Kaz (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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cookability2011-06-13 07:41 pm
kaz) wrote in cookability2011-06-13 07:41 pm
Microwave pasta sauce
This is an adaptation of a pasta sauce recipe for the hob which was one of the first things I learned how to cook. The recipe is sort of comfort food for me, but the hob version requires watching and stirring the sauce as it boils, plus needing to wash up the saucepan afterwards, which is generally too spoon-consumptive for me. So I developed this version which you can essentially just stick in the microwave and forget about! It's still not a recipe for low-spoon days for me, but then again there aren't really any recipes I can manage on low-spoon days. It *is* a recipe I can manage on lowish-medium-spoon days when cooking most things is still out of the question. It's also quite customisable.
The main accessibility issues for this, at least for me, are that you still need to chop veggies/meat unless you can get something prechopped, and that it's not a one-pot dish - this is just the sauce, you need to make pasta separately. Or alternatively, what I keep meaning to try is making it with rice noodles and just soaking the noodles in the sauce, but I haven't actually got around to testing this out yet to make sure it works and you'd have to adjust sauce thickness accordingly I think. The main accessibility bonus is that it's quick with little fuss (I can generally get this done in... twenty minutes? maybe less? including chopping time), you don't have to stand around stirring something on the hob, and it doesn't require a lot in the way of utensils you'll need to wash up later.
So. This makes enough for about a pint of sauce, i.e. two portions for me, maybe less if I'm hungry:
Ingredients:
Veggies and/or cooked meat of some form. [An important note here is that either you want stuff you can essentially eat raw or that's precooked - for instance, I usually make this with red peppers and either cooked ham or one of those packets of roast chicken breast chunks you can get in the supermarket - or you need to make sure whatever you have actually gets cooked through by microwaving it on its own for a while first. The latter works reasonably well with mushrooms, I haven't tried anything else but I do know I wouldn't recommend using anything like raw meat in this. Also, amounts are difficult - I usually use one chopped red pepper and 100g of meat, not entirely sure how much that comes to, you probably want about 2/3-3/4 of a pint.]
About half a pint of milk
Salt, pepper, whatever other seasoning you like (I generally use either oregano and rosemary or a herbes de provence mix and nutmeg)
Cornflour
Water
Optional: some cream, some white wine or lemon juice, a bit of tomato puree, maybe pesto - go wild. [The one thing I always add here is a splash of cream - it doesn't have to be a lot.]
Utensils:
A microwaveable container [I use a pyrex pint jug, which is why this recipe is for one pint of sauce. Preferably this ought to have a handle of some sort so you can handle it once it's heated up.]
A plate to catch possible spillover when the sauce boils in the microwave (which you can then use to eat off, yay for reusage!)
Chopping board and knife for chopping veggies
A spoon for stirring, possibly another for tasting (see notes)
A cup and another spoon for mixing cornflour
[image description: the above ingredients and utensils sitting on a counter. For meat and veg I have one red pepper and 100g of pre-packaged roast turkey chunks.]
Instructions:
Chop the vegetables and meat and put them in your microwaveable container (hereafter denoted MC). Add milk and whatever other liquids you want - cream, wine/lemon juice, etc. - until the solid ingredients are covered. If you can avoid filling it too close to the brim you can maybe avoid spillage in the microwave, which I didn't in this case. Stir in salt, pepper and other seasoning to taste.
[image description: the pyrex pint jug is filled to about 2cm under the brim with chopped stuff and liquid - milk plus a bit of cream and white whine - and seasoned with herbs which you can see floating on top. Kaz may have overdone it slightly with the herbs here.]
Stick the whole thing in the microwave on a plate to catch spillages and heat on high until it boils - this takes around 5-10 minutes in mine. You should be able to tell when it's boiled because the surface of the liquid will be foamy (I am having trouble describing this) and possibly there has been some overflow.
[image description: the pyrex pint jug sitting on top of a plate post-microwaving - the surface of the liquid is foamy and the floating herbs are now clumped together instead of evenly distributed, which is how you can tell it's boiled. You can also tell because there's some spilled liquid on the plate.]
In the meantime, mix some cornflour and cold water in a cup to make a liquid - it doesn't have to be very much (I generally use something like 1 tablespoon of cornflour plus enough water to make it liquid and have waaay too much.)
Once the sauce has boiled, slowly (!) stir in the cornflour-water mixture, adding it teaspoon by teaspoon, until the sauce has reached the thickness you want. If you end up overshooting (which happens to me a lot - remember to give the cornflour some time to work, I never do!) add some more milk to make it more liquid.
And that's it!
[image description: The finished product! The pyrex pint jug contains a white sauce; you can see some of the chopped red pepper and specks from the herbs used in it.]
Notes:
I use cornflour to thicken the sauce because it's what I find easiest - the other method, which is the one I use on the hob, is to melt butter or heat oil at the start, mix in flour to form a sort of doughy substance, then stir in milk and bring the whole thing to a boil. This has the disadvantage that you need to estimate the amounts quite well because you can't add any extra thickening agent afterwards and is a bit of a pain to do in the microwave, although I've done it. Alternatively, you could make a cheese sauce using this recipe by stirring in lots of grated cheese once the sauce has boiled, using that to thicken instead of flour or cornflour.
Also, technically you're meant to add the cornflour *while* the sauce boils, not after, but it still works to thicken this way and it costs less spoons. :)?
