply spaghetti in olive oil and garlic.  It’s usually served with chili flakes and parsley or other herbs.  As simple as it gets; no red sauce and no meat.  If you do add meat, I recommend medium rare steak or garlic shrimp.  It’s up to you; my sister Dr. Kathryn likes hers with mushrooms.

We looked forward to aglio with Aunt every time there was a special occasion.  My aunt would often make a meal for the rest of the family, such as a ham, but also make a batch of aglio special for me.  We had it for birthdays and we had it for visits.  Try as we might, we never could quite get the recipe right at home.  The recipe had been passed down from her mother, and she made it better than most restaurants.  There were tricks to it, as it turns out, that I had completely missed.

Aunt never added meat to her aglio.  She never had to.  The garlic was always soft and golden, and the overall gestault of the pasta gave an aura of umami even without meat.  You could add kalamata olives if you wanted to keep it vegan but add even more saltiness.

I attempted many variations of this at home, all failures.  I tried cheating and using garlic olive oil, or enhancing the pasta with garlic powder.  Awful!  I added vegetables and cheeses in the effort to bring in more flavour, never matching my aunt’s perfection.  I would phone them at their home in Stratford and ask for tips.  Obviously something was getting lost in translation, because it always came out bland.

And they said it was the simplest one!  Indeed, look at an Italian restaurant’s menu and aglio e olio is always the cheapest of the spaghettis.  There’s hardly anything to it.

I thought the secret was to make sure you added some hot, starchy pasta water to the oily mixture of garlic and extra virgin olive oil.  Simple enough.  What I didn’t really understand until Saturday, May 18 2025 was that I was doing everything right, just not enough.

I was determined to get it right this time.  I asked Jen to pick up a nice steak and some spaghetti and I was going to get aglio e olio right for a change.  For the first time.

Dutifully she came home with a beautiful strip loin with a nice cap of fat, at 50% off because she knows exactly when during the week the meat goes on sale.  I rubbed it with olive coil, sea salt, ground pepper, and a little Montreal steak spice for Jen.  She likes it; I can do without except in light moderation.  I chopped up a whole bulb of garlic into different sized chunks, for a variety of flavours and textures as you found them on your fork.  I smooshed some.  It varied.

Using my cast iron pan, I seared that steak on medium high on all four sides, and then let it cook a little longer after turning the heat down.  I chopped some parsley and let the steak rest.  It was a perfect medium rare, as I’d discover at the end when I finally sliced it.  It was also perfectly seasoned.

I set a pot to boil, adding a little olive oil to the water (I understand this helps keep the spaghetti from sticking), and a lot of table salt.  Not sea salt; table salt.  I didn’t measure, but it was a lot.

“Aglio can’t be too salty;” I reasoned.  Every time I made it in the past, I sought ways to up the saltiness, be it with meat or olives.  Salting it at the table didn’t work.  What I learned was, you have to salt the pasta by salting the water, generously.  This is what will give the aglio its flavour later on, enhancing the garlic and finally making its presence known.

Once the water is at a vigorous boil, I throw in a whole package of spaghetti.  I cracked the noodles in half and dumped them in the water.  I put the lid on and they cooked quickly.

I already had a saucepan full of olive oil going at medium heat.  Exactly three minutes after I put the spaghetti in the water, I dumped all my garlic in the olive oil, stirring frequently and ensuring it didn’t burn.

Always taste your spaghetti frequently to make sure it’s not going to be overcooked.  That’s the worst.  Instead, take the spaghetti out of the water about a minute before it’ll be at the perfect done-ness for you.  As soon as I took my first taste of the not-yet-cooked noodles, I knew I was close.  I hadn’t tasted that since my aunt made aglio at the cottage.  It was so familiar.  When the spaghetti was done, I drained it immediately.  Key here is to save at least 1/2 cup of that salty, starchy pasta water, because you’re going to immediately transfer all the pasta into the saucepan with the garlic oil.  Pour in the 1/2 cup of water and mix everything together in the saucepan, ensuring you coat every strand of spaghetti with that starchy garlic oil.  Throw in some chili flakes and parsley.  Add Parmesan cheese at the table to taste.

