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Spaghetti Aglio E Olio 🍝🧄| Cooking for My Boyfriend! (again) | Chef Kang's Cooking Secrets #13

It’s no secret that Beomgyu despised tomatoes. They’re sour, gooey and incredibly tasteless— he especially loathed heirloom tomatoes (“Why do they look like that ?!”)— so Taehyun knew that sauces like marinara and bolognese were strictly off the market whenever he had to make pasta for the both of them. Fortunately for him, Beomgyu liked garlic, so the most obvious compromise was to settle with aglio e olio, which Taehyun's garlic-loving heart was more than happy to go with.

"Hey, Solomons," Taehyun grinned at the camera, giving a small wave. “Today, I’m cooking for my boyfriend again!”

He leaned his palms on the pristine island countertop. “Beomie told me he was craving pasta today, so as you can tell,” He waves a hand over the spread of ingredients— a bundle of uncooked spaghetti, a few cloves of garlic and a bottle of oil, amongst other things. "We're making spaghetti aglio e olio today!

"It's a pretty simple recipe, so I'm a little worried about my screentime," A laugh sounded from his lips, "But don't worry, I'll probably grill some chicken breast later on."

Clapping, he announced, “So, let’s get cooking!”

Taehyun picked out a large pot that was clearly worn, with a few metallic brown stains smeared across the bottom of it. There was no doubt that he used this pot often. Humming a soft tune, he filled it with water and brought it over to the stove to boil. 

He had a seperate camera that was angled to face the stovetop whenever he had to use it. It was a birthday gift from Beomgyu, who’d noticed his struggle of constantly moving his singular camera around while cooking. He’d silently passed it to Taehyun, wrapped meticulously in patterned paper, a sly smile dancing on his lips the only clue he’d given. Taehyun had gasped when he opened the box to reveal a brand new videography camera that must’ve cost a fortune. 

(And in return, he gave Beomgyu a gift of his own— by closing the distance between them and kissing him senseless.)

He turned back to the kitchen island, hoisting a thick wooden chopping board from one of the cupboards below. “Usually, you should use about four cloves of garlic, but it really just depends on your preference. So… I’m going to use five.”

The cloves of garlic were sliced thinly with ease, the off-white slices being pushed to the corner of the board while he continued his knifework.

Once he had finished slicing the garlic, he went back to the now-boiling pot of water. He added a tablespoon of salt into it, and portioned just enough of the dry spaghetti for the both of them. While slowly placing the spaghetti into the pot, Taehyun turned to the camera, pointing a teasing finger at it, “Please use a large enough pot. It’s not advised to break your noodles in half.”

A subtle call-out to Beomgyu: Taehyun had once caught him attempting to cook his own spaghetti for dinner, but he had unknowingly chosen a pot that was way too small. In panic, he had decided to make the noodles shorter by breaking them— “ Listen , Taehyun-ah! My noodles were so far out of the pot! What if they caught on fire?!”— but he’d also managed to break Taehyun’s poor heart at the same time.

He fanned the noodles so that they were evenly spread out, letting the boiling water wash over them. Then, he took out a sauté pan and heated up a good amount of olive oil over the stove. "We'll fry the garlic for a few minutes," he mumbled to the camera while sweeping the garlic slices into the pan. The sound of pops and crackles immediately burst forth from the pan as the garlic touched the oil.

Using a spatula, Taehyun stirred the garlic slices around in order not to burn them. "Golden brown is always the best— if they're too light, there won't be a lot of flavour, and if they're too burnt… you might as well start over."

The savoury fragrance of the fried garlic wafted across the kitchen. He smiled, wondering if Beomgyu could smell it all the way from his streaming room. He pinched a few red pepper flakes and sprinkled them in as he stirred. Then he took a ladleful of boiling pasta-water from the large pot, and carefully poured it in the pan. Immediately, Taehyun’s vision turned foggy from the vapour that had evaporated from the pan. The sizzling got louder as he stirred the sauce around. He added a pinch of salt, before lowering the heat and letting it simmer.

The noodles were ready at this point, so he placed down the wooden spatula and turned off the heat for that burner, then hoisting the whole pot to the sink and slowly drained the pasta into a colander he had prepared beforehand. Taehyun shook the colander a few times, to ensure that all the water was drained. Once he was done, he went back to the stove and dumped the pasta into the pan.

