Before I start posting about my culinary adventures, I thought I would start with some background on how I learned how to cook. I’ve never had any sort of cooking class, so all of my knowledge comes from either cookbooks or my mom. I decided I should learn how to cook after eating Nighthawk Steak ‘n’ Taters for 4 consecutive days as a freshman in college. My trips to the supermarket led me past the produce and meat and straight to the frozen foods. After my first trip back home that year, my mom showed me how to brown ground beef so I could make spaghetti. My next trip home I learned how to make Italian sausage pasta, which was essentially a more complicated spaghetti recipe. Once I had started to feel a little comfortable in front of the kitchen, I tried making some of the recipes I found at HEB. I survived on these simple recipes throughout college, and became somewhat proud of my ability to cook.

I became a little more adventurous in terms of what I wanted to cook during the summer between undergrad and grad school. I had a great job working on HgCdTe avalanche photodiodes at DRS Infrared Technologies, the company my dad works for. Each Friday we would stop by Central Market on the way home and pick up some fresh fish or steak, along with some other interesting ingredients. My mom and I would cook up a nice dinner, and I learned how to make some more complicated dishes. Once I moved out to California for grad school, I kept up the same tradition of trying to cook something more elaborate on the weekend. This led me to think of recipes in two different ways: weeknight and weekend. For weeknight meals, I want something that is not too difficult or expensive, and that also makes good leftovers. Weekend meals are more involved, and possibly use more expensive ingredients.

Since I was away from my parents, and thusly my mom’s cookbooks, I started building my own collection. One of the first ones I got was Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything . Most of the recipes aren’t too difficult, but he really does try to teach how to cook everything. If you want to cook more, his book is a great place to start. After my first year out here, I had tried a good variety of recipes, but still had no idea how to come up with stuff on my own. I was looking through Tom Colicchio’s Think Like a Chef (another great cookbook), and realized there was a lot to learn from a cookbook outside of just the recipes. I looked through some other books I had collected, and one of the common themes was mise en place. It’s a French expression that technically means “setting in place.” In a kitchen, it means you should have all your shit together before you start. Prep any ingredients you need for cooking, make sure you understand the entire recipe, and you have all the utensils you need within reach. So instead of hurriedly chopping an onion while burning a chicken breast, the onion is already chopped and in a bowl. If you have your “mise” properly organized, cooking becomes a lot easier. This concept is probably the thing that helped my cooking the most.

Now that I have written about how I got started with cooking, let me explain what I want to focus on with this blog. At first I thought it would be a neat way to document all the things I attempt to cook, and also provide me with a creative outlet for one of my hobbies. I also expect that I can cook better than a lot of my friends, and this blog could be a good way to teach them some cooking techniques and recipes. My plan is to highlight a recipe in each post with pictures and discuss what I liked and didn’t like about it, as well as tips on how to make that recipe a success. For now, here’s the first real recipe I made. I haven’t made it in quite some time, so I’m not sure if all the instructions make sense.

Italian Sausage Pasta

The “Mise” (Everything you should have in front of you before you start cooking)

4 links of Italian sausage

1 to 1 1/2 lbs. ground beef (the lean-ness depends on your personal taste)

1 jar of tomato sauce (I liked Clasico Spicy Red Pepper)

1 14 oz can of diced tomatoes, drained (open the can, then use the lid to drain most of the liquid)

1 yellow onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 box of penne pasta (I’m not sure of the weight, but a normal box size)

Salt (to taste, plus some for boiling the pasta)

Parmesan cheese for serving (The fresh stuff is infinitely better than the stuff in a can. Try fresh Parmesan and you’ll never go back)

A large saute pan for browning the meat and onions and making the sauce. As a warning, a 10″ pan may be a little small.

A saucepan for boiling the Italian sausages

A stock pot for boiling water, cooking the pasta, and combining everything together.

Directions

1. Fill a medium sauce pan about 2/3 of the way with water and bring to a boil. Add the Italian sausages and boil for about 8 minutes until cooked. Remove from the heat and let cool.

2. While the sausages are boiling, heat a large saute pan over medium high heat. Add the ground beef and cook until browned all over. Drain the fat that has collected, then add the onions and garlic and cook until the onions are translucent.

3. Bring a large pot of salted water (I use about a tablespoon of Kosher salt or a teaspoon of table salt) to a boil.

4. Add the tomato sauce and tomatoes to the saute pan. While the tomatoes are being heated, slice the Italian sausages somewhere between 1/8″ and 1/4″ thick. Add the sliced sausages to the saute pan and mix everything together. Cover the pan and lower the heat to low.

5. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook about 8 minutes or until the penne is al dente. Drain the pasta, the put the penne back into the large pot. Add the Italian sausage tomato sauce to the pasta, and mix everything together until well combined. Add salt to taste. Serve with some grated Parmesan cheese.

Some alternatives to Italian Sausage Pasta

If you want to make this spicier, there are a couple things you can do. First is cook about a 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes while cooking the onions and garlic. You can also use spicy Italian sausage or a spicy can of tomatoes. For olive lovers, try adding some black olives when adding the sausage into the sauce.