1. How to cook
2. How to clean
3. How to dance
A man who can do those three things is a sexy man. Having said that, my darling husband can't do any of those things; and yet I think he is the sexiest thing on two legs. I do wish he could cook though. And clean. And dance. Ah well, such is life.
But I made it my mission to make sure my sons could do these things. And they can! Well, sort of. Both can dance, and will dance, EVEN IN FRONT OF PEOPLE, as long as there is good music. Both can clean. Sort of. As long as I nag the crap out of them. But they can do it! When they were younger, and misbehaved, I used to make them clean the toilets. I figured if they were acting like crap, they could clean it up! In truth, they can do laundry, vacuum, clear the table, empty the dishwasher, walk the dog, clean up dog poo, make beds, mop, fold, and all kinds of other cleaning related activities. I taught them how to do all these things not just because they need to know how to do it.... but also because I hate doing it. I don't want to be cleaning up after them when they are adults.
And now to cooking! My younger son really shows an aptitude for it, and actually enjoys it. He cooks with me often. When I was laid up with a broken leg, he cooked several meals. Up until now, his speciality has been Thai Coconut Curry Mussels. This week, he has a NEW specialty.
Rigatoni ala Vodka.
There are a couple of restaurants that we go to that serve this dish that Ethan really loves. Its rigatoni with a tomato cream sauce, vodka, some form of bacon or pancetta, spring onions and sun dried tomatoes. He decided he wanted to make this dish. So make it we did!
First, I had him write down all the flavours and possible ingredients he remembers from it.
Alan can't eat cow's milk or milk products, so we substituted goat cheese to get that creaminess.
The nice part about this recipe is that you never have to measure stuff, and if you don't have all the exact ingredients you just substitute. For example, you could use: bacon, pancetta, proscuito, smoked turkey, smoked spices or nothing and keep it vegetarian. You could change the goat cheese to cream or coconut milk (which would change the flavour considerably) or possibly almond milk or rice milk. You could forget the onions or green onions. You could use wine instead of vodka, or tequila or some broth. Whatever you choose. Here is what Ethan chose: pancetta, vodka, tomato sauce and paste, goat cheese, garlic, onions and green onions, sundried tomatoes and chilli.
First he chopped up a few strips of nitrate free organic pancetta. And yes, thats my incredible Kyocera super sharp ceramic knife. He was being extremely careful.
He sauteed the pancetta until it was almost crisp in a large bottomed frying pan, then added the chopped up onions and garlic.
Once those were nice and fragrant, he added tomato paste (about half of the can) and then the vodka - a nice big sizzling splash.
Once the sizzling settled down, he added a jar of tomato sauce, about a nice big wodge of goat cheese, about half a cup of water to thin it out, some chilli flakes, a bay leaf and a nice big handful of chopped up sundried tomatoes. The green onions were added on top of the finished dish to garnish and give it a bit of zing with the green color and the flavour.
As you can see, he didn't add a lot of chillis, so we put the chillis on the table if anybody wanted extra heat. Each step along the way he tasted the sauce to see if it was missing anything, or needed any additional seasoning. As the water for the pasta was salted, and the sundried tomatoes and the goat cheese have a nice tang, it wasn't necessary to add any salt to the sauce.
In a separate pot, we boiled up the salted water and added 1 box of spelt rigatoni, and 1/2 a box of spelt penne. We ran out of rigatoni, so had to make do. We cooked it al dente, and tossed most of the sauce with the drained pasta and coated it. The left over sauce we put on the table for anybody who wanted that little bit extra.
Ethan also said we needed to make a salad with balsamic vinegar dressing. He then wrote the menu on the blackboard in the kitchen, as the daily special.
Overall, the dinner was delicious, and I am SO proud of my monster.
I have been informed that for his next cooking experiment, he wants to make a dessert. Next weeks challenge: Key Lime Pie.
Its hard to see because we were laughing and moving, but thats a bag of key limes.
Now to research key lime pie....yum.
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