Fresh tomato sauce with farfalle

This dish is easy, quick, and a real showstopper. You can snazz it up by using colourful cherry tomatoes instead of the standard fare.

Materials:

-Garlic

-Basil (paste or fresh, any form of the herb will work fine)

-Tomatoes (if cherry tomatoes, sliced in half. If plum tomatoes, quarters. Basically just get the tomato chunks down to cherry tomato sized. Use about a quart's worth)

-White wine vinegar

-White wine

-Salt

-Farfalle

-Olive oil

Set your sautee pan on medium low heat, add olive oil, and a clove of crushed garlic if you want.

Add your tomato chunks and salt, and then add basil to taste. If I'm using the badil paste, I put about a spoonful in the pan. If I have fresh basil I use about 6 large leaves, or 10 small ones and finely slice them in 2 directions so you have little squares.

Add enough white wine to cover the bottom of the pan, or more if you would like. Reduce the heat to low, and let the pan simmer, stirring occasionally until the tomatoes are starting to reduce and get soft

Taste the liquid, and add salt and vinegar to taste. 

Mix it in with the cooked farfalle, drizzle a little oil on top, and garnish with your favourite hard cheese grated over top, some crushes red pepper flakes, and a couple leaves of fresh basil.

Have fun cooking and enjoy your farfalle al pomodorino fresco!

Here are a few pics of the sauce that i've made.

Meat Sauce

Meat sauce is a great option for a Sunday afternoon meal. The version i'll be teaching you how to make is very similar to tomato sauce.

Materials:

Meat

1/2 onion

Garlic

Can of crushed tomatoes

Balsamic vinegar

Cheese

Red wine

Olive oil

First things first: pick which meat youre gonna use. Ground beef, ground turkey, finely chopped chicken, sausage, etc. Basically, you want little bits of meat.

Get your pan on medium high heat, put some oil in (enough to cover the center of the pan) then wait till it shimmers. Throw your meat and a clove of crushed garlic into the pan, and mix it around so everything is coated. Let the meat brown in the pan until the edges are nice and orangey.

Now, turn down the heat to medium low and add in half a chopped white or yellow onion. When the onion is transparent, dump in a can of tomato sauce. From this point on, you basically follow the recipe for tomato sauce.

You let the sauce come to a boil, then mix it around. Let it come to a boil again, then mix it around again. Turn the heat down to low, and let it reduce for about 10 minutes. 

After 10 ,inutes add some grated cheese, red wine, and balsamic vinegar. Let that mix in and reduce for about 5 minutes, and then your sauce is ready. 

Have fun cooking, and enjoy your delicious meat sauce.

Cream Sauce

My second pasta sauce recipe, cream sauce. This sauce is incredibly easy, delicious, simple, and filling. Here's how to make it.

first, collect your ingredients: for 3 servings of pasta
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup parmiggiano reggiano cheese, grated
1 Tbsp butter
A dash of black pepper

now, put a pan on medium heat, and melt your butter until it looks like this:

next, dump in your heavy cream, and stir it slowly until it is just about to boil (little bubbles will come up from the edge of the pan)

then, add in your cheese and a dash of black pepper, and stir the sauce slowly until it is again about to boil. take it off the heat, and pour it over your pasta.

Have fun cooking, and enjoy your delicious cream sauce!

Tomato sauce recipe

Heres the way I make a simple tomato sauce-

Materials:

1 can crushed skinless tomatoes

1/4 large white onion

2 cloves garlic

1tsp Balsamic vinegar

1Tbsp grated hard cheese (grana padano, parmesan, pecorino, etc.)

Various herbs

First, chop your 1/4 onion into fine slivers, about 1 cm tall, and a couple mm thick. You can chop them into bigger chunks if you like a chunky sauce, but im going for a silkier, smooth sauce. Then, crush and finely chop your garlic.

Now, drizzle olive oil on a pan, and put the pan on medium low heat. Wait for the oil to begin to shimmer, then put in your garlic and onions. Stir them around about once every minute, until they start to be translucent and a little bit brown. This is a good time to add in chilli flakes if you have them.

Once they hit the stage pictured above, dump in your can of tomato. It will splatter a bit because the hot oil in the pan and the water content of the tomato react agressively. It will look like this at first.

Stir the sauce until it has a consistent look, and the onions are spread throughout the pan evenly. Now, let it sit until you start to see bubbles coming up, just a few though. Then, mix it around so the heat is evenly distributed.

Now let it sit until the whole thing starts to bubble. At this stage, add in your balsamic vinegar and cheese. The cheese gives the sauce a savory, rich flavour, while the balsamic vinegar gives the sauce a smoother texture, more vivid colour, and intensifies the flavour. Now you can add some of your spices. A few leaves of chopped basil, a small pinch of dried rosemary, a small dash of cinnamon, and whatever else you fancy. 

