Successful Pasta Experiment # 1: Spicy Sardines and Sweet Corn in Oil Pasta

No cream in the house for Filipino Carbonara. My dad's allergic to tomato sauce. No tuna or salmon. No bacon or pancetta. No eggs. I couldn't find most of the top-of-mind ingredients for pasta in the kitchen. But I still had to whip something up for dinner. Good thing I found a bottle of olive oil, some canned goods in the store room, a couple of sweet corns from Pampanga, and the usual garlic and onion bulbs in the dirty kitchen.

From the above mentioned finds, I was able to make a quick, easy and delish pasta dish!

Ingredients:

2 cans (5.5 oz) 555 spicy sardines sliced

2 large sweet corns

3/4 cup olive oil

1 bulb onion

6 cloves garlic

0.5 lb spaghetti noodles

a dash of pepper

Get everything ready. The onion sliced. The garlic chopped. The sardines, sliced into bits, dried from the sauce. The sweet corn kernels taken from the cob. Bring water to a boil and then throw in your pasta noodles. Take note of the boiling minutes labeled on your noodle packaging. You would need to start the countdown once you pour the noodles in the pot.

For the sauce, toast the garlic and sweat the onion in 2/4 cup olive oil. Once the garlic has turned golden brown and you can already smell the sweet fragrance of onion and garlic, send in the sardines and the corn kernels. Sprinkle some ground pepper. Mix them all together with the noodles, and pour the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil, you'd get something like this!

It was my first time preparing and eating this type of pasta today. My take: The addition of cool corn kernel bits was a pleasant surprise. It's sweet taste was a perfect contrast to the spicy sardines. My advice: add some parmesan cheese or keso de puti if you are feeling pinoy.

Bon Appetit! (In Tagalog: That's it, pancit!)