spicy garlic mackerel pasta

A quick pasta using some pretty standard pantry ingredients.

Serves 4-6. About 30min end to end.

1lb pasta
2 4.375oz (124g) tins of mackerel in oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 dried chiles (e.g., chiles de arbol), cut into rings
2 tbsp capers, drained
5 healthy stems of parsley, picked to separate leaves and stems, leaves chopped

Bring water for the pasta to the boil. Don't forget to salt it well.
While the water comes to a boil, mise the sauce ingredients: separate the parsley leaves from stems and chop the leaves (reserving the stems), slice up the dried chiles, chop the garlic, drain the capers.
Open the mackerel tins; pour a tablespoon of the oil from one tin into a pan that will be big enough to hold all of the pasta. Add the parsley stems.
Gently heat the oil on low---just mild bubbles around the stems. After a minute or two, add the chili and garlic. Don't let anything burn---turn off the heat if you need to. Remove the parsley stems.
Around now, your water should be up to a boil. Add the pasta, stirring occasionally.
When you have about four minutes of cook time left on the pasta to its recommended al dente time, turn the heat back on to medium and add the capers, letting them sizzle well.
When you have about two minutes of cook time left on the pasta, drain the rest of the oil from the mackerel, and add it to the pan.
When the pasta is just shy of ready to your taste, add the pasta and a bit (say, 1/4 cup) of its cooking liquid to the pan. Add most of the chopped parsley.
Shake the pan vigorously as you turn the pasta and the sauce ingredients, mixing everything well and giving the sauce ingredients an adhering coating of starch from the pasta.
Serve, garnishing with the last bit of remaining chopped parsley.

This is a flexible recipe that scales well. You could alter quantity on anything: add or remove a tin of fish. Drop the capers, or spend more time separately frying them up real crispy in a different frying pan. Use chiles in oil instead of dried---or fresh chiles. Swap out the allium: soften some onions, add scallions at the end, or top with crispy shallots. Add some crispy breadcrumbs at the end for texture. Use cilantro instead of parsley; use basil, or holy basil, or rau ram .