[Recipe] Thick & Zesty Pasta

It's time for a recipe post!!

I just love a good, hearty pasta dish that is great for cold winter nights. I know, it's summer now, but I haven't made a good pasta sauce in ages. Besides, hearty pasta is a meal for any season! Each time I try to make pasta, it turns into a watery mess! I was determined to get it right! This time, I was finally successful and here I am, sharing my success with you.



I don't know if this counts as a Bolognese sauce, but it does have meat and tomato sauce in it. As you know, I love to add vegetables to my meals (usually twice the amount of meat). This time, I chose carrots and zucchini.

Let's get on with this recipe! It should serve about four to six people.

Ingredients: (These are what I used in this meal, feel free to substitute or omit as you wish)

• 3/4 lb ground beef


• 1 onion


• 2 zucchini


• 2 carrots


• 3 cloves garlic


• 1 can Primo Thick & Zesty pasta sauce (680 ml)


• White wine


• 500 g farfalle (bowtie) pasta


• Dried herbs (I used oregano and basil)


• Fresh basil (for garnish)


• Salt, sugar and black pepper


• Olive oil

Directions:

1. Marinate the beef with equal amounts of salt and sugar, and as much black pepper as you like. I'd say about half a teaspoon each of salt and sugar. This is a common Chinese marinating method as it draw out the moisture in the meat and tenderizes it nicely.

2. While the meat marinates, dice your onion, carrots and zucchini into small cubes. Also, mince a few cloves of garlic and toss them into the beef.







3. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a large steel pot. When it's hot enough, add the ground beef to the pot and press gently with a wooden spoon to separate the chunks. Let it sit for a minute or two on high heat so the bottom can brown up before you stir.



4. When the beef is almost fully cooked, add onions at medium-high heat and stir well. I was very alarmed by the amount of fat/water that was appearing in the pot, but this is perfectly normal. Do not pour this fat away as much as you are tempted to! This will give your pasta sauce the thickness and richness that we want in this recipe.

5. When the onions are halfway done and your meat is beginning to brown and stick to the bottom of the pot, pour in a generous splash of wine and continue to stir. As cliche as this may sound, wine gives your food an extra depth of flavour and makes it a lot richer.



6. After most of the wine has evaporated, add in the carrots (and a few dashes of salt) and stir it for two to three minutes. Then, add the entire can of pasta sauce and turn down the heat to low. Add about half a cup of water, but not too much. The sauce should stay thick. Cover and bring the sauce to a gentle boil.



7. After the sauce has started bubbling, keep adding a little water at a time, keeping the sauce nice and thick. Simmer with the lid ajar for 10 minutes.



8. Add in the diced zucchini. Do not be tempted to add more water as you stir the zucchini into the sauce. You can add some, but just a little bit. Mix well until the zucchini is well coated. Cover the pot with the spoon on the side of the pot, and let it simmer for another 10 minutes.



9. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to a boil and start cooking the bowtie pasta. Turn the heat to medium when the water is bubbling nicely, and give it a gentle stir occasionally. When it is done, drain the water, but do not rinse with cold water.

10. When the zucchini has become soft, your sauce should have liquefied just a little and should be easy to stir. Add more dried herbs and the fresh basil and you are done!



11. Serve with the sauce on top of the pasta in a bowl, or toss the pasta with the sauce to let it absorb all the goodness of the tomato flavour!



It turned out so nice and creamy, and not sour like most of my pasta sauces turned out! I guess this is a good sauce; it was my first time trying it as it came free with the purchase of two packs of pasta.

Tips to the success of this sauce:

1. Enough oil/fat -- By adding just a little oil to the pot before you start sauteeing the ground beef, the extra oil will render all the fats out of the meat and incorporate them into your pasta sauce. This gives the pasta sauce a velvety feel on your tastebuds.

2. Enough pasta sauce -- In the past, all my pasta sauces turned out watery and sour because I would use half a cup of pasta sauce and add a ton of water, hoping to save some sauce. I realized that I had been doing it all wrong. To get a full-bodied sauce, you NEED all the pasta sauce you can get your hands on.

3. Not adding too much water -- Taking account into this with the amount of water I add to the sauce, I also considered the large amount of water zucchini has. As it cooks, the zucchini will also release water into the sauce, so be sure not to overladen your pasta sauce with water!

4. Dried herbs -- Even though the canned pasta sauce contained herbs, adding more herbs will enhance the flavour of your pasta sauce. I was really pleased with the balance of the tomato and herb flavours in this one.

