Pasta is pasta; cheese is cheese

Back to my roots. That's right, back to Rachael Ray and her obsession with doing everything in under 30 minutes. Doing everything... under 30 minutes... poor Mr. Ray.

Anyway, there is an old Italian saying: La pasta è pasta; formaggio è il formaggio.

It's not an old saying, me and Google Translate made it up together. It-tuh means-uh, Pasta is pasta; cheese is cheese. Permit me to explain?

With ingredients like broccoli, cheese, and pasta, Rachael Ray encourages you to make "Mama's Broccoli with Pasta" or Romanesco Broccoli as it's Italianized on her website.

But her recipe calls for rigatoni, ricotta cheese, and chicken breast! And I only have spaghetti, grated parmesan, and chicken sausage!

spaghetti != rigatoni
parmesan != ricotta
sausage != breast (teehee)

Ma, signora, non preoccupatevi! La pasta è la pasta e il formaggio è il formaggio.

Ah, certo, certo, Google Translate. Sei sempre così intelligente.

Let's keep cooking, and pretend like everything is molto buona, ok?


Broccoli radioattivi! Radioactive broccoli!




No, it was still good. Whew!


The cheese stands alone.


Cook the pasta. Are you a pasta water-salter or non-salter? Salt it like the sea.


Garlic IN.


The secret is to give it enough thyme and add a couple pinches of nutmeg at the end! Oh, and also, simmer the chopped broccoli in a pan with a cup of water and a cover, for 5 minutes! After you drain the broccoli, it'll be soft and not raw/crunchy. And, remember to reserve a cup of pasta water before you drain the pasta, for the cheese sauce. Ultimately, you're just going to combine everything I've talked about.


It's so pretty and yummy! So the message is, any kind of pasta is pasta, any type of Italian cheese is pretty much interchangeable.

Ciao, bella! Umile mangia.




12/14/2010: Happy European travels, Ethan! from, this American kitchen.

The Not-pie

Hello World!

Last weekend, I had friends over at my Cozy Kitchen, and we made Apple & Peach Not-Pie. At first, we wanted to bake a cake (either from a box or from scratch). We were inspired by this contradictory confection:



I mean, what exactly is this? Clearly, it's a gorgeous, probably delicious Disney princess cake of Belle, but it says Jasmine or Yasmine underneath? Whaaa? Who did this??

This brought to my mind some of the more troubling Disney songs from over the years...

Can You Feel the Confusion in the Air Tonight?

It's a Whole New World of Puzzlements

Be My Guest, Take a Guess

There's Something There... But Not Quite

When You Wish Upon A Star for Some Answers

Poor Misguided Souls

God Help the Baker's Assistant

Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Hunnhh?

From eats from last night

Enough Disney song mockery. Here, I'm pre-cooking the green apple and peaches filling. Just add butter!

From eats from last night

Look... the not-pie glows while it cooks in the oven.

From eats from last night

Oh, wow! So pretty and nice! It didn't taste exactly like pie though. There was no cinnamon in it and the peaches were still crunchy, so it served for a nice peach and apple cobbler. Not-pie. Don't you like the intricate lattice-work top crust? We ate it all, with ice cream and whipped cream. Yummyyy humble eats!

This is Cape Cod.

This is Shrimp Rolls. Humble ocean eats!

Cooking Solo

Sometimes, you don't have the pleasure of cooking with someone else. All by your lonesomes, you must motivate yourself to go to the kitchen and wash, chop, heat, stir, drain, mix, and megawash again, all by yourself. Wouldn't it be easier to just microwave any old thing? NO. You could make Pasta Carbonara.

I've discussed pasta carbonara previously on this bleg, so it's obviously a go-to favorite. This time, I didn't have white wine so I used red instead. In a bed made of lead with street cred.

For lunch today, I visited Jose's Mexican food truck behind the medical building. Chicken Tostadas, please.


Some things turn out all right when you do them by yourself. My new hairdo for instance. I didn't know I had brown streaks in my hair!

Sticky Lemon Chicken: Cheap and Colorful!

Last night, I made Sticky Lemon Chicken, a recipe by the infamous celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. He's what you might call the "bad boy" of cooking and you may have seen the show Hell's Kitchen where he calls nervous, aspiring chefs nincompoops or worse for messing up the risotto or beef wellington. He is also the father of 3 kids and I'm sure he's very gentle and nice to them. It's an exciting show but anyway, Sticky Lemon Chicken!


Sticky lemon chicken requires:

one lemon, thinly sliced.

In his cookbook Fast Food, Gordon Ramsay says "preferably by mandolin." But what is a mandolin?


Don't be so hasty to grab your musical lute-looking thing. It's this kind of mandolin.

Not as exciting.

Lemon and flat-leaf parsley, together at last...


Chicken drumsticks, searing in the pan with a half head of burnt garlic. Heavenly!


Meet the veritable Holy Trinity of sticky lemon chicken rub: Soy sauce, sherry or red wine vinegar, and honey. For the stickiness.


Lemon IN.



Voila! Quite delicious! Not your average chicken dinner. It's sticky, it's sweet, it's salty, lemony, omg just gobble it up.



May I top you off, madam? Until next time! Humble eats :)

Boeuf Bourguignon

If you have seen the movie Julie & Julia, about that other popular food blog, you may remember the pivotal role that the rustic French dish, Boeuf Bourguignon plays. In fact it played so great a role that boeuf bourguignon was billed third after the timeless Meryl Streep and the effervescent Amy Adams (source: iMDB).

