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!

Chocolate Spongecake

Spongecake is a delicious, dense, and moist cake made with whipped eggs. I will definitely use this recipe again, because it was so delicious this time.

I did my measurements for this by weight (grams), which was far more exact and constant than using volume (cups) which can change depending on how much you pack the ingredient, the humidity of the air, as well as a few other factors.

Here are the ingredients:
225g flour
250g butter (1 cup, room temperature)
4 eggs (preferably room temperature)
1tsp vanilla
225g sugar
50g cocoa
1/2 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 355°F or 180°C

Grease your pans with butter and a light dusting of flour. If you're using the square 9x9 cake tins like I did, use 2 of them.

Break your eggs into the bowl of a standing mixer with your vanilla. Beat on high, 8-10 minutes or until the mixture reaches the ribbons stage (when you lift the whisk up and make a figure 8, you should be able to make an entire 8 before the ribbons re-absorb into the mixture)

In a separate bowl, cream your butter and sugar together, then whisk them until fluffy. This will take about 3-5 minutes by hand, or 2-3 minutes with an electric hand mixer.

Sieve your flour into the butter and sugar mixture, then add half of the egg mixture. Combine by folding them together and cutting your spatula throught the center, then repeating. Add the remaining egg mixture after you fold it a few times, and continue until the whole thing is well combined. Dont worry about a few little lumps, as these will eventually form the bubbles inside the cake, and over mixing will cause the cake to deflate. However, if there are a lot of large lumps, continue folding the mixture together.

Add the milk into the bowl, and mix well. then, pour the batter into your greased pans, and bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of your pan. A cake tester or toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake straight up and down, then quickly removed should come out dry and clean.

Once the cake is finished baking, let it rest for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan. Eat it straight away or let it cool completely to room temperature or in the refrigerator before frosting it.

My cake is pictured below. I made the mistake of using one small pan, so the cake was very thick. I cut it in half horizontally for presentation, and so it would be easier to eat. This picture is pre-frosting, but feel free to use my buttercream frosting recipe and zabaglione recipe in collaboration with this amazing cake.

As always, have fun cooking and enjoy your delicious Chocolate Spongecake! Tomorrow, I will show you a beautiful way to present all three of this week's recipes as one single, beautiful, and excellent tasting dessert. see you all then.

Zabaglione

Zabaglione is a delicious Italian custard made from eggs and sugar. easy, quick, and delicious.

First things first, gather your materials.
You need a double boiler, or a pot and a heat-safe bowl to use as one, as well as a whisk. My double boiler setup is shown below.

Ingredients:
5 egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
**optional**
a liqueur such as khalua, limoncello, etc. for flavour
lemon zest for garnish

Put about an inch of water in your double boiler and throw it on medium heat.

Wait until the water is just starting to steam, then place your bowl with eggs and sugar inside on top of the boiling water, making sure that the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water in the pot.

Whisk and stir the eggs and sugar constantly while they cook together. After 5 minutes they should thicken up like a pudding, and pale in colour to a whiter shade. If not, increase the heat.

Once this is done, take it off the heat and stir in your vanilla and about 2 tablespoons of your chosen liqueur.

Boom, you're done. Spoon it into a serving vessel, and enjoy it hot or refrigerated.

In order to turn mine into a more sauce-like consistency, I added only 2 T sugar at the beginning, and then added 2 T of heavy cream when the custard was nearing completion. This gave it a lovely, silky, flowing texture, perfect for drizzling over some cake.

Buttercream Frosting

Butter cream frosting: a delicious garnish for any cake or cookie. And now you can make this glorious spread in your very own kitchen. It takes just a few minutes!

The ingredients are delightfully simple, and make for an equally delightful finished product. All you need is powdered/confectioner's sugar, butter, and a few Tbsp of milk or heavy cream.

3 cups powdered sugar
1 cup room temp butter (salted or not; it does not matter)
2 Tbsp of heavy cream or milk

Start off by bringing your butter to room temp. Next, throw it in your Standing mixer with the whisk or paddle attachment(preferably the whisk). Beat it for just about 10-20 seconds, until its spread out over the bowl and is no longer in stick form. MAKE SURE YOU TURN THE MIXER OFF IN ORDER TO AVOID DISASTER

Next dump in your sugar. Yes, all of it. Now turn your mixer on the lowest setting. Once the butter and sugar are starting to combine and have formed a clump inside the whisk attachment (or it is no longer powdery enough to billow sugar into the air, if you're not using the whisk) gradually bring your mixer up to full speed, spending about 5-10 seconds on each setting.