I threw some beautiful steak slices on top and served.  My aunt’s recipe had been saved.

You see, my aunt has been suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years now.  She can’t cook and wouldn’t be able to tell us the recipe anymore.  It would have been lost.  I saved it today.  Let it be known, that on May 18 2025, I saved the Maria Ladano (Festoso) recipe for aglio e olio.  It lives again.

I know that my aunt doesn’t understand what is happening to her right now, but I hope that her spirit would be gladdened to know that I have saved this classic recipe for all time.  Here it is.  I just wrote it down.  It can never go away now.

Thank you Aunt Maria.  For all the toy trucks, GI Joes and Transformers and CDs and tapes, the spaghetti was the best gift.

Part 203: Bitchin’ About Staff Meetings

east-side-mario-s

RECORD STORE TALES Part 203:  Staff Meetings

I used to enjoy staff meetings.  When we were a small  chain, we’d gather all the employees up after work at one of the larger locations.  If memory serves (and Lord knows we’re talking about 18 years ago now), the boss even brought a case of beer to the first one.  We’d go over ideas, improvements, problems, shoot the shit, it was informal and it was great!  It was one of the only times we’d have everybody together in one room.

As we expanded, that became impractical.  We started having meetings with just the managers.  These were a bit more serious in nature, sometimes heated, but we held them at a restaurant.  The boss would pay for everybody’s beer and food, which was really cool.  We’d have a good time, it was for social purposes as well as practical.  We usually held these “Manager’s Meetings” in the closest East Side Mario’s.  Decent, not the greatest food in the world, but I liked it.

MOTHERSIt’s a shame this wasn’t the 1980’s.  Then we could have had the meetings at a place like Mother’s Pizza!  Mother’s Pizza was the best pizza place in town.  I went there for every birthday.  It was co-owned by Ernie Whitt, the catcher for the Toronto Blue Jays.  Later on, Cito Gaston bought in as well.  Mother’s.  Now that was a pizza.*

Ahem.  Sorry.  I tend to lose my train of thought when I talk about food.

We’d mess with each other.  I remember my boss had one pen that he just loved.  Loved it.  Freaked out when he misplaced it.  He’d run around the store yelling “WHERE MY PEN!” in a funny voice.  So somebody sneakily stole his pen just before the staff meeting.

We went to Mario’s for the meet.  Upon arrival, he complained a bit about misplacing his pen, but got on to business.  A short while later, one of the store managers was casually writing with it, nonchalant.  His pen.  His precious…waiting for him to notice it in someone else’s hands.

Suddenly, he saw.  He pointed.  “MY PEN!  MY PEN!  YOU HAVE MY PEN!” he yelled in that funny voice again.  Kids at the table next to us stared, wondering who this guy was!

Yeah, those were good times.  But as George Harrison said, all things must pass.  I’ve talked before about “The Great Change”, when CD sales started to slump.  Budgets got tighter, things got more serious.  Staff meetings were moved to a stuffy boardroom in the back of one of our stores.  We started receiving extensive emails with the “minutes” from the meeting, the mind-numbing minutiae.  This was a long way from beer and pizza.  The atmosphere was dour and the meetings sometimes dragged on for 2 hours.

After the meetings, I’d sometimes shoot the shit with one or two of the other store managers.

“What was that?” I would say.  “I could have said all that in one email!”

“Was there anything said in that meeting that couldn’t have been covered in one email?” someone asked rhetorically.

It was at one of these staff meetings that Joe dubbed me with the nickname Señor Spielbergo because of my thick beard.  But in the later days, that was one of the few moments of levity.  For me these meetings were just a stagnant waste of time.  Hours upon hours of time that I’ll never get back.

* I hear they opened a new Mother’s Pizza in Hamilton.  Maybe, for future record store kids, the dream of a staff meeting at Mother’s Pizza is alive again?  I hope so.

NEXT TIME ON RECORD STORE TALES…

Fuckin’ sHEAVY!