Re: Aglio e olio --
I make this a lot. Like, a LOT a lot. Because it's yummy.
While the recipe above is good, I do a few things differently.
First, don't crush the garlic. The point isn't to have an even distribution, the point is to have slices of blonded garlic in the pasta for a lovely hit of it when you bit into a garlic slice. You just slide them into the oil long enough for them to just start changing color, and voila, lovely garlic.
Second, you should add both garlic and red pepper flakes to the oil. Maybe not much, but you want a bit of heat in it.
You can go crazy on the parsley or not, but the earthly flavor of the parsley offsets the citrus from the lemon and the spice from the red pepper and the garlic.
When you're only working with like six or seven ingredients (pasta, oil, parsley, red pepper, lemon, garlic, maybe some parm or romano cheese though I don't think it needs it) leaving one out can drastically change the composition of the dish.