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!