FoodPorn

As the daughter of a chef - skip the salt, add a bouillon cube. It's not authentic but it tastes better and half of the NYC restaurants do it already. The umami from the bouillon cube rounds out the flavour and makes it taste less like a two ingredient poverty food.

A lot of Italian dishes taste kinda unfinished until you add an umami element to them. Thats why I prefer the Croatian version the same dishes. Pasta fagioli is a beany vegetable soup, the Croatians make pasta fažol by adding a bit of pršut (smoked ham) and it completes the flavour and makes it a delicious hearty meal. That's why Lydia Bastianich has been so successful - she's been passing the typical Croatian version of meals as "authentic Italian" for decades and people like it because it flat out tastes better.

If you wanna get real advanced find some Vegeta in a European grocery store and start using it to sub salt in most meals. It's basically just a bunch of herbs, onion and garlic powder, and MSG. Use it as a meat rub, use it when making rice, use it while cooking anything savoury.

Serve with real parmigiano reggiano

Nope, there's no parmigiano in aglio e olio.