Aglio, olio e peperoncino a la Taiko Tari

After a long hard day at work (starting from 8:30 am), last night I came home late at 10:30 pm.

Famished and tired, I had about 30 minutes with the remnant of my energy to eat something and sleep and do everything all over again from 3 am.
I opened my fridge: nothing in there. I opened my kitchen cabinet - a lot of uncooked materials. There was virtually nothing but chips and lentils and canned goods that, frankly when you're as tired as I was last night, looked very unappetizing.

Then my eyes stumbled across some dried red chili pepper that my Japanese mum sent over earlier in the week, along with some dried bay leaves that our Niigata neighbor naturally dried from the big bushy bay tree in their backyard.
Then I thought... hey, I should make that pasta dish that is very simple, yet tastes very good. I went online trying to find a recipe for this pasta dish, but I couldn't remember what that dish was called.

I searched and searched. I bloody hell could NOT find it.

My tummy rumbled loudly. Yeah, I didn't eat all day because of Ramadan, except for the 2 pieces of chocolate at iftar, and now it's asking for some help.

So, I gave up Google and Cooks.com and started pulling out some pots and pans. You know what, let's just be creative here.

This is what I came up with:

Red pepper, garlic, olive oil and pasta recipe a la Taiko Tari

Ingredients:

spaghetti, however much you want to eat in one sitting
garlic, 2 big cloves, crushed or chopped
dried red pepper, 2 - slice thinly
dried bay leaves, 3 leaves
sea salt, to taste (about 1 tsp)
soy sauce, 1 tbsp
freshly grated parmesan cheese
SPAM oven roasted turkey, half a can
extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp

How to cook:

1. Slice SPAM oven roasted turkey, flash fry it with butter in a wok
2. At the same time, cook the pasta according to the instruction in your package, al dente. Drain and put aside
3. Heat the olive oil in the wok where the turkey was fried in #1, put in the garlic and cook until the garlic turned golden brown
4. Put in the sliced dried red pepper, cook until you smell pepper and your eyes watery
5. Put in the bay leaves, cook until you can smell the bay leaves fragrant
6. Toss in the cooked pasta in #2 and mix well, along with the sea salt and soy sauce, and sauté lightly
7. Put in a plate, sprinkle the grated parmesan cheese on top
8. Serve together with the turkey burger
9. Eat it
10. Make appreciation sound... yummm!

This dish is so simple and tasted so good. Now reflecting to my choice of ingredients, if you have access to non SPAM turkey burger, I would strongly suggest you use that instead, but otherwise this do just fine. Or if you want to make chicken burgers, or any fish or grill (go with white meat or seafood, not red meat); they would make a fine companion to the pasta.

And thanks to Rie, I now know that this pasta dish has a name... it is Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino!!! Google away, or you can make do with my revolutionary recipe. I use bay leaves and soy sauce - and no other people have done so in the past.