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Pasta and Why I Love...

Yesterday, I had the chance to cook pasta for my relatives. I should say, it was the product of a *ahem* experiment I did, a day after I came from Puerto Galera. I did mention that we cooked Fetuccine Carbonara (thanks Kim) when we were there, and I got the confidence to actually try and cook pasta. I never really did so before because I didn't know how to cook the friggin noodles. Now that I know how to cook the noodles (thanks to Kim again), I can experiment all I want.

So here are the ingredients:

1 white onion, chopped
1 head garlic, chopped
2 kalamansi (or if you have small lemons, better)
4-6 tomatoes (depends on the size, all finely chopped)
4 cherry tomatoes (squished)*
3 green bell peppers (chopped)
1/2 kg Spaghetti noodles
100 ml Olive Oil (preferrably Extra Virigin)
2 cans tuna flakes in oil
a couple of spring onions (chopped)
(enough salt, pepper)
parsley (finely chopped)*
oregano leaves (dried)*
cheese (cheddar or parmaesan, grated)

Procedure:
PASTA
1. Cook pasta. details: read the label on the back of the commercially available pack of pasta. If you don't understand how to do that, then have someone else do it for you. If there's no one else available, email this to someone who can. :D

SAUCE (?)
I don't really know if you can call it a sauce, but anyway...
1. Heat oil (from canned tuna flakes and Olive Oil) in a large pan on high heat.
2. Add garlic, and stir fry until the garlic slightly changes color. Sounds ala pobre, but really is just a base for flavoring the oil...
3. Pour in onions, tomatoes, and bell peppers, and stir until the onions turn transparent, and the peppers start looking edible. 3-5 minutes under medium heat will do the trick. Pour in juice right after the ingredients, and stir constantly to ease the flavor into the oil.
4. Turn down to low heat, and add the tuna. Stir until the tuna gets heated just enough, and changes a little in color. Salt and pepper to taste.
5. Either top the pasta with everything, or serve on the side. Add cheese as desired, and garnish with parsley.

(serves 4-6)

* -- optional

Now that's an oil based pasta, made from scratch by moi. I'm trying out another recipe in the near future, but to friends who want to have them made for them, ingredients cost around 300 pesos, 75 pesos per person. If you order pasta THIS GOOD in a restaurant, you'd pay around 150 pesos for 1 serving. You can do this at home, and I would appreciate comments and suggestions (although praises would be nice too). :D

Please lemme know if anybody has problems doing this, and if you use this recipe anywhere, I would appreciate a postcard of where you're from or a picture of people actually enjoying the dish. :D

I call this Spaghetti in Tuna Pepper Oil or simply Pasta du Michel.

For orders, please just drop me a line at mikhailberis [at] gmail.com.

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