Marina's Bloggariffic

Ask any Italian about pasta and you’d see how passionate they become. And there are so many different types of Pasta, its quite mind boggling. Like this Pasta Al Limone. Have you ever had lemon in your pasta before?

The first few times when I cooked pasta, though it tastes fine to me, Cart would then give it a try. The gentleman that he is, he never complains but gently shares with me tips on how to make it better. So I’m sharing some of the few crucial points with you :-)

Here are a few basics when making pasta.

1. Dont overcook the pasta.

Italians immediately delete points on a pasta if it is not al dente. Al dente basically means that it is cooked just right with a bite to it and pasta which is cooked too long will be soft and loses this bite.

To cook the pasta, you take a pot of water and add some salt. Wait for it to boil before adding in the pasta. While there are many different types of pasta, most pasta packs would have a recommended cooking time.

Like this Vermicelli cooks in 11 minutes

But if there isnt, you could take a piece and bite on it to see if it is cooked or not. And then serve it immediately with your pasta sauce. Never leave your cooked pasta by itself for too long. It’ll get lonely.

And do not throw your cooked pasta on the wall. It’ll be a hassle to clean up afterwards :-P

2. Pasta sauce basics

After observing how Cart cooks his pasta, while there are many variants in the sauce, there are basically two different bases. And these starts with the soffritto.

A) The first soffritto is in a pan with olive oil. You stir fry some chopped onion, carrot and celery.

Once it softens, add your bottled tomato sauce or fresh cut tomatoes and some salt for taste. Never use tomato ketchup because it has additives and it changes the taste. Tomato sauce should only contain tomato.

When its cooked, you scoop the sauce on to your pasta, add some parmiggiano cheese on top and mix well. Mmm yummeh!

With this basic step, you could add some ground meat while frying the soffritto and you’ll end up with Pasta al Ragu. And you could even use this sauce to make lasagna!

B) The second soffritto is to fry some garlic with a little bit more olive oil. When the garlic is brown and the oil has been infused, you add the cooked pasta in and chopped parsley on top. Mix well and you get Aglio Oglio!

Or if you like, while frying the soffritto, you could add some chilli and add tomato sauce for Arrabbiata!

Penne Arrabbiata. Death by tray.

Seafood works very well too for this soffritto. You could add salmon, clams, mixed seafood, prawns … oooh laa laa!

But just remember never add cheese for the second soffritto because the flavours clash together.

Buon Appetito :-)

I think that’s all for now in the basics of cooking pasta. If you have any other tips to share, or have any questions please feel free to comment below :-)

Cafe world is one of the games that I like to play on Facebook.

Its a cute but mindless game where you manage your own cafe by deciding on what to cook. Some of the food could take as fast as 3 minutes and some would be as long as 2 days.

But normally the longer it takes, the higher the profit and you could use the money to decorate and furnish your cafe. But the faster cooking ones lets you have more servings so that the customers will not lower the cafe rating and ensure that the traffic keeps on going.

One of the first few times that I played Cafe world, I’m quite amused mainly because of the time it takes to cook the item. Cheesecake takes 12 hours to cook? Halibut takes a day to cook? Really?

But regardless of of the unrealistic cooking times, I find myself really drawn to the food. It might be a cartoon, but it sure looked yummy! And who could turn away from a face like that?

I was intrigued enough to try to make it on my own and since I had most of the ingredients, I decided to make my own Smoked Salmon Latkes.

And its quite amusing to see friends on twitter quickly assume that I’m playing Cafe World!

Anyway, back to the recipe.

First you take two potatoes, peeled and sliced and then placed in the food processor and blend it roughly. Remove excess liquid and then put it in a bowl. Do the same thing to one onion. Drain the excess liquid and combine it with the potato.

With that, you add two whipped egg, some salt and pepper and three tablespoon of flour and combine together.

And then you take a small scoop and flatten it thinly in a pan of hot oil and let it fry till its cooked. If you like, you can leave the cooked pieces in the oven to keep warm while waiting for the rest to be fried.

Once the latkes are cooked, you could garnish it with anything you like like sourcream or even applesauce. Here I put some smoked salmon pieces. I wish that I had some creme fraiche and some caviar to add on top of the salmon but I don’t have them at hand.

Not sure if its the real thing but I like it anyway :-)

But I dont think that I’d be making it too frequently though, I don’t think its very healthy!

Sidenote : While we are on the topic of food, is this creepy to you?

Its not up to standard to what you’d have at the prata shop, but I’m quite proud at how my experimentation turned out

Roti Prata is one of the food that most Singaporeans love to eat. Since I was a kid, I would patronise hawker centers and order a nice plate of Roti Prata, accompanied by curry – it was an affordable, delicious and comforting food. The smell of freshly made prata is wonderful.

Nowadays in Singapore, there are many varieties of prata – Cheese prata, Honey and butter prata, Banana Prata, even rolled up paper thin ones. But I still prefer the original and the egg variety though. Prata has been popular for as long as I can remember.

