Pasta Sauce

I had been experimenting the last two times I cooked, on trying to make a meatless pasta sauce. You're probably thinking -- has Brian gone mad? No meat?!

I think generally pasta is kind of a very heavy, filling meal. But if you take out the meat, then it becomes this starchy by light meal if you do it right. I had this idea of making pasta where it was more pasta than sauce, which is something completely foreign to me, having grown up eating spaghetti *drenched* in meat sauce.

The first time I tried making it, the result came out completely different from what I had pictured in my mind. I had this idea of the spaghetti being dry, and covered in olive oil and oregano. That part I had down pat. But the sauce didn't work out quite so well. I wanted to have this super strong flavored sauce so you didn't need a lot, and fresh tomatoes cooked, but chopped and sprinkled over the sauce.

Instead, I basically ran out of garlic, for one thing, and then I got lazy and didn't put onions, so it was, in the end, a mushroom and tomato mixture with tons of oregano, pepper and salt. What's worse is I cooked the tomato first and it turned into a mush, and the shrooms shrank to almost nothingness. By the end of it I barely had enough for just one meal, feeding 1 person, me.

For the second try I put the tomatoes in last, but it still ended up a mush. I bought garlic but once again left out onions. I rarely ever cook without onions, so that part was already a mistake. I also picked up some basil and sprinkled that in.

What I had pictured in my mind was totally different, but the sauce ended up being pretty tasty. Ina didn't particularly like it (she likes saucy stuff whereas I had never planned to make my creation saucy) but Darryl and I both thought it turned out decent.

Tonight I plan to try yet again. I have been reading up on pasta sauce and people talking about using canned stuff, just because it makes life easier and it's still possible to make it home-style even with the manufactured ingredients. To me that's something I may try later on, but for now I want to try to make it myself. I'm thinking to add diced mango to add some new flavor tonight (because I have mango in the fridge and need to get rid of it), and of course onions.

Looking forward to it.

Fried Rice

I made fried rice a couple days ago, it's the first time I've ever tried it since fried rice traditionally contains eggs. I had a craving for it and went ahead and tried it. The picture really doesn't do it justice, I just took a photo of the leftovers which isn't very much at all. I had to take it really close because there was so little left.

Anyway, I was scouring the newsgroups for a recipe that didn't contain egg, and the funny thing is all these white americans wrote in that egg was more of a garnish and unnecessary in fried rice! Most of them rarely used egg in fried rice, or had eggs in fried rice before! Can you believe that? I think it's sad that all these people who are supposedly good cooks have been poisoned by these North American chinese restaurants, of the Ho-Lee-Chow and Manchu Wok variety.

Rock

Rock, the executive chef, won Hell's Kitchen last night and order was restored to the universe. My brother and I were sitting there thinking, what would it be like if Bonnie had won. What a disaster that could have been. You walk into the Green Valley Ranch restaurant, and plop down $20 for a prawn fettuccine that even a nanny could have made.

Not to take anything away from Bonnie's signature dish, I'm sure it tastes great, but who would want to spend money on that when you can make it at home in less than 20 minutes? Where's the draw? What's compelling you to go to the restaurant at all?

Of course there was no way she could have won. I think Jenn was robbed a finals appearance and probably could have beaten Rock, but like last season, Ramsey put an obvious winner against a cutesy girl. Why does he do it? Is it for ratings? Me, I'd rather see the two best chefs go head-to-head. I don't need a "Cinderella" story in my book. Had Bonnie won the competition, Chef Ramsey would have lost all his credibility. It would have been a travesty and an embarrassment for the cooking world.

Dinner

Take a wild guess as to what this is.

Anyway, I've been doing some cooking lately, I think Darryl and I have now had home-made dinner for about 2 weeks now, still going strong. I haven't followed any recipes, just made stuff off the top of my head, whatever inspires me.

One thing I've been having fun with is cooking with tomatoes. The tricky thing about tomatoes is that it all just falls apart when you cook it. And that's not a bad thing -- it tastes quite good. I made tomatoe/onion/mushroom/chicken breast dish last week, and quite a bit of it to last, and it actually turned out great, it was the first time I'd ever cooked with tomatoes.

Last night I made a similar one, adding cauliflower and substituting the chicken with a marinated ground beef. I found marinating the beef a lot better than what I'd done with the chicken, which had absolutely no taste in my last dish. What's great is that it's simple to make and cheap too, and it's all you need to go with some rice.

The above picture is a "watermelon steak". It's made from watermelon, cooked at 350 degrees in the oven. It was dotted with butter and has sherry poured all over. I guess it's a dessert. Add salt and pepper to taste..