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Have you tried vodka sauce? I think it's delicious. Naysayers may disagree and even question the point of putting alcohol in tomato sauce, but there's definitely a big difference between a sauce with vodka and one without. If you've never tried it, be reassured by the fact that vodka sauce doesn't actually taste like vodka. Instead, the alcohol enhances the flavours already present in the sauce. Even the 7-year-old pasta fiend in our house adores it.
This is what NYTimes's Food Chain column has to say on the matter: "The alcohol in the vodka enhances the flavor of the tomatoes [in a vodka sauce]. Some flavors are alcohol-soluble, meaning that they will be released only by the addition of alcohol. Vodka can help bring out these flavors without contributing another flavor, as wine or brandy would."
In this simple vodka tomato cream sauce recipe, the alcohol imparts a slightly bitter undertone, lending a complexity to the otherwise straightforward yet tasty sauce. The key to making a good vodka sauce is timing--undercooking will result in a sauce where you will taste the vodka (yuck).
Spaghetti with vodka sauce
Ingredients (4 servings)
- 4 oz mild Italian sausage
- handful of sliced mushrooms
- uncooked whole wheat spaghetti - 4 servings
- 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- pinch of Italian seasoning
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 14 oz crushed tomatoes
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp vodka
- 1/4 cup half-and-half cream
- 2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
- parmesan cheese, grated or shredded, to serve at the table
- hot red pepper flakes, to serve at the table
Directions
- Cook the spaghetti in lightly salted and oiled water, and then drain and set aside on plates. Keep warm. (Or if you're a multitasker like me, do this while cooking the sauce. Up to you!)
- In skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Remove casing from sausages and add to skillet.
- Cook, breaking up the meat, until brown. Add mushroom, garlic, red pepper flakes, and Italian seasoning, and cook for a few more minutes.
- Add tomatoes and salt; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 15 minutes.
- Add vodka, stir, and bring to a boil over medium heat.
- Stir in cream, simmer over low for about 2 minutes, and remove from heat.
- Serve over spaghetti, sprinkle with parsley, and serve with cheese at the table.
Incomplete sentences, or sentence fragments, are relatively common in all sorts of writing, but they're also easy to avoid. The rule is simple: a complete sentence consists of two components--a subject and a predicate--in an independent clause. A subject tells the reader what the sentence is about; a predicate tells the reader about the subject, often an action that the subject performs.
Subjects and predicates
Consider the following sentence:
The boy is doing his homework.
The sentence is about the boy, so the subject is "boy"; the sentence tells you that he is doing homework, so the predicate is "doing his homework".
In the following examples, the subjects are underlined and the predicates are italicised:
The baby screams to be picked up.
There are three lemon berry muffins left on the counter.
You and I are the best of friends.
Once you understand subject and predicate, you can move on to discerning between dependent and independent clauses.
Dependent and independent clauses
In grammar, a group of words that contains a subject and predicate is called a clause. An independent clause expresses a complete thought, and a dependent clause does not express a complete thought. As a result, an independent clause can be a complete sentence, but a dependent clause cannot be one.
Consider the following example:
The muffins contain raspberries. Which I detest.
"The muffins contain raspberries" is an independent clause and "Which I detest" is dependent; therefore, "Which I detest" is a sentence fragment.
It was a horrid date. Because he ate noisily and made crude jokes during dinner.
"It was a horrid date" is an independent clause and "Because he ate noisily and made crude jokes during dinner" is dependent; therefore, the latter is a sentence fragment.
The sentences can be revised thus:
The muffins contain raspberries, which I detest.
It was a horrid date, because he ate noisily and made crude jokes during dinner.
You can also split them into two independent clauses:
The muffins contain raspberries. I detest them.
It was a horrid date: he ate noisily and made crude jokes during dinner.
There are two things to note here. First, conjunctive words such as "which" and "because" are clues that the clauses are dependent. Second, years of schooling may have drilled it into your head to not start sentences with conjunctions, i.e., words such as "and", "but", "so", "because" (more on conjunctions here). This 'rule' might have arisen from a hypercorrecting tendency to avoid sentence fragments such as the one illustrated above. It's best to eschew sentences that begin with conjunctions in formal writing.
Informally, there are many correct ways to start a complete sentence with a conjunction:
Because it was getting late, we skipped dessert and coffee and headed home.
But it started raining and we were drenched by the time we were back.
I don't know anyone who doesn't like quesadillas. Consisting of cheese and any number of other savoury ingredients wrapped in a wheat or corn tortilla, and then browned to perfection, a quesadilla makes a great appetiser or main dish.
In these quesadillas, I use fresh spinach, but frozen spinach can be used if that is more convenient. In addition, I love whole wheat tortillas, but any kind may be used; sundried tomato, cheese, spinach, ancient grains--these are all available in the stores here and I imagine they'd be great too.
