pasta with creamy pesto

I have seen some establishments charge an upward of RM20 a plate for this shit. Well, this is how you do it for free (not technically free though, you still have to buy the ingredients).

Serving: 2 persons

Pasta (long type such as spaghetti, linguine or short one such as penne)

Half an onion, diced

Cooking cream

Pesto (store-bought at between RM11.90 to RM16.50, good luck if you wish to prepare it yourself though)

Shrimp

Mushroom (optional) (swiss-brown, shiitake, or white-button will do)

Tomato, diced

Two sticks of butter

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook your pasta to al dente (refer packet instruction for timing); drain and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Sweat your onion until tender over low heat, about 2-3 minutes. Increase the heat, stir in garlic and butter, and cook for about a minute until butter melts. Pour in the cooking cream, season with salt and pepper, and simmer until it is slightly reduced, stirring constantly (about 4 minutes). Stir in pesto. Add shrimp, mushrooms and tomatoes. Cook for about 4 minutes, or until heated thoroughly. Toss with pasta and serve immediately.

spaghetti alla carbonara

The origin of carbonara sauce, as with most other recipes are obscure. Some believe the dish was first made as a hearty meal for Italian charcoal workers, Carbonari, (“charcoalmen”). Whatever the story, carbonara sauce is, to me, one of the basic sauce for pasta (besides alfredo, bolognese, and genovese). One must learn how to make pasta alla carbonara well in order to claim to understanding what Italian dishes are all about. Luscious and wonderfully indulgent, it takes as long to make as it does to cook the pasta.  The fundamental ingredients are simple, just spaghetti (or other long pasta), pancetta or bacon, eggs, Parmesan cheese, a little olive oil, salt and pepper.  Pancetta or bacon is substituted with streaky beef slices so the dish becomes pork-free. A silky sauce is created when the beaten eggs are tossed with the hot pasta and a little fat from the meat.

Serves 4

8 strips of streaky beef, sliced into small strip

3-4 whole eggs

1 cup grated parmesan or pecorino cheese

1 pound spaghetti pasta (or other type of long pasta, such as fettuccine)

Salt and black pepper to taste

extra virgin olive oil

Cook the spaghetti to al dente. In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat. Add the streaky beef and cook slowly until crispy. Once cooked, turn off the heat and put the beef into a large bowl.

In a small bowl, beat the eggs and mix in about half of the Parmesan cheese. When the pasta is ready, drain and transfer into the bowl with the beef.  Move the pasta from the pot to the bowl quickly, as you want the pasta to be hot. It’s the heat of the pasta that will cook eggs sufficiently to create a creamy sauce. Toss everything to combine, then add the beaten eggs with cheese and toss quickly to combine once more. Season to taste, and serve at once with the rest of the parmesan.

pasta alla primavera

 

This Italian phrase, primavera [pree-muh-VEHR-uh]  means “spring style” and refers to the use of fresh vegetables (raw or blanched) as a garnish to various dishes. The origin of the dish is traced back to New York, where the chefs at Le Cirque restaurant came up with a riot of vegetation doused in butter, cream and lots of parmesan cheese. This version is a lightened and simplified rendition of this classic, but still captures the spirit of the 70’s and 80’s high style dining fashion. The dish may contain almost any kind of vegetable, but firm and crisp vegetables, such as broccoli, carrots, peas, onions, and green bell peppers with tomatoes are the usual preference. Classic primavera sauce is based on a soffrito (the sweating of vegetables in low heat without browning) of garlic and olive oil and finished with Parmesan cheese. Further versions, such as this one is based on a heavier cream or Alfredo style sauce.

Serves 4

1/2 pound spaghetti

a small bunch broccoli, about 1 heaping cup of florets

1 small zucchini, diced

4 asparagus’ spears

1/2 cup snow peas/honey beans

3 minced garlic cloves

2 tablespoons tomato paste

a bunch of basil leaves, chopped

4 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup chicken/vegetable broth

1/2 cup heavy cream

a handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the pasta to al dente. Bring a large pot of water to boil and salt it well. It should taste like the sea. In the meantime, fill a large bowl with ice water to prepare the waterbath.  Boil the broccoli for 1 minute. Add the asparagus and boil another minute. Add the snow peas/honey beans and boil for 30 more seconds. Remove all the vegetables and plunge them into the ice water. Once they’re cool, drain in a colander.

If you want, you can boil your pasta in the same pot you boiled the vegetables in, or you can start over and boil new water. In a large saute pan, heat the butter over medium-high heat.  When the butter melts, add the garlic and zucchini and cook for a minute. Add the tomato paste and cook for another 2 minutes. Pour in the chicken/vegetable broth and turn the heat to high to bring it to a boil. Add the cream and toss in all the vegetables you boiled. Stir to combine. Turn the heat down until the cream-chicken broth mixture is just simmering, then add the parmesan cheese and stir again to combine. If the sauce seems too thick add some more of the broth.

As soon as the pasta is done, drain and transfer it into the sauce and stir to combine. Add the basil and season to taste. Serve immediately.

