Recreating the Winning Pasta
Days after the Century Corned Tuna Bloggers’Cook Off, I was still thinking about our winning pasta. I was replaying in my mind and air-tasting the delectable Asian-inspired dish. So when I went to SM Makati, I bought the ingredients that I didn’t have and headed home excitedly.
I went online to check the recipe, then started measuring – approximating and assuming the correct measurements for each ingredient. Or so I thought.
All the ingredients were ready, the pasta almost cooked, and I – excited to start cooking the pasta sauce. The first few steps were fine. Until I got to the liquids. Apparently, I over-estimated the measurements and put in too much white wine and soy sauce, which made the whole thing taste sour and salty. Too sour and too salty. I immediately
went for the only remedy I know: add water and let it simmer. When it did not taste too sour and too salty anymore (just sour and salty), I decided to add in a big can of Century Corned Tuna. My initial ingredients list included two small tall cans of Century Corned Tuna Chili.
Recreating the dish was not as simple as I thought it would be! I blame it on the white wine and the soy sauce. Blame it on the miso too! The miso that I was able to purchase from SM was so different from the one that we used at the cook-off. And I was looking for that very distinct taste in the pasta sauce which I knew was brought on by the miso.
After several minutes of mixing and simmering, I decided to call it quits with the sauce and that no matter how it tasted, I’d stand up for it. If people didn’t like how it tasted, then let them be. And oh, I added some rosemary to the sauce right before taking it out of the stove.
I left the pasta and the sauce, and a plated serving on the dining table for people at home to grab some if they felt like it. My mom, without instruction nor favor, took the plated serving and ate it. I was surprised when she told me she liked it. I asked her again. Seriously, I knew my “disaster recreation dish” didn’t really taste that good, but I was glad my mom liked it.
I can never be a good cook… unless I have a beautiful kitchen and I have all the ingredients I need, and I have all the things that need chopping, slicing and dicing, etc. done for me. In short, I can never be a good cook nor a good chef, but I can be a fantabulous cooking show host! Now that’s a good shift in career.
