Project Monsary was initiated yesterday afternoon to commemorate my monsary with Melody. I cooked pasta with roast beef and razor clams for our lunner (lunch/dinner as opposed to brunch). Razor Roast Fusilli is the official designation I gave the dish – not very romantic, but it kinda rhymes. 😉
You will need:
Continental Creamy Bacon Carbonara Pasta and Sauce
Fortune Razor Clams
Libby’s Roast Beef (“Great for Burritos”)
Absolut Vanilia
Wall’s Viennetta Kurma (dates) ice cream
New readers of sixthseal.com might be wondering why there’s always alcohol involved in my cooking posts – the rational is simple, it’s better to drink and cook than drink and drive. 😉
You might need to get a mixer as well, I forgot that not everyone is an alcoholic and drinks it neat and straight from the bottle like me. 😉
The Continental Creamy Bacon Carbonara is a ready mix packet of pasta with the fusilli and (powdered) sauce in the packet. It’s kinda like the Italian version of ramen (our instant noodles) – just add water (and milk). I also forgot about getting milk and butter for the pasta, so it’s a good thing I manage to scavenge some from the fridge at home.
I also couldn’t find the automatic can opener so I had to use a manual one. We started up by opening the can of Libby’s Roast Beef, which comes parboiled and steam roasted in gravy.
I have to admit that Melody’s skillz in using a manual can opener is much better than mine. Exhibit A above shows the can she opened.
Exhibit B here shows the one I did. I’m a “shortest distance between two points is a straight line” kind of guy and I guess it manifests itself in all aspects of my life…including opening tinned food. 😉
The razor clams were drained from the brine in the can and placed in an appropriate receptacle. You don’t need to cook the tinned razor clams, it’s ready to eat.
This is Libby’s Roast Beef, which comes in nice, huge chunks complete with gravy. You have to heat it over a saucepan before serving, but it’s best to do it when the pasta is almost cooked so it’ll still be warm when served.
I also didn’t have a measuring cup and this is where Melody’s pragmatic brain comes into play – she counted the columns on a standard 500 ml bottle of mineral water and told me where I should pour up to.
The recipe calls for 125 ml of reduced fat milk (it’s a good thing I have low fat milk in the fridge since I neglected to RTFM while shopping for the cooking project)…
…and 310 ml of water. I just mixed the two together in the mineral water bottle (which doubles as a not-very-accurate measuring cup) for easier handling.
The land of milk and honey, I mean, water. I added more milk and less water since I want it to be creamier and also coz I’m not sure “reduced fat milk” is a synonym for “low fat milk”. 😉
The recipe also calls for “salt reduced polyunsaturated table spread”. Jesus Christ, why can’t you just say BUTTER! 😉
It requires a teaspoon of the “salt reduced polyunsaturated table spread” (Continental must have very high regards for the English comprehension standard of their consumers) and I could not for the life of me find a teaspoon in the entire house. It’s nowhere to be found. There is no (tea)spoon.
Melody teaches me agaration.
The results of camwhoring while estimating a teaspoon of butter:
1. Butter starts slipping from knife
2. Cell phone falls into butter when mouth opens to communicate
3. Cell phone gets sticky
4. Butter drops to the floor
Anyway, after the mess was cleaned up, the bottle with the water and milk is poured into a saucepan and the butter (margarine, actually) added into the mixture.
I set my timer for 8 minutes…
…and poured the Continental Creamy Bacon Carbonara mix into the saucepan. The saucepan was put on low heat and stirred occasionally.
The roast beef should be stir fried in a wok at the 5-minute point to ensure the chunks are nicely heated up before the pasta is al dente.
This is Melody with matching Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse plates for our pasta extravaganza.
The pasta was done at the 9-minute mark – apparently I put in too much liquid and it needed more time to coagulate with the low heat that I was putting it on.
The pasta was heaped onto the plate and the roast beef chunks added in on the side before the razor clams is mixed into the pasta. The packaging states that it serves four (4) but Melody and I didn’t even find it filling for two!
This is what the dish looks like when it’s done. The hot pasta will heat up the razor clams so it will be warm and appetizing. 🙂
Here is a macro shot of Razor Roast Fusilli – it tastes more tempting that it sounds. Melody loved it and so did I.
This is what we had for dessert – it’s the limited edition Wall’s Viennetta Kurma (dates) ice cream. It’s only available during Hari Raya Puasa since dates are traditionally eaten during the breaking of fast.
It tasted delicious and rounded up a great meal. We shared the ice cream and finished it in one sitting. There are dates in the dessert ice cream and it tastes great with Absolut Vanilia.
I love cooking together with Melody and it was a great Monthsary together.
Muaks! I love you dear! =D
