Ingredients matter. It's a phrase repeated so often by food writers and cooking teachers that it's become clichéd.
Of course, it's in the best interest of writers and teachers to point it out, because the success of a dish typically relies on its ingredients. And an unsuccessful dish reflects poorly on its source.
While the advice seems obvious, it can easily be ignored as you stroll down the grocery store aisles where convenience products and bargain prices can lure you away from quality goods. Like every savvy shopper, I love a good deal. But when that deal turns something delicious into something forgettable or worse, it stops feeling good.
The point becomes even clearer when a dish only has a few ingredients, as is the case with this week's Spaghetti With Olive Oil, Garlic and Spinach.
Start with good pasta. Look for dried spaghetti made from semolina flour. The best pasta has a springy texture with an al dente bite and a matte, rather than shiny appearance. In my experience, Italian brands are usually best.
Olive oil is often a matter of taste, so I recommend that you actually taste yours before using it in this dish. Olive oils can be very mild, with almost no flavor, or very assertive. Do you like yours peppery, with a little bitterness, or more buttery? The fun is in exploring, so shop for oil at a store where you can sample it, or at least one that has someone on staff you can talk to about it.
With garlic, there's only one simple rule: Don't buy it prechopped in a jar. Buy it fresh and chop it yourself. Garlic develops a stronger flavor the more finely it's chopped, and the flavor becomes bitter and sharper the longer it sits. And there's not only garlic in that jar; citric and phosphoric acids are also often added for stabilization and shelf life. That's why jarred garlic typically tastes acrid and even unpleasant. Certainly nothing like the spicy sweetness of fresh garlic.
Baby spinach is easy to buy fresh. It's sold picked through and prewashed in a clamshell container in the produce section, and I'm just fine with that as a convenience product. All you have to do is take a few handfuls and toss them into the skillet. When it's this easy, there's no reason to buy it frozen and chopped.