“We’ll now turn off the heat and toss this.” He picked up some tongs and did exactly that, “And let it sit for a while to let the noodles absorb the garlicky flavour.”

There was a shuffle of plush slippers from down the hallway. As the sound got closer and closer, Taehyun grinned softly to himself, fully expecting Beomgyu to show up with Hobak in his embrace, like he always did whenever the food was almost ready.

His imagination did not disappoint. Beomgyu appeared from the hallway, hair lightly tousled at the bottom but slightly flat at the top. It was a clear indicator that he had been spending the time on his computer, either playing a few practice matches of his favourite games, or helping Taehyun edit his videos. (Taehyun knew it was the latter— he had been entirely too quiet to be playing games.)

Beomgyu shuffled over to the kitchen counter, sniffing the aroma in the air. He let out a sigh, “Tyun! This smells so good…”

As if punctuating his words, Hobak meowed. Beomgyu gasped dramatically, “See! Even Hobak agrees!” 

Taehyun put down the tongs and approached Beomgyu, placing a light kiss on his forehead and reaching a hand out to pet Hobak, “Beomie, cats can’t eat garlic.” 

Beomgyu scowled jokingly, lips forming into a pout that Taehyun always thought was cute. “That’s a shame.” 

Laughing, Taehyun cupped Beomgyu’s cheek and pulled his head closer for a kiss— Beomgyu melted immediately, smiling against his lips. He tasted like bittersweet americano. 

Taehyun pulled away shortly after feeling Hobak squirm in between the both of them. Hobak jumped out of Beomgyu’s arms and made his way out of the kitchen. Looking at Hobak’s retreating figure, Taehyun said softly to Beomgyu, “Dinner’s almost ready, could you help me set the table?”

“Of course,” Beomgyu grinned, leaning in for one last peck on the lips and a ruffle of Taehyun’s hair, before going to rummage through the cabinets for plates and utensils.

Taehyun turned back to the pan of aglio e olio sitting on the stove, almost forgetting that he was filming. Thankfully, it seemed like they were out of frame, and only their conversation could be heard. He could still leave it in the video– he knew very well that his fans thought their relationship was ‘goals’ and ‘OMG THEY'RE SO CUTE’— and Beomgyu didn’t mind being in frame as long as his face wasn’t shown.

Beomgyu prefers to be secretive like that; he doesn’t see the appeal of having his face plastered on every screen and having his life shown to the world, (or rather, he can't, but that's something to unpack for another day.) although he sure enjoys talking his mouth off to anyone who’d listen.

That’s why he has a ‘cool faceless gaming channel’ (according to his words) which was focused more on wholly interacting with his fans and chatting with them. Taehyun supposes it was definitely more than a ‘cool channel’, considering bear313 was probably one of the most popular gaming channels these days, with fans clamouring over his ‘hot, low voice’. (Taehyun agrees, one hundred percent.) He’d recently gained a massive surge of subscribers, surpassing Taehyun’s very own channel by almost a million subscribers, not to mention even more followers on Twitch. Normally, Taehyun would’ve been miffed that someone who’d been making videos later than him had managed to catch up to him so quickly, but this was Beomgyu . He’s so fucking proud of his own boyfriend he’d never be able to express it in words. In food , however… that was a different story.

He picked up the plates that Beomgyu had helpfully placed beside him, carefully transferring the hot spaghetti onto them, and twirling them to ensure that they looked pretty. 

“Beom,” Taehyun called out, “Is this enough for you? Do you want chicken breast or anything? I could heat our leftovers up.” 

Beomgyu hummed, deep in thought, “Yeah, sure! The chicken from last night was delicious.”

Taehyun smiled. “I’ll get it going, then. Could you help me garnish the spaghetti? There's parmesan and parsley on the island.” 

Upon hearing that, Beomgyu immediately bounded over to the two plates that Taehyun had already filled with spaghetti, enthusiastically pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. Taehyun always tried to get Beomgyu involved with the plating process, knowing that he enjoyed releasing his sense of artistry on each plate of home-cooked food. And Beomgyu always managed to make his food look way more appetising than it already was.

Meanwhile, Taehyun got to work with the chicken, taking it out from the tupperware it was previously stored in. He dumped it into the same pan he used to cook the spaghetti in, adding a small amount of butter with it. 