Tips for cooking pasta:

1. Start with a pot of strongly boiling water.

2. Rinse your pasta before putting it into the pot -- this will prevent them from sticking to each other as they cook.

3. Once your pasta is in the pot and the water has returned to a boil, turn the heat down so it leaves just a gentle boil. Keep stirring and leaving the gentle boil to cook the pasta; an aggressive boil will just break up your pasta by the time it is done cooking.



There, the most perfect pasta sauce I've made to date! Definitely worth documenting, I am sure this recipe will satisfy all your cravings for a warm, hearty pasta sauce. It is so good you don't even need any cheese to top it off!

♥ Nikki

Cooking Japanese Curry!

Yesterday, I made Japanese curry! Easiest thing ever, especially if you are using curry roux cubes from a box!



Seriously, I don't usually like to use instant food packages, but in my opinion, there's no simple combination of everyday ingredients that can produce the intricate sweet yet savoury flavour of Japanese curry, hence I am FOR THE BOX this time!

(No pictures of the box because it was from a long time ago. The most well-known brand is Glico Curry, which comes in a variety of levels of spiciness -- mild, medium and hot. But I can assure you even the HOT variety is NOT spicy at all! There are of course other brands but I think Glico produces the most authentic-tasting curry.)

Ingredients you will need are shown in the picture.



I used pork, two onions, two or three carrots, two sticks of celery and two potatoes (lettuce was for a side dish). You can easily use whatever meat you fancy or omit it altogether for a vegetarian dish. Of course, not forgetting the curry packages! I had the mild and the hot ones.

Now let's start making this delicious curry!



1. Start by sauteing the onions in olive oil until slightly brown.



2. Add in the pork and fry till slightly cooked.



3. At this point, you can season with some salt and pepper.



4. Add in the carrots and about three or four cups of water (depending how thick you like your curry to be). Simmer on low heat until it starts to bubble.



5. When it is just coming to a boil, add in the celery and the potatoes. Here I used leftover roasted potatoes, but if you are using raw potatoes, I would advise to add them together with the carrots. Simmer with the lid on for another 10 minutes until the vegetables are tender (but not overcooked!)



6. When everything is pretty much cooked, it's time for the curry magic! It will look like a pot of vegetable soup, but when you add in the curry cubes, it slowly thickens to a sauce depending how much you add. I chopped up the curry cubes to smaller pieces so they would melt more easily.



I added two of the mild curry cubes and one of the hot one, so three altogether for this big pot of curry! I didn't add much more seasoning as the curry roux is already very flavourful by itself. Taste and add the cubes until you have reached the desired taste. If there is too much water, keep adding more cubes until you have a thick, glistening golden sauce.



8. Serve with white rice and your choice of vegetable sides, and enjoy! I love lots of curry sauce to eat with my rice so my plate is loaded with sauce! I may have simmered my vegetables on too high heat, resulting in my pork becoming a little tough; so make sure to simmer on low heat!



Here's a secret tip: Use previously roasted/fried potatoes for the most amazing potato texture in your curry! I had leftover roasted potatoes from a couple of days ago, so I threw them in and it worked out great! The crispy, golden brown taste coated with the thick creamy curry sauce is just out of this world! Beats regular potato any day!



I hope you enjoy this recipe! Try it out and let me know how it goes!

♥ Nikki

Cookie Zoo!

Today, I have a zoo of cookies at home!

"Wait a minute, shouldn't it be a BATCH of cookies?" you say.



This is what I'm talking about!

Last month, I went on a cookie cutter craze! I bought some cute mini cookie cutters at Michaels after Christmastime in 2011 and they were so adorable! The price was more than half off since Christmas was over, and I paid $1.99 for them. I never got around to using them; just looking at them made me happy :D After Valentine's Day, I saw a "romance" cookie cutter set at Michaels! With a 50% discount coupon in hand, I bought it right away!



When I got the romance set, I saw a set of Noah's Ark cookie cutters too, which was part of the series of cookie cutters Wilton has. In my mind, I was thinking, "I really don't NEED animal cookie cutters..." But when I got home and saw my two sets side by side, I knew I had to get my hands on that Noah's Ark set to complete the collection. I went back the next day and got it with ANOTHER 50% discount coupon :D



Finally, such a long time after I have bought them, I am putting them to use! The cookie cutter sets come with a super simple sugar cookie recipe that was so hard to go wrong!

