My First Time Making Sauce

my sauce

Ok, here is the thing. This cookbook has like a thousand sauce recipes for the pasta that I just gave you the recipe for. So I chose the one that matched the ingredients in my refrigerator. It was absolutely delicious, but I’m sure that any sauce with homemade pasta would be delicious.

I would also like to say, before I tell you how to make this, that I made it wrong. And it was still delicious. So there. You can follow the cookbook directions, or what I did, or whatever you want to do. I seriously doubt that it will matter.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 small onion
• 2 fresh sage leaves (I bought them from the Fresh Market so I’m pretty sure it counts)
• 1 celery stalk
• 3 plum tomatoes, peeled*, seeded, and chopped
• 2 ⅔ cups zucchini, thinly sliced
• 12 ounces spaghetti
• 1 mozzarella cheese, diced
• ⅓ cup of parmesan cheese, freshly grated

*peeling tomatoes is quite a process. I have found the best (and most fun) way to do this is spear them with a fork and roast them over a gas stove flame until the skin pops off. It’s basically the same as roasting marshmallows. Or you can boil them or something.

Directions:

1. Heat the oil in a pan, add the garlic clove, the entire onion, the sage leaves and celery stalk and cook over low heat for 5 minutes. (Here is where I went wrong. I chopped up the garlic and onion before I fully understood that they were just flavoring. It tasted fine, but you can save yourself work and not chop them up if you so choose.)

   

   here is where I began to go wrong

   
   
   
   
   

   

   failure.

2. Add the peeled and chopped tomatoes and bring the sauce to a boil over medium heat (this did not happen to mine but I think it is because I had too many chopped up ingredients in there).
3. Add the zucchini.
   
   
   
   
4. Season with salt and pepper and cook for 15 minutes
5. Here is where I realized that I didn’t have to chop up the onion and garlic because you are told to remove them and the celery and sage. Oops.
6. Meanwhile cook your pasta according to the directions that you know.
7. Drain and return to pan.
8. Toss with sauce, mozzarella, parmesan, and serve.

*If you are not entertained by YouTube videos stop reading now.*

The reason this post is titles “My First Time Making Sauce” is because of Miranda Sings. She posted a video called “MY FIRST TIME!” and she talks about her first time eating sauce at 1:48 but I would recommend watching the whole thing because it is hilarious and also it wouldn’t make sense unless you watched it all.

I make da pasta

Pasta is probably the best thing that I have made by myself over this entire experience. It was also the worst. I take that back, the bread, and possibly the salad where I added too much garlic, were the worst. I should clarify, taste wise--the pasta was one of the best, cooking wise--it was one of the worst. Pasta is harder to make than you would think. Apparently, something with only three ingredients can be just as complicated as yeast. Yeast is very complicated. I really don’t know why I had so many struggles with the pasta, but I think it was just adjusting myself to using the pasta machine. BUT I have learned the key, the secret if you will, to correctly using a pasta maker; do NOT put the entire chunk of dough into it at once. The pasta maker does not respond well to an overwhelming amount of dough. I am getting ahead of myself, first, here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¾ cups of flour (the book says preferably Italian type 00 but I seriously doubt I had the foresight to buy that and mine turned out just fine.)
• extra fancy flour for dusting
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• salt (they do not specify how much salt, so I added a pinch because that seems to be the standard salt measurement)

and there you have it. It only has three ingredients. I was shocked too.

Directions:

1. I would like to first note that making this was a lot more fun than I assumed it would be, so just follow the directions even if you are weirded out.
2. Clean your countertop.
3. Sift all of your flour and your pinch of salt directly into a mound on to your countertop. (Do you see why I added step 2?)

   

   don't forget to get all of your ingredients out ahead of time

   
   
4. Make a well in the center and add the eggs. After significant trial and error, I have found that it is best if you add a small amount of eggs, incorporate that into the flour and then gradually add more of the eggs. I did not do that at first and the egg came out of some hidden hole in the flour and made a stream and flowed all the way off my countertop.
   

   
5. Incorporate all of the egg into the flour mound.

   

   the true struggle

   
   

   
6. Knead for about 10 minutes.
7. If the mixture is too soft, add some dusting flour. If it is too firm, add a little water. Use your good judgement.
8. Shape the dough into a ball and let it rest for 15 minutes.

   

   to prove I did not steal the below picture from the internet

   

   this is not from the internet

9. Now start using your pasta maker. As I said, do not put the entire chunk the pasta maker. This does not work at all, put smaller chunks of dough in.
10. Here is how I would do it, if I tried it again right now:
1. Break the ball into 4 smaller balls.
2. Make each ball into a rectangle.
   

   
3. Feed rectangle into the pasta maker at the highest setting.
   

   
4. Gradually get to a lower setting (like 3).
   

   

   
   

   
5. Then feed your thin rectangle into the contraption that makes the rectangle into tiny strands of pasta.
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   
6. Lay tiny strands out flat until you are ready to boil them.
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   I MADE THAT

11. To cook your pasta, bring a pot of water (with a pinch of salt in it) to a boil. Add the pasta and continue to stir until it is cooked. I do not remember exactly, but pay close attention anywhere in between 3 and 5 minutes and I’m pretty sure you’ll be good.

Now you make your sauce. See it is intense for something with three ingredients.

Let's Just Pretend I'm In Italy

I MADE DIS

#artsy #cookbook #icookthings #iamsocool

see above caption

I am judging whoever took this picture.

