Angel Hair Pasta with Italian Tomato Sauce

Yes, I admit. Once in a while I do crave for Italian food. So, besides risotto, I also made some pasta this long weekend. I love angel hair pasta because it is finer than spaghetti without compromising the elasticity. Due to its larger surface-area-mass ratio, angel hair can absorb more pasta sauce and thus more flavourful.

So, here's my Italian tomato sauce recipe that serves 4 ~ 6 :

Ingredients:

8 medium size organic tomatoes (cubed)

1 carrot (finely diced or shredded)

4 cloves garlic (finely chopped)

1 cup leek (cut length-wise)

1 large red onion (finely chopped)

1 cup minced chicken or beef

2 cups fresh or canned button mushroom (sliced into 1/2 cm thick)

1 cup black olives (pitted and finely sliced)

1 tbsp red pepper flakes

4 sprigs of fresh thyme (this is the bomb and a must in this sauce)

4 tbsp olive oil

pinch salt

pinch freshly ground black pepper

4 servings of angel hair pasta

generous serving of freshly-grated parmesan cheese

Procedure:

1. In a heavy sauce pot, saute onion and garlic with olive oil at medium heat

2. Add leek and carrot saute for 5 minutes

3. Add chicken and mushroom, saute for another 5 minutes or until the meat is cooked.

4. Add tomatoes, olives and thyme and cook until tomatoes are all mashed and soft.

5.Season with red pepper flakes, pepper and salt and bring the sauce to a boil.

6.Let cool and serve it with cooked to al dante angel hair pasta

7.Top the pasta and sauce with generous amount of parmesan cheese

Most people refrain from using fresh tomatoes because they tend to be sour. So, some option includes stewed tomatoes and puree. Since I am not a canned food fan and I hate adding sugar to the sauce, I balance the sourness in tomatoes with ketchup (shhh... don't judge me).

If you have pesto sauce, add it just before serving.

I love eating this pasta with a mountain full of parmesan cheese shreds and fresh ground pepper... lovely.

Viva Risotto!

This long weekend, I finally found some time to spend with the kitchen. So, I managed to whip up one of Adrian's favorite dishes--Risotto.

In the last Italian feast with friends, I cooked a basic risotto. This time, I challenged myself with a slightly gourmet version of it--Risotto with Leeks, Shiitake Mushrooms and Truffles from Epicurious.com(which I then improvised with asparagus).

Rissoto is an Italian creamy rice that is cooked slowly with cream, broth and fresh ingredients like chicken, mushroom, truffle (which is expensively impossible to find in Malaysia), pumpkin, peas and cured meat.

To make good risotto, one needs a lot of patience because the procedure and temparature have to be right. Imagine stirring the rice for 20 minutes non-stop in order to let the rice sloly absorbs the broth batch by batch. Not to mention that the broth has to be hot. Other ingredients have to be cooked separately before mixing into well-flavoured and cooked risotto.

Yes, it is quite labour intensive but when you see the sense of satisfaction and happiness on the face your loved one after savouring the dish-- the reward is, priceless!

Who would imagine 1 cup of arborio short-grain rice will yield four servings of scrumptious risotto?

Creamy risotto with flavourful textures--leek with cream, shiitake mushroom with fresh thyme, asparagus with garlic . Don't forget to add fresh ground peppercorns to give it a kick!!!

Let's risotto tonight!