Once you reach full power, let it run for about 15 seconds, then stop the mixer. Grab a small swab on your pinky and spread it on the side of the bowl, just enough so that its smooth. If it is sufficiently glossy and smooth, take it out. However, you will probably want to add 2 T of heavy cream to the mix, and let it run on full power for another 15 seconds, until the cream combines with the mix. If you're adding flavour and colour, now would be the time to do it. If not, your frosting is finished.

For mine, since it was meant to go with the slight bitterness of the chocolate sponge cake, I added a few drops, and I mean only 3 or 4 drops since this stuff is strong, of pure lemon extract. I also added 1/4 of a lemon's worth of finely chopped zest. I then mixed it in at the same stage as the cream, and for the same amount of time.

the slight acid of the lemon perfectly complements the creaminess of the zabaglione and the slight base/bitterness of the chocolate in the spongecake, its so delicious.

As always, have fun cooking and enjoy your delicious Butter cream frosting!

NEW posts coming soon!

I have a few posts coming up:

•Zabaglione (an italian custard)

•Buttercream frosting with lemon

•Cocoa spongecake

•A compilation of all four

See you all soon!

How to make a nice roast

Preheat oven to 375°.

VEGGIES:

Chop your chosen veggies (onion, garlic, carrot, apples, and potato are really the best, they become sweet like little veggie candies) roughly. Big carrots go to 1/2 inch or 1 cm thick slices, baby carrots just leave whole, or cut into the same size slices, onions cut into 1 inch thick disks then into quarters so you have wedges, and potatoes into hefty home-fry-like wedges. Garlic cloves get peeled and thrown in whole, or smash 'em with your fist on the table if you like. Anything really can be any shape as long as the inside can get cooked, so don't make it too thick. These are my personal recommended shapes.

PREPPING FOR OVEN:

 In earthenware pan/on a pizza stone/in a roasting tray, arrange roughly chopped veg. 

Drizzle with olive oil, coarse sea salt, and coarse black pepper. 

MEAT:

Rub your chosen meat with olive oil. Season with sea salt and pepper, and lay on top of your veggies. I highly reccomend using whole chicken breasts, i usually like to trim them and tenderize them as well. 

I chose to stuff my chicken with the same veggies but very finely chopped and sautéed for a few minutes just to get nice and tender.

COOKING: 

Roast in the oven until

A.) veggies are all golden brown

B.) Or if you have meat, until the meat has reached the desired temperature. For chicken, its 150-165 Fahrenheit or 65-71 Celsius range. This will probably take 20+ minutes. I set a timer for 15 minutes and then check it every 5 minutes after that.

Remove from oven, and plate meat on a bed of roasted veggies. Drizzle with olive oil. Serve.

Have fun cooking, and enjoy tasting your lovely roast veggies with/without chicken!

The apples are so good, they absorb the flavour of the garlic and onion and chicken fat. The chicken itself mingles flavours with the stuffing, and the stuffing breaks down inside amd starts to get all melty. Everything matches so well, it is truly beautiful.

Perfect sunny side up eggs (v.2)

Eggs: they can be one of the most basic foods to prepare, yet one that can be impressively beautiful and incredibly delicious if prepared correctly. This is one of many methods of making the sunny side up egg. 

First things first, you need your materials. A good cook needs his tools to be ready, and his station to be clean and organized. Here are your tools in order of use:

~ non-stick pan

~ eggs

~ glass lid that fits non stick pan

~ teaspoon of water

~ soft spatula/flipper

~ plate

~ seasoning

Put your non-stick pan over med.-low heat. immediately crack in your eggs.

Wait until you can see a solid white layer completely covering the bottom of the egg, while the top is still transparent. Cover with a GLASS lid, and reduce to low heat.

*glass is important so you can see if the egg is beginning to bubble*

If you see a bubble forming, take off the lid for a few seconds and lance it with a cake tester or knife, then wait a few seconds. Once the top of the egg is clear only on the very inner white are, add a teaspoon of water to the pan, but do not let it touch the eggs. Here is a (very professional) rough layout of the pan. Orange means eggs, blue means water.

Cover with glass lid again, but make sure you tilt the lid so the water drips back into the puddle it started in once it vaporizes. Always watch for bubbles. If they form, remove the lid and lance them with a cake tester. Below is a properly tilted lid:

Once the inner white has reached its desired consistency, use a soft spatula to remove the egg from the pan. Be very gentle.

Plate your eggs gingerly, making sure the yolk doesnt rupture. Season with salt, pepper, and whatever else you put on your eggs.

Serve to guests or family, if it came out right it will surely impress them.

Have fun cooking, and enjoy your delicious, perfect eggs, sunny side up!