Penne arrabbiata

Quite a few people liked this recipe, so I guess I have to publish it here. Classic Italian food - beautiful and simple!


Penne Arrabbiata

Ingredients
3 garlic cloves
Olive oil
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 packs (450g each) chopped tomatoes
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tbsp chopped fresh basil
1-3 tsp chilli paste or similar spicy product, amount to taste (1 makes it a little spicy, 3 makes it genuinely fiery)
60 ml white wine
Salt
1 medium-size (400-500g) bag of penne pasta

Directions
1. Chop one garlic clove while heating 1 tsp oil in a wok
2. Add garlic, cook 30 seconds. Add tomato paste, cook and stir 2 minutes. Then add chopped tomatoes and the bay leaf. Heat on medium heat for 30 minutes, but don't let it boil too much. It also makes sense to put a good amount of water on the stove now, dependent on your stove and it's speed in boiling water. At the 25-minute mark, start cooking the pasta.
3. Now slice the rest of the garlic and heat oil in a small pan. Also, chop basil and parsley now, unless you have done it already. When the oil's hot, first throw in the garlic, cook 30 sec, add herbs and chilli, cook 30 sec and then add te wine. Again, 30 seconds does it. Throw this mix in the tomato sauce.
4. Boil it for 5 minutes, add a little salt. Then throw in the al dente-cooked pasta and mix about. Serve decorated with parsley, basil and/or parmesan cheese.

Originally this is a vegetarian recipe, however, if you want to add meat, throw in some bacon or salami!

Tomato tantrum

I cooked a little menu to celebrate the holidays the other day:

Tomato soup
Tomato and onion salad
Pork kassler with sweet pepper sauce
Blueberry waffles

My original intention was to just do the salad and the pork, but because I happened to have some stuff around that could make a tomato soup, I prepared one for a starter, and it happened to come out quite good.
Originally, I just did it from what I had around, but I tried to make an usable recipe for it. I haven't tried it though, but it's quite close to what I used and that turned out good. The tomato and onion salad is an old favourite of mine.

I might try writing up some recipes for the sweet pepper sauce and the blueberry waffles as well, but I don't have any now :( Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of them, I'll try to take some the next time I cook these recipes. So, here go the tomato recipes:

Tomato soup

1 tomato
200 grams of chopped tomatoes (half pack)
1 small tin of tomato purée
Half bag sun-ripened tomatoes
3 tsp red and green pesto
1 tsp chilli (or spicy tomato sauce)
30 ml white wine
250 ml water
Black pepper
Salt
15g corn starch
Olive oil

1. Put the water in a medium-sized kettle and heat to relatively warm (steaming, not boiling). Meanwhile, cut up the tomato and the sun-ripened tomatoes to slim strips.
2. Add chopped tomatoes, the cut tomato and purée. Heat more.
3. Heat the oil in a small pan until it's quite hot. Then quickly fry the sun-ripened tomatoes and add one tsp of both pestos, stir and add a little white wine. Boil the tomatoes in the wine until the wine can't be seen and add the tomatoes into the kettle.
4. Add the rest of the white wine, the pestos and the chilli. Allow to boil a few minutes while mixing the corn starch into a bit of water. Add the solution into the soup while stirring and let boil for a while. If your soup seems too watery, add more starch solution or if it seems thick, a little water.
5. Either pour the soup into a mixer or use a hand mixer to obtain desired level of chunkiness.
6. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Tip! The soup should be decorated with fresh basil when served! And by altering the thickness with corn starch, it can also be used as pasta sauce!

Tomato and onion salad

3 tomatoes
1 sweet onion
3 sundried tomatoes (preferably in oil, tastes better)
Black pepper
Salt
Sugar
Olive oil

1. Slice the tomatoes to either to quarter or half a circle and the onion to slim strips.
2. Put the veg to a medium-size bowl (one that you can shake the salad in)
3. Flavour the salad, shaking between the incredients: First, olive oil, then, pepper, then salt and then sugar. The correct amount of pepper is so that you can see some pepper everywhere, the same goes for olive oil, sugar and salt should be added gradually to taste.
4. Evenly divide the salad on three small plates and decorate each plate with a sundried tomato.