Hope You're Hungry

I hope you're hungry. Because if you're not, you will be right after looking through this blog. But in all seriousness... the original purpose of this blog (and actually its current purpose as well) is simply to document all of the awesome recipes I've learned since I started cooking that aren't in the cookbooks that I own. This includes recipes that I've created myself, recipes that have been passed down to me from my family, and recipes that I've learned from friends/other chefs. It's more of a way for me to remember recipes and to be able to refer back to this if I forget how to make them, but it's written in a way that pretty much anyone can follow it quite easily and recreate all of the dishes that are shown. There will also be some celebrity appearances (aka contributions from chef friends of mine) so stay tuned and stay hungry!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Fettucine Alfredo

This is a repost of a recipe I put on facebook:

This is probably the best dish I've eaten since I've gotten to Australia (which isn't saying much, but it's still really good). Credit goes to my buddy Chayapol, who taught me the recipe and is a bad ass chef who hopes one day to start his own restaurant. This note is partly for all of you guys, but also for myself since the dish was so damn good I want to remember how to make it next time. Oh yeah it's also EXTREMELY simple.

Ingredients:
- Flour
- Eggs
- Roma tomatoes (We used two... the amount of this dish we made was enough for two people but we could've had a little more. I was still hungry after I finished eating)
- Garlic
- Olive oil
- Salt
- Pepper
- Milk
- Butter
- White Wine
- Chicken
- Any kind of herbal seasoning you want, we used "mixed herbs" seasoning from the grocery store which is basically just basil, oregano, garlic, shit like that all mixed together

COOKING THE CHICKEN

This is the first thing you have to do. We used two chicken breasts. Cover them in salt and pepper and place each of them in a ziplock bag. Then fill a big pot full of water and heat it to 60 degrees. It's crucial to make sure that it stays at 60 degrees... we used a little 10 dollar thermometer to monitor the temperature. If you go over 65 degrees or so you're fucked. Anyway put the sealed ziplock bags of chicken into the water, cover the pot, and let it cook for like an hour. Cooking it this way makes the texture of the chicken AMAZING... it's super moist and tastes just incredible.

chicken cooking

While the chicken is cooking...

PREPARING THE PASTA

You're going to want to get started on making the pasta. Let me tell you something... freshly made pasta is about a MILLION times better than pasta you'd get at the store. It's worth every bit of work you put into making it, and it's really pretty simple. First scoop about 4/5 of a cup of flour into a big bowl, and then add one raw egg. Just mix it up with your hands until you have a nice, sticky dough. If it's too dry you can add a little bit of water. I think the word for making the dough is kneading? Anyway you'll need to knead for a couple minutes before you get the dough right. You'll want to make more dough but it's easiest to do it one egg and 4/5 of a cup of flour at a time.

Once you get the dough ready, roll it out until it's real thin. You might want to put a little flour onto whatever surface you roll it on so it doesn't stick. Ideally you'll get it into a big flat oval but it doesn't really matter. Once it's rolled out and it's nice and thin, roll it up into a cylinder and then cut it like this:

cutting the rolled up dough

After cutting it up, unroll the pieces and place them in a bowl.

fresh, uncooked pasta. smells amazing!

After preparing all of the pasta, boil some water, put salt in the water, and then cook the pasta. Make sure to keep an eye on the chicken at all times and make sure the temperature is 60 degrees.

PREPARING TOMATOES/GARLIC/OLIVE OIL

This part is easy. Just dice the roma tomatoes, cut up the garlic, and put them in a bowl together. Put some olive oil in there too... amount just depends on how much you want.

YUM.

PREPARING SAUCE

First, cook some white wine in a pot. Doesn't really matter how much, a couple shots worth is probably more than enough. Add some butter. A table spoon or two is enough. Add an equal amount of flour... maybe a little more. Once the butter melts and starts to brown a little bit, add some milk. The amount you add really depends on how much sauce you want to make but look at these pics for a general idea. Keep cooking it and stirring it and let it thicken a little.. if you want it thicker, just add more flour. Keep it boiling for a bit and it should be done real fast.

sauce cooking

You should be keeping an eye on the chicken and on the pasta at all times. By now the pasta should definitely be done cooking. Take the chicken out (remember takes 40 min to an hour to complete) and cut it up and add it to the sauce. Drain the water from the pasta and then pour the sauce over it. Then add the tomato/garlic/olive oil mixture on top of that.

Enjoy!!!! This dish was so amazingly good that I'm actually inspired to put effort into cooking from this day forward... more notes like this will be coming soon.

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