To the camera, he explained, “These are our leftovers from last night; the oil we used to cook the spaghetti in already has that garlic flavour, so we don’t really need to season it with anything else.” As an afterthought, he added, “And we won’t need to wash an extra pan.”

Once the chicken was sufficiently heated up, he took it off the stove and plated it onto a dish, placing it onto their small dining table that Beomgyu had graciously set up. Alongside the spaghetti, there were two glasses of red wine.

“Everything you cook is so good,” Beomgyu muttered, watching the plates of food on the table.

“I know, babe.” Taehyun chuckled teasingly. “I’ll just get the insert shots of the food and turn off the cameras before we can eat, okay?”

Beomgyu nodded, his long, brown hair falling into his eyes as he did so. 

Taehyun turned off the camera that was at the stove, then picked up the other countertop camera and hovered it above the food. He took a few steady clips of the dishes at different angles, deciding to give himself a few options to include in the video. There was a clip of Beomgyu excitedly waving a peace sign over the spaghetti, loudly exclaiming, “I can eat this, but you guys can’t!”— It was definitely going in the video. His Solomons seemed to love Beomgyu’s hyper presence in his videos as much as he did.

After he filmed the final clip, he switched off the camera as promised, and beckoned Beomgyu over to eat.

Like a maltese who had just been given food, Beomgyu plunked down onto the chair, quickly mumbling, “Thank you for the food!” and scarfing down the plate of spaghetti set in front of him.

Taehyun smiled, following suit. The spaghetti noodles were perfectly al dente as he bit into them, with the delightful flavour of garlic and earthy pepper dancing in his mouth. 

"How is it?" Taehyun asked, although he knew the answer Beomgyu was going to give.

Beomgyu let out a long, drawn out Mmmm, nodding his head slowly. "Delicious. Did you put in a lot of garlic?"

"Of course," Taehyun said, jokingly affronted.

Beomgyu giggled, eyes crinkling up into crescents. 

If Taehyun could see his own face right now, he'd be pretty sure he looked absolutely smitten, having his Beomgyu face on, as Kai calls it— his eyes seemingly littered with stars, a fond smile dancing on his lips as he looked at his lover. He couldn't help it; this was the effect that Beomgyu had on him, always.

And after they had finished dinner, after their dishes were washed and left to dry (courtesy of Beomgyu), they sat on the plush cushions of their couch, an episode of Nat Geo Wild playing idly on the television. Hobak was curled up at his favourite spot: the corner of the couch where they had a blanket laid out for him. 

Beomgyu played with Taehyun's hair, gently twisting and combing through the strands of dark black hair. Taehyun leaned into the soft touches as he fiddled with the camera in his hands, checking its battery life and the SD card. 

Beomgyu suddenly makes a noise, as if he had remembered something while looking at the camera. "I finalised the editing for your upcoming video," He mumbled.

Taehyun smiled softly, tilting his head up to meet Beomgyu's eyes, "I know. Thank you."

"You already knew? My smart Taehyunnie," He felt the tickle of his hair as Beomgyu brushed it to the side, and pressed their foreheads together. He breaks out into laughter as Beomgyu deliberately makes a cross-eyed expression from trying to look at him from their close proximity.

Beomgyu leans over and places a kiss on Taehyun's nose, trying to shut him up as he's annoyed by the laughter. But Taehyun knows that he's only pretending, because he thrived off of making Taehyun happy.

This made Taehyun laugh even more, until Beomgyu presses his hands against Taehyun's cheeks and kissed him— as best as he could, given the awkward position. But it did the job, and the two of them fell into comfortable silence.

"Taehyun?" Beomgyu whispered.

Taehyun looked up again, "Hm?"

"Love you,"

"I love you more."

"Hey—!" 

Comments 1.3k

@parkjjongsaeng ✔️

Thank you for the recipe, Chef Kang!

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2 replies

  liked by tyunnyang

@solomonsrise

GOOGLE HOW TO BECOME BEOMIE

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 23 replies

@cub313

every single video i say this, but beomie is seriously so cute

edit: can't believe tyun liked this LMFAOOOOO

👍 1.5k 👎

107 replies

 liked by tyunnyang

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@Choibeom

the food was delicious :)

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