Carefree Cooking

House Special Linguini

Everyone has their favourite pasta recipe. Some have been passed on for several generations, others have just been recently concocted. I want to share a recipe that I just put together based on what I had at home. It was a surprise to me how tasty it turned out so I'm especially proud of this one.

My wife doesn't understand why I keep buying ground beef. In her opinion, there is no dish that involves ground beef that taste good, including this one. I just tend not to listen to her and still use beef to make spaghetti. In an attempt to reach a compromise, I also use ground pork (which is what she is used to cooking with).

To start the sauce, I cooked a pack of ground pork and ground beef until both are fully cooked. It's good to break the chunks unless you want to make it look like a meatball sauce :) Pour a can of tomato sauce and a small can of tomato paste. I like to have the strong dark red color that the tomato brings. Add some water so that it gets a little watery (same amount as the tomato sauce). If you don't add water, the sauce becomes too thick and mixing with the pasta becomes a challenge. I then added all the herbs and spices that I think will go well with the sauce: basil, thyme, oregano, italian seasoning (came with the spice rack), chili flakes, salt, pepper, and sugar. I like to put sugar on the sauce so that it doesn't taste too sour. A bit of sweetness in the sauce is actually quite delicious (at least in my opinion). Add a spoon of constarch dissolved in water to thicken the sauce a little bit.

To cook the pasta, just follow the cooking instructions written on the package. Make sure you add salt to the water. In the previous times I cooked pasta, I didn't put enough salt in the water so it actually didn't do anything. This time, I made sure I put lots of salt. The salty water actually made a big difference in the pasta as it adds a bit of flavour to every bite you take.

Everyone has their own special way of making pasta. I've shared mine, now it's your turn.

posted by carefreecooking @ 12:01 AM