Panko Pangritata

For dinner tonight, M and I whipped up a quick but very tasty spaghetti with pan roasted field mushrooms, chilli, thyme and parmesan cheese. But something was missing... and so, I decided to add a textural dimension to our pasta dish - pangritata.

Pangritata is basically a poor man's parmesan born from Southern Italy. Breadcrumbs toasted in olive oil, garlic, chilli and seasoned with sea salt... the humble ingredients add crunch, loads of flavour and lots of fun to a basic spaghetti dish.

But what was special about my pangritata tonight was that because I didn't have any leftover crusty bread which I would normally process into breadcrumbs, and also frankly because I was too lazy to clean up, I used, in a stroke of rare genius (well to me at least it was), leftover panko I had in the pantry. And the results were surprisingly good. The panko crumbs crispened up perfectly and were so easy to make. Tossed through our pasta dinner, it turned something something so simple into something truly special.