Tasting: when I learned how to make this on the hob, I was also taught that the enzymes in saliva destroy the cornflour-induced thickening and therefore if we get any saliva into the sauce it won't thicken afterwards. So if we don't want our sauce to be soup afterwards we use a two-spoon method of tasting - transfer the sauce from container to second spoon via first spoon and then taste it from second spoon. A few times I've been too lazy and there didn't seem to be any difference so I have no idea how necessary this really is, but it's what my mother told me~
The main accessibility issues for this, at least for me, are that you still need to chop veggies/meat unless you can get something prechopped, and that it's not a one-pot dish - this is just the sauce, you need to make pasta separately. Or alternatively, what I keep meaning to try is making it with rice noodles and just soaking the noodles in the sauce, but I haven't actually got around to testing this out yet to make sure it works and you'd have to adjust sauce thickness accordingly I think. The main accessibility bonus is that it's quick with little fuss (I can generally get this done in... twenty minutes? maybe less? including chopping time), you don't have to stand around stirring something on the hob, and it doesn't require a lot in the way of utensils you'll need to wash up later.
So. This makes enough for about a pint of sauce, i.e. two portions for me, maybe less if I'm hungry:
Ingredients:
Veggies and/or cooked meat of some form. [An important note here is that either you want stuff you can essentially eat raw or that's precooked - for instance, I usually make this with red peppers and either cooked ham or one of those packets of roast chicken breast chunks you can get in the supermarket - or you need to make sure whatever you have actually gets cooked through by microwaving it on its own for a while first. The latter works reasonably well with mushrooms, I haven't tried anything else but I do know I wouldn't recommend using anything like raw meat in this. Also, amounts are difficult - I usually use one chopped red pepper and 100g of meat, not entirely sure how much that comes to, you probably want about 2/3-3/4 of a pint.]
About half a pint of milk
Salt, pepper, whatever other seasoning you like (I generally use either oregano and rosemary or a herbes de provence mix and nutmeg)
Cornflour
Water
Optional: some cream, some white wine or lemon juice, a bit of tomato puree, maybe pesto - go wild. [The one thing I always add here is a splash of cream - it doesn't have to be a lot.]
Utensils:
A microwaveable container [I use a pyrex pint jug, which is why this recipe is for one pint of sauce. Preferably this ought to have a handle of some sort so you can handle it once it's heated up.]
A plate to catch possible spillover when the sauce boils in the microwave (which you can then use to eat off, yay for reusage!)
Chopping board and knife for chopping veggies
A spoon for stirring, possibly another for tasting (see notes)
A cup and another spoon for mixing cornflour
[image description: the above ingredients and utensils sitting on a counter. For meat and veg I have one red pepper and 100g of pre-packaged roast turkey chunks.]
Instructions:
Chop the vegetables and meat and put them in your microwaveable container (hereafter denoted MC). Add milk and whatever other liquids you want - cream, wine/lemon juice, etc. - until the solid ingredients are covered. If you can avoid filling it too close to the brim you can maybe avoid spillage in the microwave, which I didn't in this case. Stir in salt, pepper and other seasoning to taste.
[image description: the pyrex pint jug is filled to about 2cm under the brim with chopped stuff and liquid - milk plus a bit of cream and white whine - and seasoned with herbs which you can see floating on top. Kaz may have overdone it slightly with the herbs here.]
Stick the whole thing in the microwave on a plate to catch spillages and heat on high until it boils - this takes around 5-10 minutes in mine. You should be able to tell when it's boiled because the surface of the liquid will be foamy (I am having trouble describing this) and possibly there has been some overflow.
[image description: the pyrex pint jug sitting on top of a plate post-microwaving - the surface of the liquid is foamy and the floating herbs are now clumped together instead of evenly distributed, which is how you can tell it's boiled. You can also tell because there's some spilled liquid on the plate.]
In the meantime, mix some cornflour and cold water in a cup to make a liquid - it doesn't have to be very much (I generally use something like 1 tablespoon of cornflour plus enough water to make it liquid and have waaay too much.)
Once the sauce has boiled, slowly (!) stir in the cornflour-water mixture, adding it teaspoon by teaspoon, until the sauce has reached the thickness you want. If you end up overshooting (which happens to me a lot - remember to give the cornflour some time to work, I never do!) add some more milk to make it more liquid.
And that's it!
[image description: The finished product! The pyrex pint jug contains a white sauce; you can see some of the chopped red pepper and specks from the herbs used in it.]
Notes:
I use cornflour to thicken the sauce because it's what I find easiest - the other method, which is the one I use on the hob, is to melt butter or heat oil at the start, mix in flour to form a sort of doughy substance, then stir in milk and bring the whole thing to a boil. This has the disadvantage that you need to estimate the amounts quite well because you can't add any extra thickening agent afterwards and is a bit of a pain to do in the microwave, although I've done it. Alternatively, you could make a cheese sauce using this recipe by stirring in lots of grated cheese once the sauce has boiled, using that to thicken instead of flour or cornflour.
Also, technically you're meant to add the cornflour *while* the sauce boils, not after, but it still works to thicken this way and it costs less spoons. :)?
Tasting: when I learned how to make this on the hob, I was also taught that the enzymes in saliva destroy the cornflour-induced thickening and therefore if we get any saliva into the sauce it won't thicken afterwards. So if we don't want our sauce to be soup afterwards we use a two-spoon method of tasting - transfer the sauce from container to second spoon via first spoon and then taste it from second spoon. A few times I've been too lazy and there didn't seem to be any difference so I have no idea how necessary this really is, but it's what my mother told me~