Cook and Brew.

On New Year’s eve, I was tasked to cook my own version of Carbonara. Actually, my sister shared this recipe but I slightly deviated from the original ingredients. My in laws and my dear son loved my cooking dearly that they’re asking me to cook it again this weekend. Save for the ingredients preparation, total cooking time is fairly fast. It’s just easy to do but be warned though that this isn’t absolutely one of those diets for quick weight loss.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 Onion – chopped
1 whole Garlic – chopped
Mushroom (1 can, sliced)
Beef cubes (1 box)
Nestle cream (1 can)
Cream of mushroom (1 can, campbell’s)
Evaporada Milk (1 can, alpine)
Cheese (1 box, grated)
Fetuccini/tricolor (spiral) pasta
Bacon or crispy fried Maling or luncheon meat
Butter

1. saute garlic and onion in butter
2. add on the mushroom
3. beef cubes
4. add on the cream of mushroom
5. stir constantly, under low fire
6. add: nestle cream and evap milk
7. add the grated cheese with continous mixing
8. boil the pasta (put butter to prevent pasta fromsticking)
9. fry bacon w/o oil (til crunchy)

serving: top on the bacon or you can mix it with the sauce

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This is an Italian phrase that has something to do more commonly with pastas and it means “To the tooth” or “To the bite”. Often, this can be read at the cooking instructions of pasta on their plastic labels. There are also a number of restaurants worldwide with such name.

By Al dente, it means pasta is cooked just firm to the bite. Tender but not mushy. Never crunchy. The pasta will still offer some resistance when being chewed.

The term is also occasionally used in reference to cooking vegetables, such as green beans, but should be interpreted as cooking them just until they lose their raw taste, as a way to avoid overcooking them.