Making a sauce in 10 minutes or less
With my insane schedule, I don't always have the time I want to make what I want or to make something "special" so I have to resort to a bit of cheating!
As you already know, Sundays and Thursdays are macaroni (you call pasta) days in old-fashioned Italian homes. I can eat macaroni every day – there is so much you can do with it.
Last Thursday was one of those days. In between "baby runs" (taking my babies to school and picking up) and having to go to the market, I didn't have much time at all for making dinner.
I wanted a tomato-based sauce, mom wanted macaroni in oil – so I made both.
Place the pasta pot on the stove with cold water in it and bring to a rolling boil; add salt and wait for the water to return to a full boil; drop in 1 pound spaghetti and cook al dente.
Meanwhile, heat a bit of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add a can of diced tomatoes with sweet onions; season with just a bit of Kosher salt (very little – because I am adding olives that are highly salted), cracked black pepper, onion powder, garlic, parsley and basil; bring to a simmer to desired thickness; add green pimiento-stuffed olives. Heat through.
Drain spaghetti. Mine was tossed with the tomato-onion sauce with olives; while the rest was drained, placed in a hot pot of oil and seasoned with Kosher salt, cracked black pepper, garlic and parsley. I had to have tomatoes – others wanted spaghetti in oil. Just a light sprinkle of grated Pecorino Romano to top it off.
Crusty Italian bread and a side salad to complete a very easy to prepare meal!
Best Mixed Vegetable With Chicken Liver
Ingredients :
Cauliflower
Chinese Celery
Chicken liver (Optional) could replace with pork or chicken meat
Ginger
Garlic
Onion
oyster sauce
Spring Onion
Corn Powder
Ginger, onion and garlic cut into small pieces. Chicken liver clean with salt and then cut into slice.
Stir-fry all the ginger, onion and garlic.
Add in chicken liver to stir fry until it cook.
Add in Chinese celery and stir fry again.
To make this dish cook faster, I would cook the cauliflower with boil water first. Then just add to stir fry for a while.
Then seasoning with oyster sauce, salt and thicken the sauce with corn powder water.
At last, topping with spring onion before serve.
Japanese Cucumber with Shrimp Stir Fry
Besides using the Japanese Green Cucumber for this dish, sometimes I would use the yellow big cucumber as well. of course the texture was not as good as the green cucumber. But still taste very nice and easy to buy. I personally like the small green cucumber, because i like to chew.
Ingredients :
Japanese Green Cucumber / cucumber
Medium size Prawn / meat
soy sauce
Oyster Sauce
Onion
Corn powder
oil
Clean the prawn and cut into two pieces each. Chop well onion and cut the cucumber into slice.
I missed the follow photo which should heat the wok with oil and stir-fry the onion.
too busy in preparing those thing until i forgot to take photo. Never mind it just a simply step, you could do it without picture, right?
Then, add in cucumber and prawn to stir fry.
Cover it and let it cook for a while. Until the prawn is cook, usually 1 – 2 minutes is enough already. if you like softer cucumber then you could cook a little bit longer time.
Add in oyster sauce and mixed well. Get ready the corn powder and mixed with water, then thicker the sauce before take out from wok.