P&P: Prawn Pasta

A couple days ago, my lady and I wend to Fairway, our favorite supermarket, to pick some ingredients for dinner and lunch. I saw the prawn was not expensive, $7 for a pound, so i asked her how about we have a prawn pasta. She loves seafood, especially selfish. With smile on her face, she loved that sound. Well, I am a happy chef who makes people happy; I strongly believe that making happy is definitely what chef have to do in the kitchen. For making two plates of prawn pasta, we needed chopped a half onion, two tomato concasse(diced plum tomato without skin and seed), half pound of peeled and headless prawns, black olive without seed, little bit garlic, dry white wine, dried or fresh basil and, obviously, pasta. We chose Fussily pasta. Since fresh pasta is much price than dried one, we had mixed half and half so that we could cook another two potions for next day. We normally buy the ingredients for two or three day.
To start with olive oil, garlic and chopped onion on a pan, you should star with medium heat; otherwise these will be burned before infused flavor. When onion is cooked without colored and you can smell the garlic, put prawns. Spreading the prawns on the pan will help you to cook everything evenly. Making sure both side of prawn is cooked. Prawn or other shellfishes are very delicate so you don't have to cook too long. If the cooking time is too long, the meat will loose tenderness and moisture. Soon as you put the prawns, it will be cooked in no time. When both side is cooked, puring white wine is the next. This dish does have much sauce beside wine and olive oil so it is good that covering the prawn with the wine. Next thing is put tomato and black olive. The idea of making pasta is whatever you want add, you can add. I like tomato and black olive with pasta. In fact these are very Italian ingredients. that is why I added it into my pasta.
Cooked and drained pasta put into the sauce when the wine starts boiling. At the moment, you'd better turn low the heat if you don't want to have too dry pasta. While quickly mixed with pasta and sauce, chopped fresh basil and seasoning is the last step of this pasta. We didn't buy fresh basil because we don't need that big bunch of basil. For the two potions of pasta, you will only need three or four leaves of basil. However, we used dried basil instead. Adding at the very last minute is good for fresh basil. if you have dried bail, like me, use it when you pour the wine so that the dried basil will infuse more flavor. All the ingredients and pasta should be mixed well and there is a couple of spoons of sauce should be remained on the bottom.
Before you eat the pasta, freshly grind Parmesan cheese and extra virgin olive oil make the taste better.
Try today!! if you have any question, simply left me a comment.

Today's Dinner

My girl and I love to have steak for dinner. When we went to Fairway, where is the most our favorite grocery store in the town because it has pretty much every thing that i need for cooking in low cost, we picked some stuffs for our sandwiches for next week school lunch. I'll restart to study English in the progress of entering Culinary Institute of America so we both agreed that we should reduce the food expenses due to economy crisis and too high exchange currency rate. While we were picking up some stuffs for the sandwich, we were talking about what we were going to have for the dinner. My lady loves my risotto so she asked me about it. But the problem was that we ran out of cooking white dry wine. If we buy it, we were going to spend so much money for grocery even if we bought a cheap bottle of wine.
At the Fairway, we could find cheap price of beef yet, i believe, it has better quality than any stores. So, I planed to make the steak, mash potato mixed with roasted garlic and semi-dried halves plum tomato for our dinner. I chose a pack of three sliced pieces of Beef Bottom Round. I knew it is not the best part for steak but i believe that it has good fatty so thinly sliced this part is not too bad. In fact, the cost was only $3.66. Well, what the hell it is good cheap steak for poor students like us.
I like to cook potatoes with milk because it makes rich flavor, so i did. Meanwhile the potatoes were cooking in mixture of salted 90% of milk and 10% of water , unpeeled three cloves of garlic with extra virgin olive oil and Rosemary were roasted in 140 Celsiuses. In order to the garlic infused the flavor of olive oil and rosemary, I made a little pocket, which made of aluminium foil. I put everything into there and then i closed it. The best way to find out whether it is cooked is to pock with thin stick. Simply the stick smoothly goes inside, it is cooked.
In our kitchen, we have a little oven for toasting bread or something. It has a function of controlling time and temperature which helps me to cook small amount of food. In same degree, i also cooked tomato halves. All three tomatoes were cut in half and placed on the tray. Cut surface should be up. I just left these in the oven until the potatoes cooked. Once the potatoes were cooked, draining the potato and mashing was the next step. I peeled garlic skin and then mashed it with potato. Heavy cream is for making the mash more smooth. Unsalted butter is for making rich favor. In old cook book said the amount of butter is half equal amount of potato. It sound liked really fatty but, trust me it is really good. Thinking of roasted garlic flavored mash potato, that sound makes me mouth watering all the times and it is fucking good with steak.
I got three thin pieces of steak so i cooked these in very hot pan for a couple of minutes and then rested it for same time as cooking time when every side dishes were ready to eat. Medium-rare is obviously the best temperature for steak.
Total cost $8 for steak dinner, the cost of steak, potato, garlic and tomato. I don't normally like to eat steak with gravy. What i like is only salt and pepper or whole grain seed mustard, that is the way i can taste the beef not sauce. Because of my habit, i could save some money to make or buy gravy.
Try today!! It is so good!!