I have at-home-event-hosting anxiety.
And yet, I’ve also grown disturbingly unambitious when cooking for myself. I think the spark I’d need would be other people to plate food for. This, rather than a situation like tonight, where I finshed everything up and ‘plated’ it into a neat row of tupperware containers so I can take the same food to work for lunch three days next week. On the plus side, when I’m just cooking for myself, I can serve pasta with my hands, rather than with those funny-shaped scoops, so I guess there are fewer dishes to wash. So yes, tonight was, uh, pasta with a sauce made from what I had left in the fridge, as insprired by pasta carbonara. My thought process: “noodles. need sauce. hm, I have chicken in the freezer, and, uh, bacon… isn’t, ah, carbonara or something made with bacon?” *googles ‘pasta carbonara’* And, ta-da. It’s not actually faithful to any recipe, but I did pick up some tips:
-cook the bacon first then set it aside, so it gets the proper amount of done. this will also come in handy next time I sautee brussel-sprouts-and-bacon.
-reserve some of the pasta water to use instead of new water for the sauce base — it’s already starchy and a little salty and oily. and warm, so you get stuff done faster.
-I forgot the difference between corn meal and corn starch. So it all turned out kind of weird but still ok, I guess. It’s like when you mix up baking soda and baking powder and your cookies turn out flat.
Oooh, I should make cookies this week. It would be a good excuse to get flour, which I can then turn around and use to make bread or pizza dough or those other things my more kitchen-ambitious friends are ACTUALLY MAKING.