Sugar Cookies

• 1/2 cup butter


• 1 cup sugar (you can easily reduce to half a cup, I used 3/4 cup and still found it too sweet)


• 1 egg


• 1 teaspoon baking powder


• 1-3/4 cups flour


• 1 tablespoon milk (I didn't find this necessary)


• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla


• 1/4 teaspoon salt

With my new sieve my aunt got me, I can now sift my flour when I bake! Things will turn out much smoother now, I believe! *I have not been using a sieve since this year since I moved from my last place.*



Step 1: Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a large bowl (excuse my pot!).



Step 2: Cream butter (which should be softened to room temperature -- I cheated, I microwaved it for 15 seconds..).



Step 3: Cream butter and sugar together with electric mixer.



This is what it should look like. The butter should not be melting and the sugar should disappear. At this point, my butter/sugar mixture was flying everywhere because the lowest speed on my hand mixer is still too fast and flinging everything around!



 

 

Step 4: Add egg and vanilla extract, mix well.



Step 5: Add the flour mixture slowly in a few additions and continue to mix. At this point, I sifted the flour again because I just can't get enough of my new sieve! Also, cookie dough was flying everywhere with my silly too-fast hand mixer, but I didn't want to use my hands to risk melting the butter too much.



Step 6: Gather the crumbly dough together with a wooden spoon and then finally your hands to shape it into a ball and wrap it in plastic wrap. Put the dough into the fridge to chill and rest for a couple of hours.

I did this early in the morning and went out to buy groceries. By the time I came back, the dough had firmed up nicely.



All set and ready for rolling and cutting! *No pictures of the cutting process as my hands were greasy, but perhaps next time! When I have my lovely photographer assistant with me ;)

But I shall tell you about how much fun I had. I found it important to sprinkle flour on the working surface as well as the rolling pin to prevent sticking. I pulled off about 1/3 of the dough and worked with it while putting the rest of it back in the fridge.

For the first batch, I made 4 of each of the shapes in the romance set.



Tulip, bell, heart, butterfly, crinkle heart and flower shapes! :) Bake them at 375 F if using a light-coloured pan, and 350 F if using a dark-coloured pan. I took the easy way out and used parchment paper, baking them for 8 minutes at 375 F!



After baking, these puffed up a little and got a little brown on the sides. I love how the surface is so big and you can dress them up with icing to make them look even prettier! I should make these as wedding favours sometime (if I have the chance to go to one!).

For the second batch, I used the Noah's Ark set and jazzed things up a little. I read about black sesame cookies one day and suddenly remembered I have a tiny jar of the seeds. I put about 1 tablespoon of black sesame seeds in a bowl and pounded away at it for a few minutes with the end of my rolling pin. Then I mixed it well into another 1/3 of the dough and ended up with a lovely specked ball.



I think the black sesame worked really well with the animal cutters, since animals have all sorts of spots on their bodies! Bear, elephant, Noah's Ark, giraffe, dog, lion! My favourite has got to be the giraffe with the spots!



This is how they came out! All chubby little animals! Aren't they the cutest?



These two were joined at the butt! Haha, it cracked me up...



All cooling down on a plate! Don't they look so lovely?





A close-up shot of the cutters.. I still have to try out the Christmas set! And last month, my aunt gave me another set of animal cutters which had 9 different shapes! I also got some nesting cookie cutters so I foresee making a lot more cookies in future! I must also get some cute little bags or boxes so I can pack them up and give them away! :)



And there you have it, simple delicious cookies! These taste and look amazing by themselves without icing, but I'm sure you can go all out for special occasions by decorating them! I shall be on the hunt for more festive cookie cutters! *My house will turn into a cookie cutter museum very soon!*

♥ Nikki

Banana with Soy Milk

I've just discovered the most ingenious combination of breakfast!

Its a very typical milk + fruit + cereal combo like they show it on the cereal boxes, but I never really tried them because I tend to eat fruits for snacks more than for breakfast.

Today I bought a banana to work and I had some soy milk and Vector cereal. Decided to put them all together and see how it goes. Et voila!!!

The sweet taste of the banana was enhanced by the soy milk, and at the same time, the banana brings out the distinct flavour of the soy milk. The Vector cereal? Kind of left out of the party but it's my favourite cereal after all! I realized the cereal's sugar would escape from the flakes as it sits for a long time in the milk, so you can't leave it in there for too long.

A very short post, but a simple and tasty breakfast is worth a mention! Breakfast IS the most important meal of the day, so kickstart your day by getting some RIGHT NOW! (Time check: 7:45am - most people in Vancouver should be getting up around now ;))

Have a great morning!

♥ Nikki