A ball of dough!!!

two little pasta pieces!

om nom nom nom

ooooo look at that yummy

On one of the first warm days of the year, I magically was granted a day’s worth of initiative, something that hadn’t happened since November. Thank you, Spring Fairies. (As a sidenote: that whole spring thing was a farce because we had snow days the next week. Rude.) So, armed with this day's worth of initiative and brand new bangs, I walked all the way downstairs to the basement and wiped the dust off of the pasta maker I bribed my mom into buying six years ago and only used once. It was like my junior year self inhabited my senior year self for one day. I couldn't believe it. Neither could my family.

I spent the morning making pasta. I kicked that machine’s butt...after the third time trying to use it. But after that I really was like the pasta maker superwoman. I just didn’t have much dough left by then…

If I remember correctly, I spent my after pasta “break” looking through The Silver Spoon, which is the Italian cookbook according to the cover. I mean, what? I even spent my break doing things? Ok then. I really was possessed. I marked more than 200 things that I wanted to cook but I was not possessed enough to make all of them. I decided to make a zucchini and tomato sauce for the fresh pasta and sage flavored pork chops as the meat part of the meal. I AM AMAZING. I couldn’t believe myself. The best part of this whole story is I even drove to Fresh Market to pick up the vegetables and meat. It really does take magic to get me behind the wheel so I am still in awe of that day. My parents were pretty impressed with me but not nearly as impressed as I was with myself.  

Adas Polo

This is what that deliciousness looks like.

This Adas Polo was probably one of the best things I have eaten in a very long time. It was just rice with lentils, spices and raisins but it was so yummy. Apparently, if you really want to, you can even use a rice cooker to make your Adas Polo but I don’t have one so…

Like I said with many of the recipes that I have obtained from people not books, the people generally do not use measurements while cooking, or a specific set of ingredients. That makes it rather hard for me to write down really quickly because I get too caught up in wanting to eat the food or talk to the person. Anyways, I will be attaching a couple of links to other Adas Polo recipes if you really want to make it. Look at the ones that I linked to on the Iranian Chicken post.

Directions:

1. measure out 4 ½ cups of basmati rice
   
2. pour into a bowl.
3. rinse it out with cold water.
   
4. pour out the water.
5. do this two times.
6. let it sit in new clean water for 20 min.
7. pour 2 ¼  cups of lentils into a bowl.
8. rinse three times like you rinsed the rice.
9. put in a large pot with olive oil and water and cook on high until it boils, and then turn the burner down to medium low.
   
10. boil four cups of water with 2 TB of salt.
11. pour all of the rice into the salty water.
12. cover with top that is wrapped in a towel.
    
13. boil for five min and then when it is soft, pour it out.
14. pour the rice into a strainer, strain.
15. add a lot of cinnamon, salt, turmeric, and cumin*.
16. add the lentils to the rice and spice mixture.
    
17. over a slotted spoon, pour canola oil over the rice and lentil mixture.
18. chop up an onion and sautè with canola oil on high until brown and then add 2 cups of raisins and saute until they puff up.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
19. put all of this together on a plate and serve!

*cumin and lentils help combat stomach ache. I mean, what.

Mina in action.

Iranian Chicken

you see that piece of chicken. that is what this looked like.

I know most everything about the ingredients from this "before" picture.

I learned nothing about the ingredients from this "after" picture.

This is the one thing that I will forever be confused about how to make. And this is the real reason I procrastinated so long on this blog because I really don’t know how to write about it. The struggle. Speaking of the struggle I am writing this on a counter that is much taller than I am, my arms are up uncomfortably high to write this. That doesn’t matter.

Ok. So this chicken. It includes chicken on the bone (with the fat scraped off) that is boiled for 20 minutes in a pot with canola oil, a coarsely chopped onion, ½ ts of turmeric, 1 TB cinnamon, 1 ts of salt, and pepper to taste. I swear, that is all I wrote down. I know. I have failed. I even did some intensive googling and found nothing. The struggle continues. There is a slight possibility that it might be this recipe that I found on tumericsaffron.

I recommend that if you want chicken with you Adas Polo, that you follow these recipes from Mysticpersia and Savorychicks. That sounds like a good idea.

Iranian Salad

this was tasty. then I died of too much garlic.

This was the only thing I made for the Iranian dinner. It was probably the worst thing there and that was because of my overeager use of garlic. I forgot that garlic is incredibly potent and sometimes lethal. It was painful. Never again. Before I added the garlic the salad was actually amazing, so just don’t add too much garlic.

This kind of salad actually is very good so I recommend trying it. Just learn from my mistakes. Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

• two alarmingly large cucumbers
• two rather large tomatoes
• one red onion (blanched)
• 1 clove of garlic (BUT NOT TOO MUCH use your good judgement)
• about 2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper
• a couple sprigs of parsley (if you have it)
• cheese (it would be best if it were Bulgarian, but Feta is good too because I don’t think there is a difference)

Directions:

1. Cut the cucumbers into tiny pieces
   
2. Cut the tomatoes into tiny pieces
   
3. Cut the onion into tiny pieces
4. Cut the garlic into tiny pieces
5. Add the cucumbers and tomatoes to a bowl
   
6. To make the onions taste less strong/red onion-y you can pour boiled water over them and the flavor will be less intrusive and horrible, but if you like that then do what you want.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
7. Put the onions in the bowl, too. And the garlic
8. Add olive oil
9. Add salt and pepper
10. If you like parsley you can cut it up and put it in there, if not then don’t.
11. Now add a lot of crumbled cheese.
12. Now you can eat it.