My Cooking Adventures - Spaghetti

A couple of days back, I was in full josh to cook... So thought of cooking up some spaghetti. I had purchased a packet of spaghetti long time ago but had never got around to cooking it. So armed with it and some vegetables, I proceeded to make an extremely simple version of "Pasta Arabiatta"... And it turned out so well... Man, I managed to impress myself big time !! U must know that when I cook, I am extremely critical of myself. Even if the salt is a little more, I am like, Shit!! I screwed it up!! So, was maha khush when the dish turned out really well.

*Floating on cloud nine thinking about it*

Oookay, coming back to the post, and the recipe.... I must say that this post is very much inspired by foodie blogs like Saffron Hut and Food for Thought... I am so amazed by their passion for blogging about their cooking and ofcourse by the awesome photography...

Here is the recipe.....

Ingredients
(serves 2)

For the sauce :

1. Tomatoes - 5 medium sized ones
2. Onion - 1 huge
3. Mustard seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
4. Jeera seeds - 1/2 teaspoon
5. Extra virgin Olive oil - 2 tablespoons
6. Ginger - I small clove
7. Freshly ground pepper - to taste
8. Oregano - to taste
9. Salt - to taste
10. Sugar - 1/2 teaspoon

For the Pasta :

1. Dry Spaghetti - about 75 strips
2. Extra virgin Olive oil - 1/2 teaspoons
3. Salt - 1 Teaspoon

Method

1. Thoroughly wash the tomatoes and chop them up. No need to chop finely.
2. Chop up onions. Again, no need to chop finely.
3. Chop a small piece of ginger into small pieces. You may use ginger paste instead.
4. Put them all in a blender and blend till a smooth flowing liquidy paste is obtained. Make sure that the tomates and onions are finely blended. Trust me, you will not like the final product, if they are not finely blended (source: previous cooking disaster(s) by Your truly)
5. In a open cooking pan, heat the olive oil. Once heated, added the mustard seeds followed by the jeera seeds.
6. Pour the tomato-onion-ginger liquidy paste made in step 4. Be careful when you do so... Due to the water content in this paste and the hot oil in the pan, there will be lots of hissing, sizzling and splatterting of the paste. And it hurts big time when this hot paste falls on your skin.
7. Continuously keep stirring this mixture. This prevents the paste from splattering. Add salt as per your taste. Continue cooking on a medium flame for about 10-15 mins. It will take more time if the quantity is more (Duh??).
8. In another vessel, take about 2 litres of water. Add a teaspoon of olive oil followed by 1 teaspoon of salt. Bring this to boil.
9. Once the water has boiled, add the required amount of spaghetti. My advice: Dont break the spaghetti.. My belief is that the longer the better!! It will take about 10 mins for the spaghetti to be cooked al-dente. This is very very important.
10. Once the spaghetti is cooked to perfection, drain out the hot water using a strainer. Immediately pour cold water on this. Or else, even better, hlod the spaghetti laden strainer under running cold water. Keep it aside.
11. By this time, even the sauce would have been cooked. Add the freshly ground pepper, very little sugar and oregano to the sauce and cook for a minute or so.. You may also add some tomate sauce/ketchup if you like..
12. Once done, remove from fire and leave it for a minute.
13. In a plate, spread the spaghetti. Pour the sauce prepared in Step 12 over this and serve immediately.

I just reviewed what I have written and sounds like the procedure to carry out a science experiment... Haa Haa.. But I am lazy to go and redo the whole thing.. So Please adjust!!