Free Recipe Friday: Pasta in Herbed Garlic Butter

This week, I'll share one of my favorite recipes. It's so easy to make, but so easy to screw up if you don't know what you're doing. It's also cheap and incredibly satisfying. It's vegetarian, but is the perfect recipe for infinite experimentation, so break out your inner MacGyver and have fun.

You'll also notice that my recipes are VERY detailed. I do this because most every recipe I've ever followed leaves out steps that are integral to the process, small things I've had to learn through experimentation. Consider it my special gift to you.

Happy Eating!

PASTA IN HERBED GARLIC BUTTER
- serves 2
- prep time: 3 minutes
-- cooking time: 8-12 minutes

Equipment

• medium saute/frying pan
• Saucepan large enough to boil pasta
• medium whisk or large dinner fork
• large burner/eye on the stove
• garlic press or microplane grater

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 Tbsp olive oil (since you're cooking with it, you don't have to use Extra Virgin)
• 6 oz of dried pasta (I use Angel Hair because it cooks the most quickly)
  
• one clove of garlic (DO NOT substitute garlic powder, garlic salt or even minced garlic that comes in the jar pre-prepared; trust me on this one)
• 2 tsp salt for cooking pasta
• Herbs of Your Choice: 1 tsp dried or 1 Tbsp fresh, as a general guide
  
• salt & pepper, to taste

Basic Summary: Start the pasta, melt the butter, saute the garlic, drain the pasta, throw the pasta in the butter and garlic, laugh because it was so incredibly easy, eat and enjoy.

1. Fill your sauce pan with water and add 2 tsp salt. Cook pasta almost according to package directions, removing it from heat 2-3 minutes before the package says it's ready. Since your pasta will need time to cook, start it and complete the rest of the recipe while it's cooking. DO NOT put oil in the pasta pot. DO NOT rinse your pasta. I'll be happy to explain why once I get into your kitchen and show you.
2. While your pasta is cooking, heat your saute pan over medium heat on a large eye of the stove. Add 1 Tbsp butter and olive oil to pan.
3. Peel garlic. For garlic prep techniques, hire me and I'll show you how.
4. As the butter and olive oil heat in the pan, you'll see them change. There will be a point when the butter begins to separate into a yellowish liquid and whitish solids.
5. At this point, your pasta should be ready to drain. Simple pour it into a collander/strainer and leave it alone. Again, DO NOT rinse your pasta.
6. When you see the butter separating, grate your garlic into the pan as quickly as you can. Be sure to get every drop of garlic from the backside of the grater. You'll hear it sizzle a little and smell really strong.
7. Immediately begin stirring the garlic with a whisk or a dinner fork. Your main objective is to cook the garlic to a light golden color. It happens very quickly (1-2 mintues), so DO NOT leave the pan unattended for any reason. If it starts to brown at all, remove the pan from heat and turn temperature down. Return the pan, but watch to make sure it doesn't happen again.
8. Once the garlic starts turning golden, add the last 1 Tbsp of butter and let it melt for about one minute. If you are using dried herbs, add them now.
9. Reduce heat to low and add your pasta to the saute pan and fold into the garlic butter. The pasta will be a little sticky, but the garlic butter will quickly fix that. If you are using fresh herbs, add them now.
10. Turn off the heat and let the pasta sit covered for 3-5 minutes. Salt and pepper, to taste.

Serve and enjoy!

Wednesday What's On the Menu

Every Wednesday, I'll bring you recipes that I've been experimenting with over the past 7 days. I choose Wednesday, not because I enjoy being difficult (which I do), but because I abide by rule #1 of the How To Cook Knoxville Mobile Cooking Academy:

Rule #1: Choose one day a week and set aside 1-3 hours for planning and organizing.

The amount of time you'll need depends upon what meals you want to cook, but planning and organizing will make every meal easier and less expensive. I'm a busy girl starting her own business, so any time and money I can save is golden. From menu-planning for the week to making a shopping list to separating portions, if you can create the good habit of being prepared then each meal you make should take no more than 30 minutes of actual time during the week.

And, if you think that advice comes from a Type-A super-anal organized gal, then think again. Call my mother and father and ask them if organization has ever been one of my strong points. For me, though, it's infinitely worth it, because I love everything about food -- the smell, the taste, what it means to eat, what it means to feed someone, what it means to be fed -- it's almost a religious experience.

But, back to Wednesday. I choose Wednesday because on my schedule I've already experimented with meals for 7 days and it's time to start all over again.

Enjoy the inspirations, and if you want to learn how to cook them, let me know you know how to find me.

