Basil Pesto Pasta that Melts My Heart

What’s in this pesto pasta that I am blogging about it? It’s simple with no cooking required save for boiling the pasta. You only need to mix the pesto ingredients using a food processor or a blender, combine the mixture with the hot pasta noodles and voila! What do you get? A healthy, no-meat dish that is surprisingly loved by kids, which goes to prove that kids have a simple taste. I may be generalizing, but, seeing how my two children devoured it, and then hearing about how my three-year old niece also loved it (I had some sent to her), being the picky eaters they are, it’s safe to say so, I suppose.

And you know why else this is very important? My son, out of the blue, embraced and kissed me saying, “Ma, I love you, no matter what, through thick and thin.” And this pasta was the trigger! He must have been overwhelmed with gratefulness seeing me drop by the grocery, after fetching him from school, to grab fresh basil, olive oil and walnuts, and then go straight to the kitchen to prepare his favorite pasta. He had ordered it at Amici the couple of times he went there, and he could easily finish a serving for two.

Did it compare with Amici’s? Honestly, in all humility, it did! J

And I want to share with you how I did it. After months of browsing, looking up pesto recipes, and after several packs of basil gone rotten in my fridge, I finally made my first attempt at what turned out to be almost like a no-brainer kind of cooking:

• Cook about 350 grams (or about a third of 1 kg pack) of spaghetti noodles.
• Mix about about 2 cups of basil, 3 cloves of garlic, about 3 tablespoons of walnuts and 70 ml of olive oil in a food processor. Halfway, add in another 70 ml of olive oil to fully coat the dry ingredients. 
• Drain the pasta and transfer back into the pot. Pour the pesto over the noodles, grate cheddar cheese, and stir. Transfer to a serving dish and sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese.

Try it! You won’t regret it. I spent roughly less than PHP200 or less than USD5, and this pasta dish was shared by 3 adults and 3 children! Imagine how cheap that is. I bought an 8-oz can of walnuts for PHP300, but only used a fourth of it, so that leaves me with enough walnuts for three more meals! Happiness. 

Baking With and For the Kids

Prologue (you may skip this part)

Not another inclement weather, we had wished, but it seems that this scenario of heavy rains and flooding has become a regular phenomenon since typhoon Ondoy in 2009. With this situation, I think it is incumbent upon schools to seriously revisit their school calendars. School suspensions have been getting more and more frequent, and even if the schools would hold make-up classes or make adjustments in extra-curricular activities, we know that these do not fully make up for lost school days. I understand there is a minimum number of school days that DepEd requires of all schools, but nevertheless you’d observe that the months from November to March would come and go by in a flurry, and at the end of the school year, a parent kind of feels shortchanged in a way given steep tuition fees. Well, just my thoughts…

This inclement weather has an upside though for stay-at-home-moms and their children who fortunately need not go out and whose houses are on high ground, flood-free. I and my kids belong to this fortunate lot. Garrett and Gab would have missed school today had it been a regular school day because both are still recovering from a viral infection which caused them running fevers over the weekend that spiked to 40 degrees Celsius. So, it turned out we are even luckier that classes got suspended today. I am relieved that they now seem to be on the way to recovery. I got scared it might be dengue because the onset of the fever was sudden. Both neither had cough nor colds.

Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are suffering the brunt of this weather, and to the millions of workers who braved going out today, and others who are inconvenienced one way or the other.

********************

I would openly admit that I am lousy with introductions, starting a blog post. I tend to end up talking about other things first, and then jump to the reason why I got the urge to write – my real topic.

So the text above (kind of a prologue) is of little relevance to the title as you have (I’m sure) noticed. It really humbles me that you’re still reading (me) at this point. You’re a friend, aren’t you? Or, you’re one of my siblings. Whoever you are, thank you for dropping by this blog again and staying on a bit more. Hehe, ok, let me get down to business.

Today was a good time to bake with my children on account of the school suspension. Baking used to be just a dream for me. I had the oven sitting pretty in the kitchen for seven years without being used until its knob labels have all been erased. I simply had no motivation then to squeeze in baking time into my precious weekends or holidays.

I have not tried baking cakes yet. Actually, what I have been cooking in the oven recently – since the day I found myself with so much time to pass at home – are not cakes nor pastries but meat and pasta. I have on two occasions tried making muffins and macaroons, so this makes it just my third time to “bake.” And it’s my first time to bake cookies.

The muffins and macaroons were not so much of a hit with my kids. But this time, they liked what all three of us made. Recipes for oatmeal cookies are pretty much the same, but I adopted the “Awesome Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie” recipe from SimplyRecipes blog. It uses more ingredients and recommends an additional step of browning the butter. I thought it must be more special. Instead of bitter chocolate cookies, I used semi-sweet chocolates.

It was easy-peasy, easy as a piece of cake! Gab helped stir the flour and other dry ingredients. Garrett helped crack and beat the eggs, and measure the ingredients. We then took turns mixing the final dough.

And these are the awesome cookies we baked. We baked them for around 15 minutes and let them stay in the oven until cooled, so we ended up with crispy cookies. If you prefer a soft, gooey cookie, it is a must that you take them out of the (pre-heated) oven after 10 minutes.

I think baking is really easy because all the resources are on the web to guide you step by step. And baking is a fun way of introducing cooking to kids, all the measuring and mixing are curiously, amazingly fun for them. There is also a better chance that kids would eat what they helped bake. Happy baking!

