Pasta alla Puttanesca

This is one of my favorite pasta dish. When I say favorite I mean that I used to make this a lot. I had since forgotten about it. Last weekend, feeling like having pasta for lunch. Since spaghetti and meat balls is out of the option now, I started looking at my recipe book for other pasta recipes and stumbled upon this one.

And it is so easy to make. The original recipe only calls for garlic and not onions, but I like onions so I added some.

Saute the onions until they look a bit wilted.

Then add garlic and red pepper flakes.

Continue sauteeing until the garlic is lightly golden.

Ma-Po Tofu with a twist and becoming a vegetarian

I am becoming a vegetarian. Ovo-lacto vegetarian because I'm still including eggs and dairy product in my diet. On the weekends when we go out to eat, I sometimes morphed into a pescetarian because I often order fish.

It all started about 2 years ago. After reading several articles by Michael Pollan on the NY Times's website (here and here). We really liked his philosophy "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

So we started adding more vegetables into our diet and it worked really well. Then we thought that maybe we should try to become vegetarian.

I lasted 2 days.

I was miserable. I didn't enjoy what I eat and I missed meat. But I think switching overnight was a big mistake. It was just too much. And especially since I didn't really know how and what to cook that doesn't include any form of meat.

Mark Bittman's Cassoulet

I always browse recipes and love trying something new. I borrowed the Food Matter's cookbook from the library last week.

I read the intro and am liking what Bittman wrote. He's promoting reducing meat and dairy intake and increasing vegetables in recipes, something that I've been doing for years already. And here it is, a cookbook that already does it for me. Plus all the recipes are already tested. Score!

For my 1st try from the book, I choose Cassoulet. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, doing the slow-cooked version, which means that I used dried beans and simmer them for an hour with the sausages.

Some modification that I made - intentionally or otherwise:

• I used 2 chicken sausages and 1 pork sausage.
• The recipe said to use 2 zucchini or 1 head of cabbage. I used both. Why not :).
• I used dry thyme and parsley instead of fresh.
• I forgot bay leaves  and cayenne pepper. Glad I forgot cayenne pepper as it has enough kick from the 2 spicy sausages.

Tasting impressions:
So good! The beans were tender and sweet and I love all the veggie in there. I've been bringing it to lunch the last 2 days and looked forward to eating it (okay, maybe I'm also feeling bored at work this week). It's the perfect lunch for the winter!

You can find the recipe here on Bittman's website.