Pour water into your pot and mix in the salt. Keep over a medium-high heat covered until your water boils.
10 cups Water, 1 Teaspoon Salt
Stir the pasta into your hot boiling water and mix it well. Cook pasta to the desired texture (to the bite or soft) uncovered over a medium-high heat setting for about 8–12 mins (follow pasta packet instructions). Stir occasionally so that the pasta doesn't get stuck at the bottom of the pan.
3½ cups Pasta
Strain pasta when it's done cooking.
To assemble the Pasta meal
While the pasta is boiling, prepare your fresh ingredients. Zest and juice lemon. Keep zest aside.
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
Cut off parsley stems and chop garlic small.
½ bunch Parsley
Keep all ingredients, including oil and seasoning, ready.
¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper, Salt, 2 Tablespoon Olive Oil
Pour oil to the pasta. Add chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper to that and mix your pasta well.
Garnish
Garnish your pasta with lemon zest. Topping with Parmesan is optional.
Lemon Zest
Serve up.
Notes
Pick a pasta type that you like. I recommend spiral pasta, fussili pasta or rotini pasta shapes for this dish because the olive oil and seasoning cover well the spiral-shaped pasta types.
½ bunch parsley with stems = 1 cup loose parsley without stems or ½ cup chopped, or 30 grams chopped parsley.
For the best quality olive oil, get cold pressed small batch produced. If you need to go budget, get an extra virgin olive oil from an affordable but known brand. Avoid pomace olive oil as it is heavily refined, artificially flavored, colored and might not contain real olives.
Parmesan is optional if you are plant-based. I like to add freshly grated Parmesan. If you want quality, get only Parmigiano Reggiano from Italy. If you are on a budget, you can use the Parmesan from the store, but know that this is not parmigiano and Parmesan doesn't exist in Italy.
Grate your lemon skin with a knife to make lemon zest. Only use untreated (pesticide-free) lemons when using the zest in your food. Bio or organic labels sometimes are also pesticide-free, but this is not the case all over the world. Check with your country’s organic food laws.