Spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino is a dish with a mere four ingredients, three if you eliminate the hot peppers. It’s most commonly made by cooking the pasta and while it’s boiling, heating the oil and adding chopped garlic and paper flakes until the garlic has just started turning brown. When the pasta is done, it’s placed in the pan with the other ingredients along with a few tablespoons of pasta water and cooked until the pasta has absorbed the water.
You’d think with such a simple dish and the ways Italians usually codify recipes, there would be few variations. You’d be wrong. There are an amazing number of ways this dish might be prepared.
For example, instead of chopping the garlic you could just cook while cloves of it until it turns dark, then discard it. Now you have a garlic oil that works fine with the dish but doesn’t have a scant number of pieces as in the picture. You can use fresh hot peppers, dry, or none at all. you can add the peppers at the end or cook them with the garlic. You could add pecorino romano or parmigiano reggiano cheese grated on top (although many folks wouldn’t think of cheesing a sauce made primarily with oil).
Like all simple dishes, the quality of the ingredients make a huge difference. Use good olive oil. Really good. I use pretty good oil to cook the garlic, and add the really good oil at the end so it doesn’t cook.
Despite the universal properties of the dish and the popularity of it, you won’t find it on may restaurant menus. Most of the time it’s just assumed that you would know that the restaurant has these ingredients and you can ask for it in the same way you can ask for pasta with butter and/or cheese for a young child.