Penne alla Vodka

My friend Sian, who is one of the most delightful people ever, posted this on her blog a year ago and its taken me this long to get around to making it. I'd had it once before from a restaurant, and I remember enjoying it, so I figured it couldn't go too badly.
SPOILER: I WAS RIGHT.
Aside from not mixing it very well, so I occasionally had a big vodka-y bit of pasta that made me choke a little, it was really delicious and I will make it again, vodka permitting. Although I wouldn't put it past me to buy vodka specifically for cooking this. Pasta + cream + parmesan = the best. Siany's recipe was vegetarian, but I googled around a bit and people seem to like putting bacon in it, so I settled for chorizo because it was on special and I was not disappointed.

The second time I ate it (leftovers for lunch the next day) I used regular cheese instead of parmesan, and it was delightful.

PENNE ALLA VODKA
Serves four
Total time commitment: 30 minutes
Recipe from Monster Girl Writes

1 onion
400g can diced tomatoes
Herbs (Sian recommends oregano and basil)
200g penne
Olive oil
Garlic
2 Tbsp thickened cream
2 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup vodka
Parmesan or another form of cheese
Chorizo (optional)

1. Put water for the pasta on to boil. Heat the oil and garlic in a pan, finely dice the onion and cook until golden.

2. Add pasta to boiling water. Meanwhile, add the can of diced tomatoes and herbs to the onion mixture, and cook until heated through. This should take about ten minutes, roughly the same time it will take for your pasta to be al dente (fancy way to say cooked but chewy).

3. If you're using chorizo, start cutting this up and frying it now while you drain the pasta, because the part of the stove you just cooked the pasta on is still hot so you won't waste time heating a third thingy. We're all about technical terms in this kitchen.

4. Return the drained pasta to the pan and stir through the butter so the pasta is coated. Add the vodka to the pasta and mix, then add the tomatoey, creamy sauce. Combine everything, serve into bowls, and top with parmesan or other cheese and chorizo, if you're being that kind of awesome.

Roast Beetroot

I'm going to be entirely straight with you, I wouldn't have posted this if it didn't look like some crazy marble painting in the enamel dish. Mum made me roast beetroots once during my vegetarian phase and when I expressed some sort of interest in making them again, she gave me the enamel dish and four beetroots and sent me on my way with a Maggie Beer method.

I'm sure these would be great as a side dish, I had them in pasta with cream cheese (I'm 99% sure. It was something creamy but not cream; it was also about six weeks ago and my mind has since been filled with verb conjugations) and that was great. As long as you're careful, its not quite the mammoth task I'd built it up to in my head.

EDIT: I think it was actually aioli, not cream cheese. I don't like cream cheese enough to have had it lying around in my fridge after a trip home, and I just saw the aioli in my fridge and was like "OH YES THAT". 

ROAST BEETROOT
Serves 4
Total time commitment: 10 minutes active, 40 minutes cooking
Recipe from Maggie's Harvest by Maggie Beer


4 beetroots
Olive oil
Water
(its recommended you do this in an enamel pan, I've never done it without one so I don't know if it would work or what happens)

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Cut the stalky bit from your beetroot 2-3cm above the beetroot, otherwise they will bleed and your whole kitchen will be dyed pink. Gently rinse the beetroot.

2. Place the beetroots in the baking dish and drizzle with olive oil and about 2tsp water.

3. Cover with alfoil and bake for 40 minutes.

4. When beetroots have cooled, gently rub off the skin. I would recommend wearing rubber gloves for this, thankfully I have a lemon tree outside that I could pinch some lemons from to get the nice pink colour out of my hands before I dyed the kitchen but it was touch-and-go (or rather, don't touch and go, AMIRITE) for a while.

5. Cut and serve however you would like!

ARGHHH

Last week of uni + two exams this week + general hectiness = not much new cooking.

Tonight, I'm making Gordo's Fish, last night was danish fritters, and that aside, its been snacking on rice crackers. Thank goodness I decided to buy snack food, I don't know how I usually survive without it in the house. It feels like cheating to put a recipe for "spinach, tomato, cheese and pepper on rice crackers", though, I feel you can figure that out yourself from the title.

Meanwhile enjoy this picture from happy things

How to: Chop an onion

So I thought I had this down until I was at Levi’s a while ago and his dad showed me this way to chop onions. It’s a lot easier. Good work, Keith. I took a lot of photos in case I am awful at explaining what I mean.

For this (surprise!) you will need an onion and a sharp knife. This is what an onion and a sharp knife look like.

Cut off the top and bottom of the onion.

