Beef and Mushroom Pasta

Apart from X’Mas decoration, X’Mas tree and Advent Calendar, there is one more interesting thing in the UK. That is “X’Mas crackers”. It is used to pulled at the Christmas dinner table or at parties. According to Wikipedia, it is not widely popular in the whole world. It is more like a traditional X’Mas play in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. X’Mas crackers is a cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated X’Mas wrapping paper. Inside the cracker, there are a color paper hat, a small toy and other trinket and a motto. Then, you need to wear that paper hat during your meal and say the trinket to everyone. I can’t wait to see what my small toy is this time in my X’Mas cracker.

Recipe: Serve for 2 people

 

Steps of Beef and Mushroom Pasta
(1) Prepare a sauce pan for Fettuccine Alfredo. Add it into the boiling water and add a little salt in. Cook around 6 minutes.
(2) Prepare a sauce pan. Add some olive oil and heat on a medium heat. Cook around 3 minutes.

(3) Add thinly sliced beef into the pan, keep stirring until it turns medium. Then, set aside.

(4) Use same pan to cook mushroom. Add some oil if needed. Cover the lid and cook around 2 minutes.

(5) Add cooked Fettuccine Alfredo in the pan. Add around 200 ml pasta water in the pan and beef stock. Cook until the Fettuccine Alfredo ready.

(6) Add beef and onion back. Mix all ingredients well. Add some salt if needed.

 

In Taiwan, those mushrooms are very popular that it is one way I usually cooked it and I love it. Italian people will not disagree of me, but pasta can be used for lots of different food. Even for Indian curry, it is my way of cooking. Try and enjoy it.

Bacon Aglio Olio

The type of Aglio Olio in Italian restaurants in Taiwan is rarely. But, I ate once in the student’s cafeteria in my husband’s university. It is weird, isn’t it? Sold at student’s cafeteria?

Traditionally, Aglio Olio was offered to the poor who couldn’t afford to add other sauce. It is reasonable to be sold at university’s cafeteria, isn't it. But, who care? I just like food with garlic flavor. So, I like this kind of simple pasta, the strong garlic flavor mixing into my spaghetti.

Recipe: Serve 1 Person

 

Steps of Bacon Aglio Olio

(1) Prepare a fried-pan. Add olive oil in the pan. Switch the medium heat on. Add chili pepper and garlic in the pan. Fry chili pepper and garlic around 8 minutes.

(2) Prepare a saucepan. Boil spaghetti with a little salt and a little olive oil. It takes around 12~15 depend on manufacturers.
(Selena’s Kitchen Talk: Avoid sticky pasta by adding olive oil to the pasta water.)

(3) Add bacon into the fried-pan. Fry bacon around 2~3 minutes.

(4) Then, add chopped mushroom into the fried pan. Fry until it turns soft.

(5) Dry spaghetti. Then add it into the fried-pan. Well-incorporate all ingredients.

(6) Add spinach in before the spaghetti is ready. Season pasta with some salt. Switch the heat off.

 

It is so YUM~~~ I felt like I want one more after eating the whole. Pasta can be so delicious without adding any extra pasta sauce. Just enjoy the pure flavor with chili pepper, garlic, and olive oil mixed with spaghetti. It is just so easy. The type of Aglio Olio will become the regular showing on my dining table. Enjoy it and don’t forget to prepare more. Because you definitely want more.

Meatball Pasta with Tomato Sauce

IKEA is very famous worldwide because of not only their design of furniture, but also their meatball. If I go to IKEA, I would like to have a plate of meatball there. They also sell the frozen meatballs. So, of course, I purchased a bag of meatball. If you have purchased one, you know how many meatballs per bag. I can’t use the same way to cook meatball every time so that meatball past. Um… It sounds yum…

Recipe: Serve 4~5 people

Tomato Sauce Link

Steps of Meatball Pasta with Tomato Sauce

(1) Prepare a fried-pan with oil. No need to have too much oil that just needing to cover the bottom. Add meat balls into the pan. Switch to the medium heat. Fried all meatballs until it turns tender.

(2) Prepare another saucepan that boiling water to cook spaghetti. Add salt and a little olive oil in to avoid sticky. It takes around 12~15 minutes depend on every manufacturer. Stir a while every 5 minutes.

(3) Get meatballs out of the pan into a bowl. Set aside. And then, use the same pan to fry mushrooms.

(4) When mushroom turns tender, adding meatballs back
(5) Add tomato sauce into the pan, the amount of tomato sauce needs to over the height of meatball. Add salt and black pepper to season the sauce. Boil the sauce around 2 minutes and then switch the heat off.

(6) Place spaghetti on the plate. And then, pour the sauce and meatballs over the top. Sprinkle some cheese over the top.

