Whoo, that was a long break. My last update was 20th November! And its already 29th December now! My, time does go by so fast! But, to make it up to you, my friends, for tonight's dinner, I bring you THREE dishes. Not one, not two, but THREE! Awesome, eh?
Have you ever pondered whether to have spaghetti or lasagna for dinner? Or perhaps a pizza? I mean, they're all Italian and they all taste really really really good. *drool* Well, ponder no more! With this recipe, you can have all three in one dish! Amazing, right? I shall keep you waiting no more, here we go! (No, its not cheating. Its still three dishes by Ihsan counting! :D)
What you need:
100g spaghetti
1 small boneless, skinless chicken leg, chopped very finely and seasoned (or, use about 100g of minced beef)
50ml milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cheddar cheese, to taste
1/2 of a 500g jar of your favorite pasta sauce
Garlic powder
Onion powder
More Cheddar cheese, to taste, and add some mozarella if you're feeling adventurous!
Also, I didn't have these ingredients handy, but do use sausages, dried herbs, etc., if you want. Feel free to use anything you would normally use to make pasta. Or pizza.
What you do:
- Preheat oven to 180 C
- Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain.
- In a small pan, cook chicken over medium heat. Set aside.
- Beat milk and egg together in a large bowl until well combined. Season with salt and pepper.
- Add in cooled pasta and mix until well-coated. Add several good handfuls of Cheddar cheese.
- Pour mixture into a baking dish and spread pasta sauce over it. Distribute chicken over pasta sauce
- Bake in preheated oven until hot and bubbly, about 30 minutes.
On the whole, it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, I had a really late lunch, so I couldn't enjoy it to its full potential, but I managed to enjoy it just enough. :) With all that cheese in there, how could I not?? Oh yes, since I like my cheese slightly burnt, I left the thing uncovered, but if you're one who likes melt-y stringy cheese (which is also good, by the way), you might want to keep the baking dish covered while this cooks in the oven.
If I were to do this again, though, I would probably cover the pan also for the first 20 minutes or so, and leave it there for another half an hour. Don't get me wrong, it tasted good (cheese with pasta sauce does that to me) but I found that the bottom of the dish was a bit too watery. You could probably see it in the photo. I'm pretty sure that its supposed to be more... firm and cut-able (hence the whole pizza thing) but this one kind of just flopped onto the plate. So I would add more eggs, maybe, and leave it in the oven for longer.
On the plus side, this is much easier to make than lasagna (though if you wanted to get fancy, you could cook the meat with some chopped onions and such), slightly fancier than plain old spaghetti and, dare I say, healthier than pizza? Hey, at least this one uses no oil! ;) Pizza has tons and tons of oil. If you wanted it even healthier, you could cut back on the cheese, I suppose, but then what would be the point of even having it in the first place?? It's pasta. Pasta goes with cheese. Enough said. :D
Oooh, before I take my leave for tonight, I'd like to point your way to the little poll at the top right hand corner of this page. I thought it was a nifty little widget and wanted to try it, hehe. So please, do answer it? It takes, like, 5 seconds. No difficult things. No signing up, and not much reading even! Just point and click. :D
And with that, I'll say good night! With promises of a new dish next week. No, really! I promise. Stay tuned!
Quote of the day: Try to cook so that it will surprise a little, agreeably and astonish slightly, without shocking.