My Hands Smell Like Garlic

Here I am, guilty of being on fb (again through the course of the day), using the laptop this time, in a semi-office setting, complete with a table and an office chair. I’m also browsing other sites I find myself on almost everyday – Rappler, Blogger (reading blogs I follow; happy to have recently stumbled upon Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop), Instagram, ADB mail (just checking), among others. While browsing, I lean on the table with my elbow, cupping my chin with my palm, and I smell g-a-r-l-i-c. I’ve just cooked dinner.

It’s a late discovery for me – this love for cooking. I didn’t know I could really cook (almost) everyday. The rewards are immediate and fulfilling, making up for the lack of "formal" work (housework by a mom is informal :-)) and pay. Relatedly, I used to kind of dread doing the grocery, having to go through all the aisles of the supermarket to replenish pantry and fridge supplies every other week, and I just hated my infrequent trips to wet markets. 

I feel different now, like I’m really kind of morphing into a full-pledged homemaker. But not the stereotype of old. I would like to associate myself with the younger ones in their late 20s and early 30s, whose social life is largely based on social media – mommies who are actively fb’ing, instragram’ing and even blogging and joining online forums. Ooops, this topic needs a separate blog post. (There are security issues being discussed globally on whether parents are screwing the digital identity of their children by posting pictures and other information, and unknowingly creating a mess even before these children reach an age when they can decide what identity/personality to put out publicly. I am concerned, of course. But, again, I’m veering away from the topic of this post.)

Shifting back to my main topic – I have taken a real interest in cookbooks, cook shows, chefs, and food in general. My husband worries that I am starting to really fill out my clothes and stretch (some inner) elastic bands such that bulges appear where they hug so snugly. That’s the downside of good, home-cooked meals. Oh, well! Look who’s talking! He is also getting bigger. Uh-oh!

My birthday is upcoming, and I am cooking! Wow! There’s always a first time! I am going to prepare a dinner consisting of:

- Salad of mixed greens, tomatoes, and fruits with vinaigrette dressing 

- Spaghetti in mushroom sauce – adapted from the recipe on the package of Clara Ole Pasta Sauce (Mushroom).

- Spicy Shrimp and Spaghetti Aglio Olio (Garlic and Oil)

- Mediterranean Fish Tacos

I am also inspired by Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives via her book, Eva’s Kitchen.

And then there are these other books which I thumb through to get more ideas. 

Cooking per se is not difficult. It is actually thinking of what to cook on a daily basis that poses a challenge, and cooking for picky children make it not only challenging but, at times, stressful and frustrating. The good news is that my son, who unlike most kids, has never really liked spaghetti, is now eating spaghetti with gusto! He cried when I told him, around the time before I had temporarily stopped working, that we would be dining out less. He used to like eating out a lot, but now says he prefers to eat at home, and is requesting that I just cook for him on his birthday. True, I am not exaggerating. :-)

The recipes I have tried are mostly of Food Network’s Rachael Ray. I like watching her 30 Minute Meals show, and her recipes really turn out well.

When I cook Filipino dishes, it is also easier for me to just google, which turns up a lot of Pinoy chefs’ blogs. Everything about cooking is just a click away.

I think the real challenge is to get the ingredients. Feta, ricotta and other cheeses, vegetable broth, canned chicken stock are nowhere to be found in the area where I live. And zucchini is P300+ a kilo! Yup, prices are also limiting to a large extent. But moms are creative with budgets. I try to offset, like I wake up in the middle of the night to wake up my daughter and lead her to the bathroom. This way we save almost P500 on diaper. Oh, things just round up in the end, everything is connected.

But what makes my son like my cooking more? It’s because of that one ingredient – love. Love means more attention to details and the process, from buying ingredients to plating. It makes all the difference!

Finally Loving the Kitchen

I love that I have finally taken over my own kitchen. For the last 10 years or so, it was my able kasambahay who largely decided on and cooked my family’s meals, and on special occasions such as Christmas and birthdays, it was always somebody else taking charge of my own kitchen – either my in-laws or my mother. I would just be a happy observer, almost a guest in my own house. I was scared to cook dishes other than the simple ones I knew, and I was too lazy to learn . I was not fond of watching cooking shows nor did I take interest in the cookbooks I received as wedding gifts. It was enough that I knew how to fry, cook rice, and do basic Filipino dishes like tinola and sinigang.

I had no keen interest in renovating the kitchen and buying kitchen stuff. It was my husband who did all the job. In one trip to Singapore when kitchen wares were on sale at Tangs department store, with discounts as much as 70%, he spent hours window-shopping and then buying pots, pans, cooking utensils, cutleries, and even a pasta maker! I was somewhere else hunting for shoes and bags. We came home with huge boxes of WMF wares and other quality kitchen stuff he bought at bargain prices. He was very pleased with his purchases especially after checking that they cost him less than 2 times the price tag here in Manila.

But things have changed since July when, as you know, I have become a stay-at-home mom. The nice pots and pans that my husband bought, which had been kept away, are now out of the cabinets. The pressure cooker that he also bought years ago is finally being used. And the other kitchen gadgets have been taken out of their boxes as well and put to use. My kitchen is now fully functional.

I now also personally know what my refrigerator contains because I myself cleaned and organized it recently. I don’t have to ask for a grocery list. I know exactly what is lacking or running out of supply. And it feels so good to be in control for the first time.

My kitchen, although far from being complete, inspires me to make delicious dishes. I have mostly tried dishes I picked up from watching shows on Food Network channel and  from recipes shared by friends. I do not attempt to copy everything and buy all the proposed ingredients. There’s room for some creativity, and the trick is to taste the food as it cooks and add seasonings bit by bit. I surprise even myself! For instance, I thought lasagna required special cooking techniques. My first attempt was a big success, meaning everyone who tasted it really liked it. It was such a hit, I just might make another one to share with friends like you. :-)