YOU can never have too many pasta recipes, and finding a good new one is an event. This is especially true of fast pasta recipes, the kind in which the sauce is so easy that you have to start boiling the water before getting out the garlic.

Yet there is a subset of pasta recipes that go beyond fast, prepared with just a few ingredients that are almost always in the house. These are the pasta dishes of the desperate cook, the one who has been too busy to shop or too busy to think, or who must put dinner on the table in 20 minutes.

I love those kinds of recipes, and that's why I made a cooking date with Arthur Schwartz, the host of ''Food Talk,'' a daily radio program on WOR-AM in New York. His latest book, ''Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania'' (HarperCollins, 1998), focuses on a part of Italy where the people are generally poor but where simple but great pasta dishes appear on the table every day, a feat seemingly accomplished with smoke and mirrors. He is also the author of ''What to Cook When You Think There's Nothing in the House to Eat'' -- currently out of print but due to reappear this fall -- which makes him a one-man clearinghouse for fast, easy pasta recipes.

In about an hour, he made three pasta dishes while I did nothing but type, eat and peel garlic. His choices were spaghetti with fried eggs, a quicker version of carbonara; linguine with canned tomato ''fillets,'' and linguine with walnuts and anchovies.

All of these recipes have one thing in common: garlic cooked lightly in good olive oil. As Mr. Schwartz noted, ''Neapolitans use garlic delicately; they want the flavor in the oil, but frequently cook it lightly and remove it.'' The garlic is not browned but ''blonded'' (''imbiondito'' in Italian), lightly cooked to release its gentle nature. As most pasta aficionados know, oil flavored with garlic like this is the simplest sauce there is, and far from the worst.

These recipes, however, take things one or two easy steps further. In the first dish, sometimes known as ''poor man's spaghetti,'' you fry a couple of eggs in the olive oil after removing the garlic; tossed with the pasta, the eggs and oil create a creamy, delicious sauce.

The mahogany-colored walnut and anchovy sauce is thinned with cooking water and very complex considering how few elements go into it. In the tomato sauce, the main ingredients are combined in a cold pan, brought to a boil and cooked about five minutes. Even when made with pantry tomatoes, it has an astonishingly fresh flavor.

SPAGHETTI WITH FRIED EGGS

Time: 20 minutes

Salt

1/2 pound thin spaghetti

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or lard

2 large cloves garlic, lightly smashed and peeled

4 eggs

Freshly ground black pepper

Freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino cheese, optional.

1. Bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Start the sauce in the next step, and start cooking the pasta when the water boils.

2. Combine garlic and 4 tablespoons of the oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Cook the garlic, pressing it into the oil occasionally to release its flavor; it should barely color on both sides. Remove the garlic, and add the remaining oil.

3. Fry the eggs gently in the oil, until the whites are just about set and the yolks still quite runny. Drain the pasta, and toss with the eggs and oil, breaking up the whites as you do. (The eggs will finish cooking in the heat of the pasta.) Season to taste, and serve immediately, with cheese if you like.

Yield: 2 or 3 servings.

LINGUINE WITH WALNUTS AND ANCHOVIES

Time: 20 minutes

Salt

1/2 pound linguine

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 large cloves garlic, lightly smashed and peeled

1/2 cup shelled walnuts, coarsely chopped (pieces of about 1/4 inch or a little less)

Red pepper flakes to taste

4 whole salted anchovies, rinsed and filleted, or 8 oil-packed anchovy fillets, rinsed.

1. Bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Start the sauce in the next step, and start cooking the linguine when the water boils.

2. Combine the garlic and oil in a deep 10-inch skillet over medium-low heat. Cook the garlic, pressing it into the oil occasionally to release its flavor. When it is just beginning to color on one side, add the nuts and the pepper flakes. Remove the garlic when it colors on the other side; cook the sauce another minute or so.

3. Add the anchovies, and increase the heat to medium, mashing them into the oil as they cook. As soon as they dissolve, almost immediately, add 1/2 cup of the pasta's cooking water to the pan. Remove the sauce from the heat until the pasta is cooked.

4. When the pasta is still a little undercooked -- about 2 minutes less time than usual -- drain it, then turn it into the pan with the sauce. Cook the linguine in the sauce, stirring and tossing constantly, until all the liquid has been absorbed and the linguine are tender. Serve immediately.

Yield: 2 or 3 servings.

LINGUINE WITH TOMATO 'FILLETS'

Time: 20 minutes

1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, or about 2 pounds peeled fresh tomatoes

Salt to taste

1 pound linguine or spaghetti

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

Red pepper flakes to taste

3 tablespoons minced basil or parsley.

1. Cut tomatoes into strips, discarding seeds and juice; place in a strainer to drain while you bring a pot of salted water to the boil for the pasta. Start the sauce in the next step, and start cooking pasta when water boils.

2. Combine tomatoes, oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a 10-inch skillet, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook briskly for about 5 minutes (8 minutes for fresh tomatoes), stirring occasionally. The tomatoes should remain in pieces, and there should be no liquid remaining in the pan other than the oil.

3. Toss the pasta with the sauce and the basil or parsley, and serve immediately.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.