Beef bourguignon is a traditional French peasant dish that has been turned into fine dining, from what probably began as a way to eat meat that was too tough otherwise. It is beef cubes stewed in red wine, with onions, mushrooms, and carrots. And butter. And this version has bacon. And bacon fat.




Here is the beef, seared on all sides, and bacon, waiting to be stewed. This by itself smelled so wonderfully fantastic that Amy and I weren't sure if we would make it through the whole process with anything left to eat.



The onions and carrots happily carmelizing.



The mushroom, thyme, and garlic, a powerful trio.



Final product! 1.5 hours later, beef bourguignon. True, it may not look appetizing, but the flavor is rich and amazing! Superb with a crusty bread, like our sourdough loaf.





And it's always worth it to cook and share with a friend. Bon Appetit! I mean, humble eats. Tomorrow: Sticky Lemon Chicken, Gordon Ramsay-style.

Eggx and Yomato

Hello, dear Readers. I have not updated in a long time. You probably think I have not been eating. HA HA HA.

Today's main dish is Eggx and Yomato (Eggs and Tomato). I remember eating this simple dish as a child visiting China's countryside as well as in America, growing up as a kid. It is rustic cooking, no fancy ingredients or techniques, just eggs and tomato. You first scramble the eggs then take them out of the pan. Add fat chunks of fresh tomato - it must be real tomato, not canned stuff! Cook the tomatoes until they are soft, add soy sauce and a spoonful of sugar, this is meant to be a slightly sweet and savory dish. Which is genius! Think about it, how many tomato dishes do you know that are meant to taste quite sweet? It's an awesome flavor combination! The flavorful sauce is great to soak the white rice in your bowl. Add the egg back in and combine. Done.

This dish is a favorite of my best friend from high school and college, Yi. She is the yomato. I am the eggx. Together, we are the perfect timeless combination. You don't need to mess with the recipe. No need for stinky garlic or onion that makes you cry. Just eggx and yomato. Sometimes yomato won't let you play with her nice long hair. But that's ok, she's always there for you when you need a vine to talk to. Yi, this dish is for you. And it was f@cking delicious. Yomato, look how clean my living room is!

Comfort Food

What's your favorite comfort food? A comfort food is a food that you're always willing to eat, no matter what time, place, or who's cooking it, and no matter what the caloric content. For me, an essential comfort food is..... mac n cheese! (macaroni and cheese). I will eat mac n cheese at any time. When I cook it, it's a special event and I need to make a big batch. It's not the easiest food to make either! You may end up shredding 1, 2, 3, 4 different cheeses, cooking pasta, and making cheese/butter/milk sauce. You can add any toppings you want: tomatoes, broccoli, chicken, bacon, ham. Whether it's at a fast food place, a dining hall, the White House, I know I won't be able to resist the yellow cheesy gooey melty stuff. I do however draw a line at box mac n cheese; I don't like cheese powder.

The weird thing is, my parents never made mac n cheese for me as a kid, since it's not exactly Asian food. (See: cheese). I must have developed the taste for it as an adult, craving what I could never have. My parents made lots of tofu however, so I like eating tofu too. I stir fry tofu with lots of oyster sauce and nothing else -- tastes just fine! HAO CHI! Great Eats :)

Fried Plantains and Lazy Thursday Dinner

Readers, you must know that sometimes I, Nerdy Chef, feel like Starving-Lazy Chef and not every night can be a perfect Rachael Ray night. Some nights you just want to come home, grab the frozen package of Trader Joe's Mushroom Risotto out of the freezer and heat it up in a pan. That, my readers, was last night. But Matt and I had bought some plantains from the "recently marked down for quick sale" shelf at Shaw's, and they looked dangerously overripe. We had to cook them and eat them before they grew brains and decided to violently overthrow us and take over the kitchen.

The plantain, according to Wikipedia, is a crop in the genus Musa (like the banana) and is generally used for cooking. As you may know, plantains are less sweet and soft than bananas and must be cooked before eaten. Did you know that green, underripe plantains are starchy and overripe plantains are sweet? A staple food in tropical regions of the world, plantains are treated in the same way as potatoes are: steamed, boiled, and fried. In fact, Matt thought the fried plantain tasted just like a potato. I closed my eyes and pretended that I was eating a potato but I kept thinking, "Why does this potato taste and smell like a banana?" And I found this part of the Wiki article interesting, since I just learned about sadya from Sujiet, who's from Kerala.

Traditionally plantain leaves are used like plates while serving South Indian thali or during Sadya. A traditional southern Indian meal is served on a plantain leaf with the position of the different food items on the leaf having an importance. They also have a religious significance in many Hindu rituals. They add a subtle but essential aroma to the dish. In the Indian state of Kerala, a food preparation called Ada is made in plantain leaves. Plantain leaves are also used in making Karimeen Pollichathu in Kerala. In Tamizh Nadu, the plantain leaf is used to serve food in most of the house during festivals or special occasions.

Fried plantains are perfect for lazy Thursday meals. You peel the plantain, cut it into discs or lengthwise into rectangles, whatever you feel like. Heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in a skillet and fry the plantain until golden brown on both sides. We dipped the plantain discs in hommus, which was sort of an interesting culture clash. With some tortillas and Cheddar Jack, I made simple pan quesadillas. Yum! Humble Eats, folks! :)