 

Meatball pasta was inspirited by the movie, Hancock, that Mary cooks meatballs pasta for their family. As I said before, I am not a fan of tomato sauce so that I just leave this recipe away. After cooking Bolognese Lasagna last time, I found out tomato sauce can be so scrumptious. So, why not just cook meatballs pasta with tomato sauce!! Enjoy it.

Tomato Sauce

Food with tomato sauce was not my top choices when eating at restaurants. Because the flavor of tomato are too much too be real tomato flavor. After cooking Bolognese Lasagna, I found out… YES… The really tomato sauce should be like this, a mild tomato flavor with light tomato color. And  it is very scrumptious. Everyone cooks it in different ways. Here is one of my ways to cook it.

 

Recipe: Serve 5~6 people

 

Steps

(1) Heat up the vegetable oil in a big saucepan. Then, put some chili pepper in. Stir around 1 minute.

(2) Then, add chopped garlic cloves into the pan. Cook around 3 minutes to let the oil full of garlic flavor.
(3) Add the quartered tomatoes into the pan. Stir a little bit to let the oil cover the tomatoes. Cover the lid and cook around 10 minutes until it starts to become very soft.

(4) Add the chopped onion and carrots into the pan. Stir it with tomato. Boil it until tomato start to juice.

(5) Pick chili peppers out. Use a kitchen blender to blend all ingredients. Then, put chili pepper back.
(Selena’s Kitchen Talk: If you love spicy food, it is definitely okay to blend chili pepper with other ingredients.)

(6) Add 2 table spoons of tomato puree and 1 table spoon of soy sauce into the pan.

(7) Simmer it around 60~90 minutes until it turns thick.

(8) Add some sea salt and black pepper to taste

 
I have discussion with my friends that homemade sauces won’t have a very strong color like sold at jar. But, the taste is much better than those. Then, why would we like to buy them? Because of beautiful color? Or, very convenient? I am not sure if I could cook or bake every day after going back to work. But, I would like to try.

It is a very yum tomato sauce that I use this sauce to cook pasta, risotto, roast meal or anything you want. Enjoy it.

Bacon Pesto Pasta

Blogging how to do pesto sauce means I would like to blog how to do pesto pasta. But, pesto pasta is not as popular as another two. It is not only in Taiwan, but also here in the UK. The Italian restaurants I have been in Leicester don’t have pesto pasta. It really makes me wonder. But, I know lots of people liking pesto pasta.

I went to food shopping at Sainsbury’s last week. Saw a big basil pot there. The strong and fresh flavor … OH… I knew I would like to bring it back to home and use it to cook lots of things. So, of course, the first thing is the classic pesto pasta.

Recipe: Serve 1 person

Pesto Sauce Link 
 

Steps of Bacon Pesto Pasta

(1) Prepare all ingredients

(2) Place spaghetti into the pan and add some salt. Pour the boiling water and add 1 tea spoon olive oil the pan. Switch onto the high heat and keep boiling it. It takes around 8~10 minutes. It needs to stir 2 or 3 times when boiling to prevent spaghetti sticking together.
(3) At the same time, add 1 table spoon olive oil into another fried pan. Switch to the medium heat. Add onion into the fried pan. Cook for around 2 minute.

(4) Add bacon into the fried pan. Cook it for around 2 minutes.

(5) Place mushroom and broccoli into the fried pan. Cover with the lid and cook around 4 minutes.
(6) Then, dry spaghetti. And place all spaghetti into the fried pan. Add the pesto sauce and 2 ~ 3 table spoon spaghetti water into the fried pan. Cover with the lid. Cook for another 2~3 minutes. Before placing onto the plate, taste it. If it is not so salty, add  a little salt into it.
(Selena’s Kitchen Talk: I always medium cook my pasta. And then, cook my past with the sauce. The flavor of pasta will be more tasty if you cook in this way.)

Pesto Sauce

People know there are three main pasta sauces, tomato sauce, creamy cheese sauce and pesto sauce. These sauces represent three colors of the Italian flag, red, white, and green. Pesto and creamy cheese are my favorite pasta sauce. About pesto, I like the strong basil flavor with garlic flavor. When pesto sauce is covered around the spaghetti and you eat into your mouth, it is the best thing. Pesto sauce is very easy and quick that it only takes around 10 minutes. And then, you can use this pesto sauce to your cooking and baking.

 

 

 

Recipe: Serve 3 ~ 4 people

 

Steps of Pesto 

(1) Prepare all ingredients

(2) Place olive oil, basil leaves, garlic clove, pine nuts into a bowl. Blend them well by a kitchen blender.
(3) Add grated cheese, salt and black pepper. Well-incorporated them
(4) Preserve them in a clean jar in the fridge.

 

Is it easy and simple? Although people say it can last about few weeks in the fridge, I prefer to eat them in fresh. Look for a classic pasta sauce? Here you are.