However popular prata may be in Singapore, I’ve yet to find freshly made prata in Rome. My friend Lynn has been craving for prata, so I thought that I see if I could try to make one myself. I found a prata recipe online. It looked easy enough.

First put 3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon salt and 5 tablespoon of ghee into a bowl and mix.

Then add in warm milk and then knead all your frustrations away.

And then you have a nice dough! Divide it into 8 balls and put it under a damp cloth and let the dough rest.

Once the dough is rested and unaware, hit it with a rolling pin and make it flat. Or use your fingers like me.

And then finally put it in a hot pan with some ghee and fry it. And soon you will have home made prata! Yay!

Of course, my prata isnt perfect though. I need to tinker with the recipe a little bit more. Maybe knead it longer and add more ghee so that the texture becomes more sturdy – thats why prata makers could flip and throw it around!

Impressive! I’ll try to make it better the next time

I love love love pizza.

Its probably one of the things that I could eat (in moderation of course) on a regular basis without getting jelak sick of it. In Italy, there are many variations of pizza but for now, I’ll share with you two types of pizza!

This is a Pizza Tonda.

Rinaz posing in her trademark pose™

A Tonda is a round, personal sized pizza. This particular pizza that I had at La Camiceria is a Roman styled pizza. Roman styled has a thin dough which makes it crispy. Its definitely my favourite style of pizza

Check out the size of the fork with the size of the pizza

While this pizza at Dar Poeta is a little bit more of a Napolitana style where the outer crust is thick, but gets thinner to the middle. Cart says that Napolitana style is the ultimate style of pizza, but I still much prefer my crust thin and crispy

As you’ve noticed, the portions are pretty huge but this is the standard personal size! Many a times I’d just ask for a box to take away because its hard for me to finish it at one go.

What’s amazing is that I’ve seen tiny Italian kids who could eat the entire thing.

But if a round pizza could be too much, there is another type of pizza called the Pizza Al Taglio

Pizza Al Taglio is a range of pizza that you can choose. You ask the server the type of pizza you want and ask her to cut accordingly as to how much you want it to be and she’ll warm it up in the oven. You pay according to the weight of your pizza.

Eligio is my favourite place to have Pizza Al Taglio. Though the place is like a hole in the wall, pizza wise, its fantastic. It was love at first bite – the crispy dough, the toppings. It was just fantabuloso!

To me Italy and Pizza goes very well together. Its impossible for an Italian to make bad pizza right? Its just in their birthright!

Its like eating Tom Yum in Thailand, and eating Soto Ayam in Indonesia, Sushi in Japan … food just tastes better in their country of origin.

Or so I thought.

Cart and I were at Warner Village to watch Harry Potter. Feeling peckish after the movie, we decided to have a pizza at the Pizzeria near it.

And this was our pizza.

Its cold. COLD! The sauce was cold. The toppings were cold. As you could see from the picture, the cheese was probably too traumatised to melt. It was like eating baked bread with sauce and toppings right out of the fridge.

The name of the Pizzeria was “Thats Amore”. Amore means love in Italian. Suffice to say, I wasn’t in love.

This is sacrilege to all pizza! Even Hizza Put does it better!

Ayam masak merah is one of my favourite things to eat. Literally translated, it means Chicken cooked in red gravy. It is a robust, rich and filling food that can be eaten with practically anything – rice, bread, roti jala. This was a dish that we’d usually have every other week while back in Singapore.

Having missed my comfort food, I tried my best to find most of the ingredients and attempted to make it myself. One of the ingredients is this concentrated tomato paste.

Refrain yourself from trying to brush your teeth with this

However, there are some key ingredients that I cant get here in Rome. One of them being lemongrass and I dont even see it for sale in the Asian kiosk that I patronise.

Anyways, I still have a few ingredients at hand. First, I marinated the chicken with salt and tumeric powder

And while waiting for the chicken to be marinated, I sliced and fried some potatoes because mum always did it like that

I used the same oil to fry the chicken. And I loved how the fried chicken looks. The tumeric powder really adds to the colour! In another pan, I fried some ground ginger, garlic, onion and chilli. Then added some tomatoes and stirred till they were a little more cooked.

Finally I added in the tomato concentrate and waited for it to be a little “crispier” before adding the chicken and the potato and of course added a bit of salt for seasoning.

I waited for it to cool down before having it with rice. At the first bite, its not bad, but the taste is off.

What did I do wrong? I want my cheeken

Updated : I see where I went wrong. Redid it again and it tastes extremely close! Thanks for the tip everyone! :-)

Here is what I did to the gravy:

• Soak some dried chillies
• Blend it with an onion, some ginger, garlic and lemongrass (if you have it)
• Fry it till crispy, stir in the tomato concentrate, add the fried chicken and add a bit of sugar
• Most importantly add santan (coconut milk) to give it that lemak flavour!

Woo I am so happy that I ate two platefuls of it and promptly fell asleep on the sofa