Spicy Spaghetti Olio with Cili Padi and Ikan Bilis

I love simple, easy to cook dinners for the obvious reasons. When I cook rice, it usually comes with at least 2 types of dishes; a vegetable dish and a protein dish eg chicken or fish. Sometimes I would fry meehoon (vermicelli rice noodles) but our favourite and must have item in the kitchen has got to be spaghetti and pasta. Any type of pasta will do. Apart from the usual bolognese sauce, another of our favorite is spicy spaghetti olio with cili padi or cili kering and ikan bilis. It is hubby's favourite and he was the one who showed me how to cook it. It is very simple, the ingredients are minimal and very easy to cook.

Ingredients:

• 1 red onion, sliced. I prefer to use a big onion because it is so much easy to peel as compared to shallots. They're tiny and annoying to peel.
• A few garlic, crushed and chopped.
• Cili padi, thinly sliced. If you don't have cili padi, you can use cili kering as well. The amount depends on how hot you want your spaghetti to be.
• A handful of ikan bilis, washed and chopped. You can also leave the ikan bilis whole but I like to chop them up into small pieces so I get a piece in every bite. We have some tulang ikan masin so I just added them a bit to give that extra flavour.
• Spaghetti, cooked as per instructions.
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

The method is simple. Fry the onion, garlic, ikan bilis and cili padi until fragrant, add salt and pepper and then stir in the cooked spaghetti. Stir thoroughly and you are done. Sprinkle some parmesan cheese before you eat. 

Since this dish is spicy, Babycakes had bolognese pasta. Whenever I cook bolognese sauce, I would cook extra and freeze some for her in small portions. This comes in handy during the nights when she can't eat what we're having. She is also picky in her vegetables so I pureed some mixed vege (boiled, of course) and froze them too. I added the puree into her bolognese sauce and she didn't even know it. WIN!