“Midnight pasta” has a fairy-tale ring to it, as if you’re capping off a night of clubbing or a royal ball with some quickly made carbs. To me, it evokes a cook in half-loosened cocktail attire, shoes kicked off, effortlessly gathering ingredients while sipping Champagne from a slipper.
Recipes: Pasta With Miso, Parmesan and Pickled Peppers | Pasta With Lemon, Capers and Anchovies | Pasta With White Beans, Olives and Fennel
But 7 p.m. on some weekdays can feel like midnight, and in yesterday’s sweats, without a minute to spare, you might need to make dinner with whatever’s on hand.
This is how I usually do midnight pasta.
That doesn’t diminish its glamour. There’s a certain thrill to making something from nearly nothing, to transforming a few garlic cloves, some good olive oil and whatever else you can scrounge from the cabinets into culinary gold.
The traditional Italian version, spaghettata di Mezzanotte, is the simplest of dishes, using only what was in every nonna’s kitchen: pasta, aglio, olio, pepperoncini (garlic, olive oil and chiles).
In our more eclectic times, the dish has grown to include anything you might find in your pantry at midnight or, you know, on a Tuesday after work. Anchovies, onions, capers, olives, pickled peppers, canned beans, tomato paste, Parmesan, spices like fennel seeds and, in my house, lemons are all fair game.
I also like to scatter some kind of frilly green on top, gleaned from my herb pots when they’re blooming or foraged from the fridge when they’re not. Even tired parsley or celery leaves can be finely chopped and strewn like fairy dust over a tangle of spaghetti, adding vibrancy to what can be a rather dun-colored dish. But that’s strictly optional, and skipping it won’t diminish the flavors.
Of the three new takes I offer here, the miso and soy sauce version might be the most unexpected. These ingredients pack a deep wallop of umami, and using pickled peppers in lieu of chile flakes lends brightness as well as heat. Mild white miso works best, integrating seamlessly with the garlic and oil, but you can substitute yellow or red miso if that’s what life, and your refrigerator, have handed you. Just make sure to taste as you go when adding extra salt.
In another take, a can of white beans rounds out a midnight pasta, giving it protein, heft and a pleasing creaminess when the beans break down into the olive oil, turning into a silky, almost velvety sauce. A few crushed fennel seeds lend a gentle, haunting sweetness, and a handful of olives make it nicely briny.
Lastly, to the classic combination of anchovies, capers and garlic, I add whole sliced lemons. The key is to tame their bitterness by blanching the slices quickly in the pasta pot, then sear them in olive oil to caramelize them slightly, soften their tang and give them golden edges.
Midnight pasta keeps its effortless charm no matter what time — or what you’re wearing when — you cook it.
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Melissa Clark has been writing her column, A Good Appetite, for The Times’s Food section since 2007. She creates recipes for New York Times Cooking, makes videos and reports on food trends. She is the author of 45 cookbooks, and counting.
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