Day 3: Pasta and the Importance of Optimization

Coming from my last Pasta adventure, I decided to try again and make some tweaks while making Penne in Tuna Pesto. Of course, with these tweaks, I learned new things that could help me improve.

Boil the water before putting in the pasta.
The first time I cooked pasta in the rice cooker, I had put the pasta in with the cold water and waited for it to cook. This time, I tried to use the rice cooker to boil water. It turned out to be very tricky because unlike boiling water in a pot where you get the really big bubbles rising to the top, the rice cooker only had tiny bubbles despite being plugged in for a while. It was only when I started seeing the water swirling quickly to the top (but still no big bubbles) that I decided to put the pasta in. Once I did that, those big bubbles showed up. I suppose this means that the rice cooker can somehow detect that it's not really cooking anything yet. Sorcery, I tell you.

Time the cooking.
My mom advised me to cook the pasta for 8 to 10 minutes, so I decided to put on my timer. At 8 minutes, the pasta was still a bit tough, so I kept adding 2 more minutes until I stopped cooking at 12 minutes.

Since the timer was on, I had more peace of mind that I could do something else. I opened the can of tuna and combined it with the pesto sauce in a pan. After mixing it all together and after the alarm had sounded, I took the pasta out of the rice cooker and ran it under cold water to stop the cooking process (again, a handy tip from my mom). I strained the pasta then placed it in the pan to mix it in the tuna and pesto.

Timing the cooking helped ease my paranoia so I wasn't checking on things every minute. It also somehow increased my confidence that I was doing things right.

Serve immediately.
One mistake I made last time was I let the pasta sit too long. So while it was still good, it was also cold. This time, M couldn't wait to eat so right after I transferred the pasta out of the pan and into a bowl, we gobbled everything up right away! It tasted great while it was still hot, as pasta always does. Of course, I had to take a photo of my achievement (pictures or it didn't happen!):

Now I'm thinking of what else I can do with the pasta using just a few ingredients and minimal effort (haha)! On to the next kitchen adventure!

Day 2: Pasta and the Versatility of the Rice Cooker

It's no secret: I love carbonara. Every time I visit a restaurant and am not in the mood to be adventurous and try something new, I always fall back on carbonara. Mostly it's because I try my best not to have tomato-based pasta for fear of my acidity acting up. But I've come to love it in all of its many forms (except the ones that use too much milk).

After a few days of subsisting on sandwiches and cereal since I didn't really have enough time to cook something before heading off to work, I found myself with a full day of being at home and juggling work with all the other adult stuff: paying the bills, loading the laundry, and finally, cooking!

For tonight's dinner, I decided to test two things: the first is whether or not it really is possible to cook pasta in the rice cooker. A quick Google search shows that it's possible, but it was only when I spotted a recipe in a YUMMY Cookbook that said "Rice Cooker Pasta Cubano" that I became a believer.

I decided to follow this blog entry since it was the only one I found that had some specifics: how much pasta to put, how much water to add, and it spoke to me in layman's terms! So I crossed my fingers and prayed to the Pasta gods that I was putting enough water and pasta in the rice cooker. And hallelujah, it worked!

Just like cooking rice, I had to watch it for the times that the water would bubble over as it boiled. I also took the blog's advice and opened it a bit to stir occasionally. But unlike cooking rice, the cook switch didn't automatically go off. I knew something was wrong when I smelled something, so I rushed to the rice cooker and found this:

The pasta was starting to stick to the rice cooker's pot and burn! I quickly unplugged the rice cooker, got some water, and mixed it into the pasta. I breathed a sigh of relief as the pasta started to unstick form the pot and I could stir it again. Whew! I left the burnt pasta in, the same way that war veterans are proud of their scars. (Whut?!)

The next thing I decided to test was Del Monte's Heat and Serve Carbonara Sauce. I know nothing beats fresh ingredients and making the white sauce from scratch, but even I know not to bite off more than I can chew. So when I saw this at the grocery, I decided to check it out and see if the recipe on the packet really was as easy as it sounded.

Before anything else, I had to make sure the pan was hot. My mom's tip was to hold my hand over the pan to feel the heat, and maybe even touch it just to check. But I found a better tip online: put some water droplets into the pan then watch to see if it'll boil. I tried it now, and there are the droplets beginning to bubble!

I then added the butter, water, and the pasta sauce into the pan and started stirring. It just said to stir for eight minutes, but didn't really say if I should be watching for anything. Should the consistency change? Should I be smelling anything? Since nothing was really happening despite my stirring, I decided to add the pasta in bit by bit. I mixed it in and went by my gut feel on how the ratio of pasta to sauce should be.

Finally, my favorite part: the cheese! I disregarded the pasta sauce's instructions to put one tablespoon of grated cheese because the cheese lover in me was thinking, "One tablespoon?! WTF??" So I decided to just grate the cheese right into the pot and mix it all in.

I took a cue from Masterchef and decided to taste one noodle. It's edible! I wouldn't say it's fantastic because I do know how carbonara tastes like when the sauce is made from scratch, and you can tell this sauce was pre-made. But for someone who just doesn't have the time (or skill, like myself) to make it from scratch, it's a good alternative.

Of course, it's not carbonara without bacon. The plate on the left is mine, while the one on the right is for M. I haven't quite figured out how to cook soggy bacon; I'm afraid that it'll still be raw!