 

spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce

There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of a fresh, fully ripen plum tomatoes. The blessed tropical weather that we have means that having fresh tomatoes is an occassion we savour all year round. The dish has a thick creaminess that you can never duplicate with canned plum tomatoes, no matter how good or expensive the are. There is an ideal instant, a tell-tale sign, for serving this sauce: when the tomatoes soften and all of their juices are in the pan, the sauce will suddenly begins to thicken. At that moment, at its’ peak, another minute or two later will result in the juices evaporating and, although the essence of the sauce is equally intense, it won’t be able to coat the pasta well. Observe the sauce as it cooks, but should it happen, just add a little olive oil or butter to the finished dish.

Serves 4

8 medium-sized fully ripen tomatoes (cored and roughly chopped)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

one shallot, minced

a good slab of butter, about 4 tablespoons

400 grams spaghetti or linguine

a handful of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water. Melt butter in a skillet of a saute pan, add the garlic and shallot and fry for a minute or two over medium heat. Add the tomatoes, cook, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes begin to juice up, then turn the heat to low and continue to stir until the sauce thickens. Season the sauce to taste. Once the pasta is cooked, drain, and toss with the tomatoes and cheese.

Variation:

• Add some shrimp when together when frying the garlic and shallot just before adding the tomatoes
• Add a few branches of basil, remove them just before serving and stir in about half cup of roughly chopped basil leaves into the pasta
• Toss the pasta with about a cup of cubed fresh mozzarella
• Add dried chilli to taste along with the tomatoes to install a bit of heat into the pasta

**A note on preparing fresh tomatoes: Always core fresh tomatoes before being used (remove the cone-shaped wedge from the stem end). Peeling is optional – but if the tomato skin is an issue, simply remove it by blanching (score the bottom end of the tomatoes, drop the tomatoes into hot boiling water for 30 seconds, remove with a slotted spoon into a bowl of cold water and slip the peel right off the score marks). Alternatively, you can also fish out the skin as the sauce simmers; it automatically separates from the flesh.

pasta bianco [white pasta]

The first pasta dish i learned, courtesy of Jamie Oliver, is this recipe, basically a sauce of butter and freshly grated Parmesan. It was a time when cooking pasta to al dente was challenging enough for me, a time when i had first encounter my cooking renaissance, almost 13 years ago, when the best thing i could do to get food on the table was calling for the waiter. Today i could probably prepare this dish with both eyes closed. This recipe gives you a really good feel for how to cook pasta properly, you want the sauce just to coat the pasta.

Serves 4

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely grated

40g of butter

450g of spaghetti, linguine, fettucinne or tagliatelle

2 to 3 handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

In a pan, melt the butter and gently fry the garlic in it without coloring for a couple of minutes.  Cook your pasta and reserve some of the cooking water. Pour in the cooked pasta into the melted butter together with the Parmesan and toss the pasta around to have the sauce coat the strands properly. Use the reserved pasta cooking water to loosened the sauce if it became too thick. Once you have the desired consistency, season to taste and serve immediately.

There are many ways to vary this sauce – you can stir in some chopped tomatoes into the garlice butter before removing from the heat, or you can incorporate different cheeses, but the key is to get simple, well-seasoned, delicate pasta coated in a butter cheese sauce.

the most basic: Tomato sauce

Homemade tomato sauce is leagues better that anything you can find in a jar at any grocey store, however fancy the packaging is or how expensive it is. Tomato sauce can be made either using fresh tomatoes or canned peeled plum tomaotes. For this variant i’ll share the simple recipe of using canned tomatoes. The quality of the canned tomatoes is important, but not necessarily the most expensive one. My favourite, and has been forever used is Cirio, an Italian brand that uses the best of San Marzano tomatoes. You can make the sauce fresh every time you wish to use it or in a big batch and store away into the freezer (where they will keep for a couple of months)

First of all, chop 2 cloves of garlic, dice a medium sized red onion, and fry them gently in olive oil over medium heat, adding a three-finger pinch of salt and stirring, until the onion is soft and translucent. Add two cans of the tomatoes, lightly season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and simmer gently for 30 minutes. Break and mush the tomatoes with a spoon (if you break it at the beginning, the sauce will taste bitter), correct the seasoning and add about 4 tbsp of butter. Add a few stalks of basil and serve immediately with your pasta.

Of course there are so many different ways for you to take this sauce forward…

For spicy arrabiatta, start the sauce off by adding a few whole fresh chillies. The chillies will provide some added heat to the sauce. After the sauce has simmered for 15-20 minutes, remove the chillies, chop them up and add back as much to continue bringing the heat into the sauce.

A real crowd-pleaser, and my favourite, is to end the sauce by adding in a nice swig of balsamic vinegar and a handful of grated Parmesan. This variation is fantastic with pasta such as fettuccine, tagliatelle or with grilled meats and fish.

To make a puttanesca, simmer the sauce gently with a handful of good pitted and squashed olives and anchovies. Also by flaking in a tin of tuna, you’d taken the sauce in another different direction.