Recently my lady friend (hello Lizzie) had the idea of combining my love of food and film into regular blog posts. Essentially the concept is to cook/bake dishes seen in movies, see how easy they are to make and how they taste. Lucky for me, I enjoy cooking however Lizzie is much better at it than I am so she took the reins on what is hopefully the first of many food related film blog posts.

The idea sprung to Lizzie’s mind after were watched the Jon Favreau flick, Chef who stars and directs this food lovers movie. (If you’ve not seen it, I suggest that before viewing it that you eat something extra tasty. Food envy is the worst.) Favreau stars as Carl Casper, a frustrated chef, caged by the menu he has to serve night after night as well as his unrelenting boss, Dustin Hoffman.

Once upon a time he was being hailed as one of the most exciting things in the restaurant business but is now reduced to a bog standard cook. This leads to a pretty bad review from a well-known food critic and the meltdown to end all meltdowns. Unfortunately for Casper, this is the digital age where everyday people can photograph and film at the push of a button which leads to him becoming a viral star. He quits and soon after he’s convinced to start a food truck which quickly gains popularity.

Before all of this, the pre-meltdown portion of the film if you will, he cooks garlic pasta (full name is Pasta Aglio e Olio) for Scarlett Johansson who loves it! Who wouldn’t? It looks so good that I’m pretty sure I could smell it. Maybe it was the garlic bread I was eating at the time but I doubt that. Anyway, here’s the ingredients and method for the garlic pasta.

For the original recipe, take a look here.

Ingredients (Serves 2 people)

• Large handful of spaghetti
• 8 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly
• 150 ml extra virgin oil
• 1 tablespoon of chili flakes
• 60g Parmesan, grated
• Handful of diced parsley
• Juice of 1 lemon
• Salt and pepper to season

Method

1. Find the Chef soundtrack and press play
2. Boil some water in a saucepan, add salt and then place the spaghetti in until cooked, usually around 10 minutes or so
3. Whilst this is cooking, heat up the oil in a separate frying pan on a gentle heat and then add in the garlic, ensuring that you stir it every minute so that it doesn’t burn
4. Once the garlic is golden brown, remove from the heat, drain the spaghetti and leave on the side until you’re ready to mix
5. Add the chili flakes to the garlic and oil, then stir, making sure it is well mixed
6. Turn the volume up for God’s sake! I can’t hear the sexy salsa sounds of Chef over all that frying and mixing!
7. Add the spaghetti in and toss/stir until it is completely coated in garlic/chili oil (I’m drooling, I want it again!)
8. Add in the parsley and parmesan and again stir well
9. Squeeze in the lemon juice, ensuring it is drizzled all over the spaghetti
10. Season with salt and pepper to your own taste
11. ENJOY!

It’s a surprisingly simple recipe which (minus chopping the garlic thinly) didn’t take that long. It’s perfect and filling by itself, however I’d recommend that you serve it with a salad if anything. I added in extra parmesan as I was eating, because of the heat and this also improved the taste overall.

We used more than a tablespoon of chili flakes and it was a bit too much, however you can probably take the heat better than me. Here are a few images during the cooking  process. Excuse the quality, my camera thinks it’s from the 90s.

Keep an eye out on my blog for monthly movie recipes from all sorts of films and if you have any ideas you’d like me to try out, let me know.

Keep. It. Reel.