Now, turn the heat down to low, and stir the sauce around until it stops bubbling. Start cooking your pasta and let the sauce sit over low heat, uncovered the whole time, stirring occasionally. This will reduce the sauce (in Cooking, reducing something generally means to evaporate some of its liquid.) This will intensify the flavour, colour, and make the texture more velvety.

Most pastas take about 11 minutes to cook, but follow the directions on the box. Including boiling the water, the pasta itself will probably take about 15 minutes, which is a good amount of time for the sauce to reduce.

This recipe will produce enough sauce for probably about 1.5 lbs of pasta (depending on how much sauce you like on your pasta) which will feed around 6-8 people depending on their appetites, or provide lunch for one person for a whole week.

Serve with grated cheese, freshly ground black pepper, and a light drizzle of olive oil.

Enjoy cooking and eating your delicious tomato sauce! This makes a great holiday family dinner, or just a simple solo meal. If you decide to make it, show me on instagram @davidramsay99 

Pasta

Pasta is an incredibly diverse food. There are so many different pasta shapes, different things the pasta is made from, and different sauces you can top the pasta with. The combinations are endless, but there are a few classics, which fit into larger categories. For example, bolognese is a meat sauce, the classic "spaghetti sauce" is a red sauce, and alfredo is a cream sauce.

When you're making pasta sauce, you can do it using almost anything you have. As many or as few ingredients as you desire can go into a sauce. Thats the great part of pasta- if all you have is butter, or olive oil, and some spices, you can make a sauce. (You can actually just put olive oil or butter on the pasta and eat that.) if you have carrots, celery, sausage, bacon, grana padano, garlic, onions, roasted red peppers, red wine, balsamic vinegar, and tomatoes, you can make a sauce from that. You don't need to go out and buy tons of extravagant ingredients- that is, of course, unless you want to. 

Another awesome thing about pasta is that you can make it however you like it. If you like penne with red sauce, go ahead and make that. If you like a fresh tagliatelle with cream sauce and lemon zest, you can do that too. It all comes down to what you want to eat, and what ingredients you have.

Throughout the next few weeks, ill show you how to make different pasta sauces. Ill show you a basic cream sauce, a red sauce, and a meat sauce. Enjoy!

Seared chicken

materials you will need:
chicken breasts
pan
cooking oil
salt and pepper

1. Slice chicken breast to 1/2 inch slices

•if you have boneless skinless chicken breast fillets, slice them about halfway up from the fat side, and along the whole length

•if you have chicken breast tenderloins, you dont have to slice them at all.

2. Tenderize with maul or rolling pin until as thin as possible

3. Coat with oil, season with salt and pepper

4. Heat non stick pan (or regular pan) on high until very hot (if you have a regular pan, put a very small amount of high smoke point oil and wait until it shimmers in the light) Place your chicken in the pan.

6. Leave the chicken for about a minute, after you lay it in the pan. this increases the quality and consistency of the browning.

• you can check the chicken's browning on the bottom every once in a while, but reduce the heat and shake the pan over the cooking grate to release the pan's heat if it starts getting too dark before the bottom 2/3 of the chicken are cooked.

7. Wait until the bottom 2/3 of the edge of the chicken has turned white (probably around 5 minutes, changes due to thickness of chicken,) flip 

8. Let this sit in the pan cooking. Check the bottom occasionally. Remove from the pan when the bottom is perfectly browned to your liking.

This seared chicken is incredibly diverse -- here are a few things you can do with it:

-you can pour equal parts marsala, red wine, and balsamic vinegar as well as a tablespoon of butter into the pan immediately after cooking your chicken while the pan is still hot. then, let it reduce until it has a syrupy consistency. then, serve the chicken on a bed of pasta with this sauce poured over top

-slice thinly or chop into chunks and put it in a salad

-eat it with a side of steamed broccoli for a healthy dinner

-make a sandwich with it-bacon, spinach, arugula, tomato, and avocado is my personal recommendation

-put some in tacos or burritos

-put some in a stir-fry with of vegetables and rice

-stuff a pitted and grilled avocado half with a salad made from chicken, arugula, diced tomato and a drizzle of olive oil

Have fun cooking, and enjoy your seared chicken!

the importance of a garnish: Chocolate cake

This is a compiled dessert of all the recipes from this week: chocolate sponge cake, lemon butter cream frosting, and zabaglione custard.

 This dessert is an excellent example of the importance of garnishes, as far aesthetics go. Look at the first one. Something just seems missing, right? Now look at the picture below.

something still seems missing, but that's because I ate some. The chopped lemon zest really brings the whole thing together, and fills in the empty space on the top.

have fun cooking, and enjoy your cake!