No plating yet because M isn't home yet, so I've left the pasta in the pot to keep it warm. We'll find out the verdict soon enough!


UPDATE: Success! M and I were both just going for edible (yes, we've both managed our expectations according to my skill level), so we were both pleasantly surprised that it tasted decent. I didn't do so bad at plating either:

There's still a bit of pasta left in the rice cooker, plus uncooked pasta in the container. I wonder what I'll try next!

Day 1: Bacon and the Importance of Kitchen Tools

My husband M and I have finally moved to our new place. Hooray!

Granted, we're still transitioning by shuttling to and from our parents' homes to pick up our personal belongings and our wedding gifts, most of which are things for the kitchen. But today was THE day for me.

Today was the first day that I would have to make breakfast.

To prepare for this momentous occasion, M and I went to the grocery last night to stock up on the easiest things to cook: breakfast food. Bacon, hotdogs, tocino, corned beef, Spam, and tuna. All things that, if all else failed, I knew I could pop into the microwave or just eat with bread (haha).

And so this morning, while M was still in the shower, I decided to start with my all-time favorite, BACON. I already knew that I could just pop this into the microwave and it would come out crispy (just the way I like it!), but felt that I would be cheating myself if I didn't at least try to cook it in a pan first.

So I referred to Huffington Post's article "How To Cook Bacon: Three Ways to Achieve Perfection" to test if I would, indeed, have the perfect bacon. Out of the three ways presented, I chose The Traditionalist. In my attempt to cook bacon, I learned a few things:

1. You have to know your stove.
The first step in the article said to start with a cold frying pan. So I did just that-- put the cold bacon on a cold pan. Then I waited forever. And then I got impatient, so I decided to crank our electric stove to the highest setting, just to speed things up. Sure enough, in a few minutes, the oil started to sizzle. Then I panicked and decided to turn it back low. The power light was on, then off, then turned on again, and I got so paranoid that I didn't know what setting I was on anymore. Meanwhile, the bacon continued to sizzle in the pan. Hallelujah, despite my fiddling around, it was actually cooking!

I grew up with a gas stove in the house, so I would see how high or how low the flames would go. It's a different story with an electric hot plate, so it seems that it really will take a few hits and misses to figure out just how hot is hot.

M later told me that after his experience with the stove, it seems that it automatically turns off when there's enough heat, then turns back on when the heat is not enough. How it has some self-regulating feature, I have no idea. There must be sorcery involved in this stove.


2. You need the right tools.
When M stepped out of the shower and smelled the bacon cooking, he happily said, "Wow, it smells good in here!" He looked over at the pan and said, "You should flip that over now. Where are your tongs?" I looked at him blankly and realized, we forgot the set of kitchen tools in my parents' house! No spatula, no tongs, no fork-looking pasta scooper thingy (I will eventually find out what this is really called, don't worry), nothing! Just our silverware. So regretfully, he said, "You should step aside. I'm gonna need to use a spoon and fork on this."

Just like that, I got relegated to dishwasher duties. Later, he explained to me that not only was it dangerous to use a metal spoon and fork in cooking (even I know how metal conducts heat!), these could also damage the pan. And if there's one thing I learned from our wedding registry, pans can be hella expensive! So later in the day, I made it a point to pop in quickly at home (and by that I mean brave one hour traffic at noontime) to get all the other kitchen stuff we would need.

3. What the Internet says is true-- don't crowd the pan. 
I am happy to report that the Internet has not failed me here. The bacon needs to breathe. I only put three pieces of bacon in the pan, making sure they weren't sticking to each other, and I liked seeing how each piece sizzled in the oil. They were all cooking evenly! I got something right! And I could just imagine that piling on the bacon in one pan would lead to uneven temperatures throughout. So this totally makes sense, even to a newbie like me!


4. The bacon is still cooking even when it's already on the plate.
When my bacon was still in the pan, I felt it was still looking a little pale. But M said, "You should take that out already. It'll come out crunchy. I'll make the next batch because I like mine a bit soggy." So I grudgingly took out my pale bacon and watched as M cooked his own batch. The next time I looked at my plate, the bacon was crunchy, just like he promised! Now I know that I shouldn't wait for it to seem crunchy in the pan because if I do, I'll end up with burnt bacon on my plate!


Day 1 was an eye-opener for both M and I. On my end, I've realized that learning how to cook really requires you to study your equipment first, and the right way to use them. And for M, he learned the true extent of my cluelessness in the kitchen. So much so that he's volunteered to cook for the first month, but of course I said no. How will I learn if I just watch him do everything?! We've decided to compromise: I'll let him teach me how to use the stove, and he'll leave me alone to learn how to make pasta dishes.

With that, I already have Day 2's lesson in mind! Stay tuned!

A prelude to my new adventure!

Welcome to my new blog!

I am a kitchen newbie. Through and through.

And that's a problem when you're also a newlywed. My husband knows how to cook, but I would like to be able to cook for him, for us. So I have resolved to learn, and as motivation, I'll be documenting what I'll be cooking in this blog. So while I've never been really successful in maintaining a blog, doing so may help me be more motivated in learning how to cook.

Some may ask why I don't just enroll in cooking school. Well, that's because I like learning on my own. So this blog will also document an experiment of sorts: if it's really possible to learn how to cook by relying on cookbooks, recipes found online, and maybe YouTube tutorials.

Stay tuned for what that first recipe might be!