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| The Recipes of Passion |
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Surprising your partner with a creative yet delicious meal can satisfy
more than the appetite. Today we're featuring the first two courses. First is a delicious,
tasty appetizer that is sure to impress you and your Valentine. And for the second course, we have two soups to choose from: an exotic chilled strawberry soup or a rich broccoli cheese soup.
Try them, they will work wonders!
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Back-to-basics pasta
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| Directions: |
| Pasta may appear to be the easiest thing in the world to cook, the answer to a 'what-on-earth-can-we-eat-tonight' panic. But if you don't follow a few basic rules, it won't live up to your expectations. Here are some suggestions: |
| -Use plenty of water (about 1 liter per 100g) to boil the pasta. |
| -Once the water has come to the boil and not before, add salt. In traditional Italian cooking 1 ½ tbsp is added for every 450g of pasta. You may want to use less, especially if you don't own a very big pan and have to use less than the recommended amount of water. |
| -You do not need to add oil to the water. Just give the pasta a brisk stir to separate it once it has softened. |
| -Add the pasta all at once when the water has come to a rolling boil. If you add it little by little, it won't cook evenly. Do not break dried pasta in two to make it fit into the pot. Prod it down into the water with a wooden spoon as it softens. Cover the pot to speed up the return to the boil, removing the lid once it does, and cook until al dente - 'to the tooth'; meaning it still retains some chewiness. Fresh pasta should be ready by the time it returns to the boil. |
| -Cooking times given on the box are generally too long. Draw a strand out with a fork 2 minutes before the printed recommendation and test it between your teeth to see if it is firm to the bite. It will continue to cook a little when you have drained it and again when you add it to a serving dish or sauce in the pan, so it's better to have it a little underdone. By the time you serve it, it will be perfect. |
| -Before you drain the pasta, reserve a mug of its cooking water. Sometimes a sauce will need a little loosening. |
| -Drain immediately to stop the cooking process, giving the colander a good sideways nudge or two. Pour it at once into the serving bowl or into the sauce, according to the recipe. Shapes and sauces |
| No Italian will even think about what sauce to make until they have checked on what pasta the store cupboard holds. Some shapes go better with certain sauces, though spaghetti is the most versatile standby. Quills, butterflies, twists and shells trap and hold thick with creamy sauces. Rigatoni tubes, fusilli, and rotelle are good at catching small pieces of meat or crumbs of mince. And they respond well to dense, spicy cream and meat sauces, like mild, sweet Italian sausage crumbled and fried with shallots and cream, or your traditional Bolognese. Spaghetti, tagliatelle, and pappardelle - the broadest of the long noodles - are best for thick sauces. Pappardelle goes well with chicken-liver sauce, hare sauce or basic tomato sauce. Thin spaghettini, linguine or bucatini are most suitable for any oil-based sauce with shellfish, crab or molluscs, like Linguine with Mussels and White Wine, or the often mis-named Spaghetti alle Vongole which always uses the thinner Spaghettini. Penne quills, farfalle butterfly shapes and conchiglie shells are best for holding thick and creamy sauces - think Penne alla Carbonara, a sauce of pancetta or bacon, grated Parmesan, and beaten eggs that cook in the heat of the pasta in which they're tossed. Farfalle and conchiglie go well with robust sauces from the north of Italy, popular during autumn and winter months - try a mixture of chopped Savoy cabbage, pancetta, thyme and mozzarella for farfalle, or dried porcini mushrooms with tomatoes for conchiglie. Fettuccine are most flattering to sauces using cream and cheese, or cream and mushrooms, as their finer texture underlines their voluptuousness. Fettuccine al'Alfredo is a classic best made with fresh pasta. |
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