Spaghetti With Homemade Tomoato Sauce

Okay we are starteing with the tomato sauce since it needs to simmer for a couple hours at least. Start by taking out some tomoatoes. How ever many you want. The more you use the less canned tomato sauce you will need to use. Make sure when you buy tomatoes they are ripe when you buy them. They don't ripen at your house no matter what you think you know. Also, son't keep tomatoes in the fridge or sun.

We are going to blanch the tomatoes, so boil some water.

Then place your tomatoes into the boiling water.

Boil them unitl the skins crack then remove them and place them into ice water. This will make them very easy to peel.

Here is the skins that we removed.

Take your peeled tomatoes and put them through a foodmill or one of these things you see in the picture.

Make sure you get all of the pulp which is what you see here.

In a large stock pot, or dutch oven brown your favorite ground meat. We like to use Italian, or sage sausage.

While the meat is browning dice up some veggies. We used onions, green bell peppers, and garlic. Lots of garlic. You can use other veggies; shredded carrots and muchrooms would be good.

Once the meat is browned add the vegetables. You may need to add some oil. if the meat is lean.

Now if you have a garlic press I reccomend using it. If not just chop it up really small.

Pick out a few of your favorite Italian herbs. We used sage, oregeno, basil, and thyme.

Add about a tablespoon or so of each into a mortar and pestol.

And grind it all up!

Pour that into the meat and veggies.

Open a can of tomato paste and pour that into the meat and stir it up a little bit.

Now time to add the tomato sauce we made earlier. We also added a can of canned tomato sauce since we needed a little bit more sauce.

Tomatoes are very acidic so the sauce will need something sweet to dilute the acidity. We used a couple tablespoons of brown sugar but you can use whatever sweetener you like.

While the sauce is simmering you can make your pasta since the dough will need to rest for one hour. Start by measuring out 300 grams of Semolina flour which is used for pasta. Make a well in the flour.

Crack three eggs and two eggs yolks into a bowl and pur them into the well.

Scramble up the eggs with your fingers a little bit.

Add a pinch of salt if you forgot to add it in like we did.... It is supposed to be added in before the eggs.

Then slowly incorporate the flour by pulling it in with your hands until it forms a workable douch

Once it is workable start kneading it.

The dough will become very hard to work so you will need to use all your strength. Knead for about 5 minutes or until the dough is smooth and very hard to work.

Gather a couple damp clothes. Cut the dough in half and wrap the dough balls in the damp clothes. Let it rest for one hour. The dough will become a little softer.

Get out your handy dandy pasta machine.

Place one of your dough balls onto a floured surface.

Roll it out until it is about an inch thick so it will go through the pasta machine.

Start on the thickest setting on your machine and run it through a few times gowing down in thickness one setting each time.

Fold it in half and repeat the process a couple times. This will get the streaks out of the dough and make it shiny.

Now run it through almost to the thinest setting.

Fold it and cut it in half, and repeat the above process with each half.

This procees is kind of monotonous but it is worth it. When it is finished the dough will be shiny and you should be able to see your hand through it. Now do the same with the other dough ball. Cut the sheets into about 12 inch long sheets.

Take one of the sheets and put it through the spaghetti cutter

And place the spaghetti into a bowl. You may need to flour it to keep it from sticking. Repeat the proccess with each sheet. After you make pasta a few times it becomes easier and you will get the technique down.

This is our cooked pasta, we forgot to take poictures of it cooking. So to cook bring some water to a rolling boil and right before adding the pasta salt the water heavily. This is the only time to season the pasta. Fresh pasta takes very little time to cook. About one minute. Check it frequently so it doesn't over cook.

Here is your sauce that has been slowly simmering and cooking down. You may need to remove the lid so some of the water will cook out if it needs to be thicker. Also, remeber to taste the sauce a few times to make sure it doesn't need anything. We added a few fresh sprigs of thyme about half an hour before we ate.

Now assemble your pasta. Put some spaghetti on a plate and top it with your delicious tomato sauce. Trust me all the hard work that goes into this will be worth it. Good luck, and good eating.

Stir Fried Rice

Alright, seems how we are making stir fried rice, which is Asian, we decided to use Shitake mushrooms. Which we have cleaned properly. As seen in the Sweet and Sour Chicken post. We sliced them thinly.

Then diced them up into little pieces.

The next veggie is sugar snap peas. Just open them up by any means necessary and remove the peas. Save the outer shell.

Here you can see the little peas. Look how cute they are.

The outer shell that you saved just slice it thinly so it is about the same size as the rest of the veggies.

And Wabam! I take over and started cutting up some broccoli... cut off a few of the flourets and give them a rough small chop...

Cut some corn of of a cob...

Cut and dice some carrots...

Now, I return to peel up some garlic. The more the marrier. Then just mince it up real fine. Now take it away, other dood!

Now the next few pictures are a bit confusing... I switched pans a lot for complicated reasons... but here I am adding some sesame oil.

Heat it up and coat the pan nicely...

Scramble fry an egg all nice like...

Add your assortment of veggies and stir fry them... sadly we don't have a wok so it's not technically a stir fry... but yeah.... now you saw the veggies we used but you can use pretty much any kind you want... we also prefer that you add some sort of meat... we had to make this vegitarian for our veggie cousin.... bleh...

Take the rice that your awesome brother steamed... because he is awesome....

Then add it to your veggies....

Mix it all up and add soy sauce and more sesame oil to taste and you have your self some awesome stir fried rice...