Cooking!! つくりましょう！！

Tried out a few dishes lately. They're all first attempts so everything could be a bit better, but is was cool and kinda fun all the same. ^^

Trial #1: Pasta

Did this for last night's dinner.


Ingrediants: Linguini pasta, half an onion, half a carrot, a sausage, minced beef and some cheese for experimentation.


Boil pasta till it's soft. Some online guides recommended adding a bit of salt, which I did.


Drain in collander.


Cook everything except minced beef and cheese.


Add beef.


Add Prego and cheese.


Serve hot.

Verdict: Tasty. Prego sauce was awesome, though I could have added more. The sauce is supposed to completely cover the meat and condiments, but mine just coated it. Carrots were a bit hard, smaller chunks might have helped. Ditto linguini, should have left it to boil a bit longer. Nevertheless a satisfying meal.

Trial #2: Japanese curry

I've been wanting to try this ever since my brother brought back some kare last year and cooked it for us. Grabbed a pack off the shelves when I was at Jusco. This was dinner 5 minutes ago.


Ingrediants: Leftover carrots from yesterday's pasta, the other half of the onion, a slice of pork cut into cubes. Of course not forgetting the curry.


I thought it would be a paste, but turns out it's the watery gravy type, meaning I have to use it in one shot. No wonder it was cheaper and double the weight of the paste types. It left lumpy so I assumed there were bits of carrot and potato in it.


Cooking was simple, like frying anything else. Onions and carrots go first.


Add pork.


Add curry.


Stir it all around.


Serve with rice.

Also not in picture: some French beans I cooked on the side, because I felt like something green.

Verdict: Very easy to cook-- the hardest part was washing up, because a lot of the sauce got stuck onto my supposedly non-stick pan. Pork was also a bit tough, should have let it cook linger or cut it into smaller slices. (Just did Trichinosis in lecture today too.>.>) I'll definitely try the paste type curry next time, was hoping to make the curry last out for the next dinner and even thought of using half the pack only but in the end chucked everything in.


Tomorow's lunch- packed half the curry and what's left of the beans. Cooked too much rice again. >.> Yesterday was too little linguini, today was too much rice. I suck at estimation.

Yeap, so this is my first time cooking curry and pasta on my own. It's standard boiling and frying stuff, just need a lot of improvement on the estimation and presentation part >.> Everything tastes ok, but that's because the essential ingrediants were all pre-made and pre-packed. It's not like I prepared the curry or pasta paste from scratch or anything. The cooking steps I did are just what felt right to me, with a few tips gotten from cooking sites. I'm pretty sure there were some blunders there, so any tips and improvements are welcome. :)

I'm not the foodie type that can tell subtle differences from similiar types of food-- for most part of my life I've been an eat-to-live person with poorly developed gustatory cells. Only recently I've felt this inner joy of preparing and making food, even though I have scant general knowledge of food, barely an iota of confidence and an even poorer sense of presentation.

Whether this is a novelty or not remains to be seen, but as of now I enjoy planning what to cook and making dinner is the best part of my day. :)