Penne alla vodka

My husband and I have been pretty busy these last couple weeks. Like tonight, he has a rehearsal at night and have to leave by 5.30pm. But I didn't know until 4pm. You can only eat out so many days... so what do we do? We make pasta! It's always simple, yummy and quick.

Serves 2

Ingredients:
8 oz penne (or mezze penne)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1.5 oz thin slices of prosciutto, chopped
10 oz tomato sauce (i use pre-made ones)
1 1/2 fresh tomatoes, diced (or can tomato would be okay too)
50 ml vodka
2 tablespoon heavy cream
1 teaspoon hot pepper flakes (more or less, depending on how spicy you want it to be)
handful parsley, chopped
handful parmesan cheese, finely grated
salt, pepper and sugar to taste


In a large pot, bring heavily salted water to broil.
In a preheated pan over medium heat, put olive oil and prosciutto, cook for 3 minuets or so until crisp. Remove from the pan and use paper towel to remove excess oil from prosciutto. Clean pan and sauté onion until soften and slightly caramelized. Add garlic, tomato, and cook for another minute or two. Mix in tomato sauce, hot pepper flakes, sugar, salt and pepper to taste, make sure it's well combined. Add vodka to the sauce and turn the heat up a little to cook off the alcohol. Once it's broilling, bring it down to simmer for about 6-8 minuets. Stirring ocassionally.
Meanwhile, put penne into salted water and cook according to package directions. Drain pasta, leaving a bit of pasta water to thin out sauce just in case.
Stir in heavy cream to the tomato sauce, turn off heat. (I actually didn't have heavy cream tonight, so I used whipping cream instead, worked pretty well I must say)
Fold penne into the sauce. Add chopped parsley and parmesan to serve :)

Winter Sky

Egg tart

Homemade Egg tart :) It is not easy to find a Chinese bakery in Connecticut, so I made my own. It's actually not difficult at all. Take me less than an hour to make from beginning to finish. 

Makes 8 to 12 (depending on the size, I use 3 inch diameter molds)

Ingredients:

6 tbs  unsalted butter (soften)

3 tbs  powdered sugar

3 large eggs (room temperature) 

6 oz   all-purpose flour

6 tbs  superfine sugar 

6 oz   hot water

2 tbs  evaporated milk

dashes of vanilla extract 

Pre-heat the oven to 375F

To make the crust:

In a large bowl, cream butter until slightly pale. Add powdered sugar, mix well until smooth.  

Crack and lightly whisk the eggs in a separate bowl. Add 2 tablespoon of the eggs to the butter/sugar and mix well. Add a splash of vanilla. Sift flour into mixture in two parts. Make into dough. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out the dough and press it into the cupcake mold.

To make egg custard:

Put superfine sugar into hot water, stir and make sure it's all dissolved. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining eggs with evaporated milk. Add in the sugar water. Pour the mixture through a strainer, make sure it is smooth and there are no foam and bubbles.

Pour mixture into the crusts.  Bake for about 20-25 minutes until tester comes out clean. 

For those of you who read Chinese, I actually modified the recipe from this website: http://www.christinesrecipes.com/2009/03/cantonese-egg-tarts.html

So check it out :) 

My take on kimchi jjigae (kimchi soup)

Kimchi craving!!!

I was in Santa Clara a month ago and came across a Korean food court where I had this amazing kimchi soup. But of course there isn't any good korean restaurant within 50 miles of where I live. So I went online (thank you internet), found a couple recipes and try to take things from each and make it my own :) All the measurements of the ingredients aren't very exact since I usually measure by eyes, so apology for that and hopefully I will get better as this goes along. 

Ingredients: 

1/2 lb pork belly (I used ground pork since I have some leftovers)

2/3 package of tofu, cut into bite-size
1 cups kimchi, roughly chopped

1/2 onion, cut into slices

2 cloves of garlic, minced
9 to 10 mushrooms (I used shiitake, but regular is good too)
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 cup beansprout (optional)

Seasonings for the soup:

1 tbsp gochujang (hot pepper paste), depends on how spicy you want it to be
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbs sugar
1/2 tbsp gochugaru (red chili pepper powder, optional)

Prepare the ingredients. I marinated the pork slight by using some soy sauce and sugar. I also added some imitation crab meat (since I bought loads when it was on sale)

Heat up some sesame oil and throw in the garlic. Add in the pork and wait for it to release some fat.

Add in the onion and the mushroom, cook a little bit and get some color on them. Then add the hot pepper paste and mix well. 

Throw in the kimchi and some of it juice. Cover everything with just enough water, then add the tofu and seasoning (soy sauce and sugar), make sure you taste it at this point so you can adjust accordingly. Let it cook for at least half and hour so the ingredients can absorb all the tasty flavor.

Put the beansprout at the bottom of the serving pot and pour soup over it. Sprinkle some green onion and chili powder. Voilà!!! And it was not too shabby for the first try on making this :) Serve hot with some rice? Makes me happy. 

First entry

I have not wrote a blog for a while so I am excited and hopefully this is going to last longer than the last one :)