Tuna Basil Pasta

I cooked for my family again last Sunday! And yes, it’s pasta again. Someday I will cook something different, but for now, I’m trying to exhaust all the possibilities for pasta.

So I call this pasta “Tuna Basil Pasta”. I didn’t follow any recipe this time and just went with what I felt like, and the result was pretty good!

Here’s the “recipe”! :D

Ingredients:

• a 400g pack of penne, boiled with a little oil to avoid sticking, and a little salt for taste. It’s best to cook al dente, but since I’m cooking for my grandma too, I overcooked it a bit so it would be easier for her to chew.
• a 560g pack of Del Monte Italian Style Spaghetti Sauce. I always use Italian style because Filipino style is too sweet for me.
• a large can of Century tuna in vegetable oil. I would have used the hot and spicy flavor, but my dad and my grandma doesn’t like food that’s too spicy. I mashed it a bit with a spoon so that it wouldn’t be too chunky.
• a large can of button mushrooms, sliced.
• a medium sized red onion, diced.
• lots and lots of garlic.
• lots and lots of dried basil! I don’t have any fresh herbs so I use the dried one, but it’s pretty good too.
• Salt and pepper. And vegetable oil (use any variant you have).

Steps:

• After heating your pan enough for any water in it to evaporate, add vegetable oil. I used about 5 tablespoons but it depends on how much you’ll be cooking. If you’re using a non-stick pan, you can use less oil.
• After the oil heats up, saute the garlic until golden, and then add the onions. Saute them together until the onions are slightly transparent.
• Add the tuna and saute with some salt and pepper. I also added the basil here just so that the tuna will taste of basil too. :D Add the mushrooms and saute some more.
• After the mushrooms have slightly cooked, add the spaghetti sauce. When the sauce is boiling, I also add some hot water to the sauce just so that my pasta won’t be too dry. Add a bit of sugar to taste, in case the sauce is too sour for you.
• Let the sauce simmer for a while. Stir constantly to prevent the sauce from sticking to the bottom/sides of the pan. At this point, you can also add some grated cheese or cream to the sauce. :) I didn’t because I wanted the sauce to be light.
• After a few minutes, add the pasta! Stir constantly to mix the sauce with the pasta, and also to prevent the paste from sticking to the bottom/sides of the pan.
• Once the pasta is completely mixed with the sauce, you can just cover the pan and let it cook for a few minutes in LOW HEAT. This will make sure that the sauce and paste can combine and the pasta itself wouldn’t be tasteless.
• Aaaand… it’s ready! Turn off the heat and serve! :)

I love making pasta. It’s so easy, and everything is instinctive. But this is only because I spent years watching my mom or our household help making it, so I’m confident about how things should be done. If you’re a first time cook, then make sure you ask someone more experienced to watch over you to prevent you from doing anything stupid! :D The most important part of cooking is knowing when to turn up and turn down the heat. This determines how tasty, how tender, how well-cooked, and how unburnt your food is, so I suggest you learn this before cooking anything by yourself. :) Now that I’m used to cooking, I don’t have to think about it anymore, but it takes time and practice and lots of experience.

Have fun! :)

Eggplant and tomato pasta!

IMG_4302, originally uploaded by charmaineyv.

Remember a few posts ago, I said I was going to attempt to make a pasta based on this recipe from PioneerWoman.com? Well, here it is! Except, of course, I made a few adjustments, such as exchanging diced tomatoes for tomato paste, and parmesan for Eden cheese (because that was all that was available at home). The end result is quite delicious, especially with the basil (I used dried) added in, although it was a bit on the dry side, which for some reason is always what happens to my pasta. Perhaps I have a fear of adding more water…

I also did the whole cover-eggplants-with-salt bit, because apparently, the salt would help dehydrate the eggplants, but I washed the salt off afterwards and I think it reversed the entire thing. Or maybe, now that I think of it, it did work because usually eggplants would “produce” water when cooked, and in this case, it didn’t. Hmm… must do more research.

Anyways! I’m sure that if I could do it, so can you. Because I’m a lousy cook. I just dream a lot.