In
my family, pasta is a staple in our diet just like rice. Whenever we're running
late or too lazy to cook a traditional Chinese meal, pasta is our go to
meal. Although I love to eat, cooking was a mystery to me so I decided to
tackle this issue and start learning. Today, I cooked dinner for my family and
made a very quick and simple dish: Linguine with sausage and peppers.
Ingredients:
- 9 oz. Linguine
- 11 oz. sausage
- 3.5 oz. red bell pepper, seeded and diced
- 3.5 oz. yellow bell pepper, seeded and diced
- 11 oz. tomatoes
- 6.5 oz. onion, peeled and thinly sliced
- 0.25 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- Salt and pepper
(I Love Pasta 228)
Although
I've never cooked before, it definitely was an easy process. The first thing I
did was dice all the peppers, tomatoes, and onions. Also, I crushed up all the
sausages for the sauce. Then, I sautéed the onion and peppers. In the book it
said, "When it is well browned, discard the melted fat and transfer the
sausage to the peppers" (I Love Pasta 228). This was a helpful tip as
it made the sauce less greasy. Also, cooking the sausage separately really brought out its taste and made the sauce much more delicious.
After
I made the sauce, the book said to boil the linguine until it was al dente and
then to drain it (I Love Pasta 228).
Now
that I had made the sauce and pasta, I combined them to come up with the final
product.
The
biggest issue I had was measuring out all the ingredients. When I went out to
buy them, all the measurements used in the book were not used in the store. I
ended up estimating all the measurements, but in the end there wasn't enough
sauce for the pasta. Obviously I'm no Gordon Ramsay, so next time I'll definitely follow the cookbook precisely.
Once everyone had a bite, they all agreed it wasn't bad. This was a huge confidence booster since my mom usually makes great food so "not bad" was a big compliment for a first-time chef. Now that I've had a taste of my cooking, I'll definitely cook for myself more since I know it won't turn out too bad.
When you cook, do you think being precise is important?
I Love Pasta: An Italian
Love Story in 100 Recipes. Newtown: Taunton, 2013.
Print.
That looks delicious! For me personally, I think that precision in cooking isn't too important. In baking, that's a whole different story, but I find that when I am cooking I can usually add or take away ingredients in the recipe to my liking and it doesn't effect the final product too much. Definitely want to try out this recipe sometime! Nice job! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks! I agree with you. Measurements are much more important in baking than they are in cooking.
DeleteLooks great! You seem to already be very good at cooking. The final product shown also looked really good (like how they would serve it to you at the restaurants. For me, I think precision is important to a certain degree but you don't need to really stress over it if it's a little off. I think that estimating would be perfectly fine as long as you get relatively close. This seems very delicious and something I may want to try out sometime!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I've watched a lot of cooking shows so I've noticed how the chef plates the food and recreated that with my pasta.
DeleteWith baking, yes - baking is a science, but with cooking like this: no. There is a lot of wiggle room and experimenting allows you to figure out just how you like something prepared. This looks delicious by the way.
ReplyDeleteI agree that precision isn't the most important thing since you can always fine tune the measurements to your liking.
DeleteThis looks amazing! I happen to not think that being precise is the most important thing when it comes to cooking. Its important to follow the recipe but you should be able to try new things and add what you would like. Its an experiment and you should have fun mixing things up a bit to make new creations.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you! When I cook, I usually change the recipe a little so the ingredients are things that I like to eat.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThat looks delicious. I usually don't pay to much attention to precision because I like to change the recipe up to make it taste more like what I want it to.
DeleteHi Jasmine! To answer your question about precision, I think that in some cases, with cooking, precision is necessary because you do not want a completely horrible dish. Other times however, I think that precision is not important because it can be really enjoyable to play around with a dish and possibly create something new.
ReplyDeleteThis dish looks amazing! It’s making me very hungry. Keep up the good cooking, it looks like you are doing very well for being a new cook! (I know the new cook feeling). Do you have any tips for dicing vegetables? From your pictures it looks like they are diced nicely, and I cannot for the life of me dice vegetables well.
Thank you!
Sidney