Spinach mushroom quesadillas, served with sour cream and corn chips on the side
Ingredients (Makes 16 wedges for approx. 4 main course servings)
- 2 cups shredded light mozzarella cheese
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 cup sliced mushrooms
- 4 10-inch whole wheat tortillas
- 1 pound of fresh spinach, shredded (equivalent to approx. 10 oz frozen*)
- 1 tsp cumin
- minced jalapeno peppers, to taste (optional)
- chopped black olives, to taste (optional)
- to serve: salsa, sour cream, guacamole, pico de gallo, etc.
Directions
- Cook spinach until it is dark and wilted. Drain and pat dry.
- Sprinkle 1/4 cup cheese over half of each tortilla; set aside.
- Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in garlic, onions, and mushrooms, and cook about 5 minutes.
- Mix in spinach and cumin (and jalapenos and olives, if using), and continue cooking 5 minutes.
- Place an equal amount of the mixture on top of the cheese on each tortilla, and then sprinkle 1/4 cup cheese over the filling. Fold tortillas in half over the filling and cheese.
- Place quesadillas in dry skillet or a griddle**, and cook a few minutes on each side, until golden brown. Cut each quesadilla into 4 wedges (I use a pizza cutter) and serve with dips or sides of choice.
*If using frozen spinach, cook according to package directions and make sure you SQUEEZE it dry.
**When I make larger quantities of these, I use my large griddle instead of a skillet so I can cook them all at once.
'Lion's Head' soup is a Chinese soup containing meatballs traditionally made with ground pork. The meatballs, whose rugged shape supposedly resemble lions' heads, sit in a warm flavourful broth with a generous amount of napa cabbage (also known as Chinese cabbage) and other veggies.
In lion's head soup, the meatballs are key. Some people make them with chicken or turkey rather than pork, out of preference or necessity. We don't often have ground pork either, as it is a) hard to come by, depending on where we shop, and b) often pretty fatty when we do find it. But pork is an important meat in Chinese cuisine--chicken and pork were the most common meats at mealtimes when I was growing up--so I don't bother substituting it
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Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is in my opinion one of the franchise's most under-appreciated movies, features the great Christopher Plummer as Klingon General Chang. He's one of the best baddies in the Trek universe--certainly better than, say, the Duras sisters. And you know Chang's a badass because he's bald and has an eyepatch bolted onto his face.
David Warner, who seems to have played most of the major Trek species, is Chancellor Gorkon in the same film. Like Chang, he has the tendency of spouting Shakespeare, especially text from Hamlet, which he speaks in "the original Klingon". It is this line that apparently drove the Klingon Language Institute to produce The Klingon Hamlet
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January's issue of Martha Stewart Living has some beautiful pictures of Moroccan-spiced chicken, served with sides of minted carrots and couscous. I like Moroccan anything, so I was dying to use this recipe. Moroccan flavours are often vibrant and spicy --not necessarily 'hot'--and turmeric and cinnamon are pretty much essential.
Although my husband and son like chicken, they're not fans of couscous, so I made some steamed rice for them and couscous for myself. I used whole wheat couscous with chopped dried fruits (prunes, apricots, raisins), olives, and toasted pistachios, and sprinkled a bit of lemon juice on top. I was also wary of serving the carrots to the boys (sigh...the pics of minted carrots looked so good), so I made Brussels sprouts instead
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*spoiler-free*
Whether or not you're a fan of Fullmetal Alchemist, you might've heard of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the second anime series in the franchise that started airing in Japan in May. Fullmetal Alchemist is the insanely popular manga and anime series by Hiromu Arakawa. FMA fever reached its peak in probably 2006 or so, but it still has devoted fans, including me and my geeky family
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I love a good, rich, and dense cheesecake, but it's not something I make often. Most cheesecakes use 16 to 24 ounces of full-fat cream cheese, which in itself is delicious yet sinful; add in the butter and sugar, plus any other fillings, toppings, or sauces, and the base (often a cookie or graham crust), and you've got a heck of a calorie-laden dessert. Not to mention that I usually don't make cheesecake unless I have enough people to serve it to; leftover slices of cake in my fridge are not a good idea. 
An alternative to making a full-fledged cheesecake is to use the same basic ingredients to make a smaller pan of cheesecake squares. This is a (relatively) light cheesecake dessert, mildly sweet and creamy rather than dense. Instead of a cookie crumb crust, the squares are offset by a golden, slightly chewy base that incorporates the surprise ingredient of chopped walnuts. A few pieces of fresh fruit makes a delicious and pretty way to serve the squares
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In school I learned to write essays in the present tense. Often, people's essays, articles, reviews, etc., sound like this:
"WALL-E was a great movie. I thought that the story was very imaginative and the animation was top-notch. My favourite part was when WALL-E squashed his pet cockroach."
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Comment by Irene
on Spinach and mushroom quesadillas
Grammar Matters
Cooking Monkey