Slice down through a layer of skin and peel off. I normally take off one of the white (see through?) layers as well because lately the outside layer has been kinda gross. Up your game, local shops.

Stand the onion on one of its newly flat edges (where you cut off the top or bottom), and slice in half.

Get one half of your onion, and make incisions lengthways along the onion, leaving a gap at the top so it holds together. I’ve left quite large gaps because I only wanted it roughly diced, but you can put them closer together for a finer dice.

Holding your onion sides and being careful about that knife, cut the other way along the onion to dice it.

Once you get to the bit that has no incisions on it, you can just roughly chop that into pieces.

Sweet Potato Curry

Welcome back, Blogger! If you aren't someone who uses Blogger you probably didn't know that it has been out of action for a few days. If you are, you probably also considered jumping ship and moving to WordPress (but I haven't, because I like it here).

So now you can finally get my recipe for sweet potato curry. Trust me, it is a ripper. It takes a little longer than I would usually spend on a dinner, but its quite worth it. I made this on one of those days where nothing goes quite right and you don’t have all the ingredients. News flash: after a year of diligently keeping my cupboards stocked with 400g tins of diced tomatoes, I didn’t have one when I went to cook this; I forgot to add cauliflower to my shopping list; I couldn’t find ground coriander so smashed up some coriander seeds and then when I was looking for cumin, found the ground coriander so added that too; cashews were too expensive so I didn’t top it with cashews - and hopefully Levi doesn’t read this because I neglected to tell him they were in the recipe in case the dish tasted worse in comparison to how good it could have been with the cashews.

If you want to follow the normal recipe, sub the tomato paste and water for 400g tin tomatoes. And if I can make a suggestion - cube the sweet potato quite small, because it will cook faster and you won’t be standing over the pan dying of hunger. I’ve added a lot of options into this recipe, because depending on what you have available, things can be added at a myriad of times. I’ve also not given any measurements for garlic or ginger - go with what you like. I substituted the cauliflower for frozen peas, because they added a bit of colour as well. This is quite a nice, easy dish served on rice, and the leftovers were good for lunch the next day. I’m a little concerned at how much I eat if the recipe is meant to serve 6 and I got 3-4 servings out of it, but it was SO GOOD.

SWEET POTATO CURRY
Serves 4
Total time commitment: 1 hour
From Leon: Naturally Fast Food Book 2

1 onion
Oil
Ginger
Garlic
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2-1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp turmeric
1 sachet tomato paste
200ml warm water
4 baby sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
400g tin coconut milk
Frozen peas

1. Chop the onion and fry in oil for 5 minutes. If you are using minced garlic from a jar (hello, self), add it with the oil; if you’re using *proper* garlic, then add it after the onion has softened a bit. If you’re using *proper* ginger, add that with the garlic; if you are using ground ginger, add that, along with the other spices, about a minute after the *proper* garlic/once the onion has softened.

2. Add the sachet of tomato paste and the warm water/tin of diced tomatoes, and the sweet potato. Cook for 30 minutes, adding water if it seems to be drying out.

3. Add frozen peas (as many as you like) and coconut milk to the pan, put the lid on and simmer for 10 minutes (or until soft). Delicious.

Pasta with Peas

I've spent the last two days trying to post and blogger hasn't been loading. How awkward for blogger.

This recipe is one that, as the book says, could probably be whipped up in the depths of a nuclear winter. Considering how quick and easy it is, I was expecting it to taste a lot more bland than it did. I actually timed this to see exactly how long it took to cook - 22 minutes and 7 seconds - but most of that was waiting for the pasta to boil. It was very easy and didn't take a lot of effort, which is what you need on a Sunday night.

PASTA WITH PEAS
Serves three
Total time commitment: 22 minutes 7 seconds
From the second Leon cookbook

1 leek
1 onion
Olive oil
Bit of butter
Garlic
Peas
Parmesan
Pasta

1. Boil some water for your pasta. I think you can cook the pasta without much direction.

2. Heat a little bit of oil and butter in a pan. Don't have the heat too high or it will burn. While this is warming up, or beforehand if you are not speedy with your knife skills and worry about hot oil spitting at you out of the pan, cut up the leek (thinly) and onion (diced).

3. Chuck some garlic in the pan for extra flavour, and then add the leek and onion. Let them soften a bit.

4. Add some peas - I didn't measure, just added until it looked nice.

5. Hopefully your pasta is done - top the pasta with leek and pea mix, and top that with as much parmesan as you can handle.

Happy Mothers' Day!

Happy mothers' day Mama and Grandma and Aunty Mel and other mums who read my blog!

I strongly considered posting a picture of mum busting a move at Tara's 21st, but this one (from the same night) is just too lovely.