Ground Pork Black Bean Chipotle Chili with homemade Chili-lime Tortilla Chips
Lemon Rosemary Shrimp Alfredo with Parmesan Potatoes
White Balsamic Vinegar & Honey Chicken with Herbed Rice
Sauteed Bosc Pears and Bananas over Honeyed Cous Cous with Scrambled Eggs and Ciabatta Steak Minis

Find your inner MacGyver and experiment with what you've got in your pantry. Then, plan your meals for next week and start all over again.

Happy Eating!

Food Tip #1: Always have the following on hand:

For those of you who have not seen my business cards, I have this on the back:
---------
Food Tip #1: Always have the following on hand:

one sharp knife
one plastic freezer bag
one slice of bread
one tablespoon of ketchup
2 cubes of ice
a sharp, pointy stick
---------

Here's why:

1. One Sharp Knife: Having at least one sharp non-serrated knife in your kitchen toolkit will allow you do almost everything you need to do in your home kitchen. From paring an apple to cutting a tomato... from slicing bread to slicing cheese... from cutting open a chicken to cutting open a bag of salad. Some people will tell you not to cut open the bag of salad with it, but as long as you are keeping it dry (NEVER let your knife soak in water for any reason) and sharpening it (you can pick up a great knife sharpener for a couple of bucks), feel free to cut open any MINOR packaging with it.

2. One Plastic Freezer Bag: A plastic freezer bag has so many uses in the kitchen -- marinade in it, portion out meals for the week and have fresh meals READY when you come home from work, store your measuring cups and spoons together in the cabinet so you never have to hunt them down, freeze meals for leftovers, keep the odds and ends from cooking in it and use contents to make a great broth at the end of the week... and the list goes on and on.

3. One Slice of Bread: Ever made a sauce that was way too salty? Remove your pan from heat and push everything over to one side and let the sauce drain to the other side. Take a piece of regular bread and sop up as much as the sauce as you can/want. Return the pan to heat and add a little water and/or chicken broth to rehydrate and dilute what you have left. Voila! This works in a pinch if the dish hasn't cooked for too long.

4. One tablespoon of ketchup: This is one of those secret ingredients that I use all the time. If a broth-based soup is a little lacking, add a little ketchup and it will immediately taste better. Same with salsa, same with pasta sauce. This is for American eaters only, though... one reason it works is that American palates are so used to the combination of flavors that it makes the food more "friendly" to our tongues.

5. 2 Cubes of Ice: From "shocking" vegetables to soothing the burn on your hand, ice is just plain "hand"-y. Yes, I went there...

6. One Sharp, Pointy Stick: This is one of my new discoveries. At the beginning of the summer, I got a gas grill. I prefer gas because I have the ultimate control of temperature. Of course, at the beginning of the summer, I tried shish-kabobs. I used about 10 of the wooden sticks that came in the pack of 50 and the rest have sat in my drawer for months. So, I started experimenting with them. They are great for stirring tea, flipping chicken breasts in a saute pan, securing a pork roast and handling small and medium-sized pieces of raw meat. The key here is that they are cheap and DISPOSABLE and since they are wood, they are biodegradable and can be composted. I primarily use mine to put raw meat on the grill because I touch raw meat as little as I have to in the kitchen to cut down on contamination.

Remember, if you're in the Knoxville area and want more... just email me and we can set up a time to meet.

Happy eating!

Welcome to How To Cook Knoxville

Welcome to the How To Cook Knoxville, the blog of a woman crazy enough to think she can convince people that:

1. Cooking is worth it because it's not hard and can be quite fun.
2. Cooking is worth it because it can save you money.
3. Cooking is worth it because it can bring you closer to your family.

Cooking can also be an art form, a religious experience, a healing ritual, a confidence builder and quite honestly, a very enjoyable endeavor.

If you are in the Knoxville area, How To Cook Knoxville (HTCK) can also be your one-stop-shop for 100% personalized, 100% cost-effective and 100% YUMMY cooking lessons.

100% personalized : Using your Personal Food & Technique Inventory, I will create a custom lesson to suit your needs and tastes. I can show you how to "fake" your favorite restaurant fare. I can try my hand at your favorite family recipe. After an initial consultation, I will come to YOUR home, show you how to use YOUR equipment and show you how to cook the RECIPE(S) OF YOUR CHOICE.

100% cost-effective: You buy the ingredients and pay me for my time. That's it. My rates are $40.00 per hour for private instruction and $60.00 per hour for group instruction (up to 5 people). Non-profit organizations pay only $25.00 per hour, but must choose from recipes I have selected. Most lessons can be completed in 1.5 - 3 hours.

100% YUMMY: I will bring a sample of my cooking to our initial consultation and you can taste for yourself.


Thank you for reading!