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1
Slice the garlic thinly and combine with the olive oil in a small bowl. Leave at room temperature for 30 minutes, then remove and discard every piece of garlic. The oil should carry a faint, mellow garlic scent with no sharpness.
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2
Bring a large pot of unsalted water to a full boil. Add no salt: the colatura will season the finished dish entirely. Cook the spaghetti to a firm al dente — the pasta must retain a definite bite, as the cold sauce will continue to soften it in the bowl. Reserve 12–16 tablespoons of the starchy cooking water before draining.
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3
While the pasta cooks, prepare the dressing bowl: it must be at room temperature or slightly cool — not warm. Combine the colatura (1½–2 teaspoons per portion; taste first, it is saltier than soy sauce), the garlic-infused oil, the chopped parsley, and the crumbled chilli in the bowl. Add the reserved pasta water and stir briefly. No heat is applied at any point: this is where the dish lives or dies — colatura heated even briefly loses the volatile aromatic compounds built over 12–24 months of fermentation in the terzigni, and becomes merely salty rather than complex.
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4
Drain the spaghetti and transfer immediately to the dressing bowl. Toss vigorously and continuously: the starchy water, oil, and colatura must emulsify into a thin, translucent coating sauce that clings to every strand. Slow or gentle tossing produces an oily pool at the base of the bowl. The sauce should appear amber-glossed and coherent, not pooled.
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5
Serve without delay. The dish must reach the table immediately after tossing: the emulsion is fragile, the temperature drops fast, and no reheating is possible without destroying the colatura. The pasta should be glistening, intensely savoury on first taste, and carry no perceptible raw garlic or dominant chilli heat.