Easy Pasta Recipe

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Disclaimer: San Remo was kind enough to send me some of their artisan pasta to try out for myself.

A while back I noted that San Remo had released a range of artisan pasta. I’ve now had an opportunity to try this pasta for myself and I’m pleased to report that it is definitely a cut above the average dried pasta.

Andy and I like our pasta cooked quite differently. In my opinion, he likes his pasta cooked too much, and he thinks I like it underdone. This means that dried pasta needs to be able to handle a fair bit of cooking without going soggy and claggy. And trust me – there are plenty available that do!

We tried out the San Remo casarecce – short lengths of twisted pasta which hold a finer sauce really well. I was impressed before the pasta even hit the pot because the packet was easy to open without resorting to scissors or ending up with massive tears in it or pasta all over the floor. I know this sounds trivial, but the standard plastic packaging used for most food stuffs seems to defeat me.

Sauce wise I made a very simple tomato based sauce. For the two of us, I finely sliced one onion and cooked that gently with a few cloves of garlic. I added two roughly chopped rashers of bacon and one (very hot!) finely chopped chilli. When the bacon was starting to look cooked, I added a tin of crushed tomatoes, a sprinkling of oregano and a splash of white wine. I let that all cook down for a while before adding a chopped red capsicum. I finished the sauce off with some beef stock that I had lying around in the fridge.

The beef stock was definitely the masterstroke, as it gave the sauce a lovely depth of flavour. Given the elements of this sauce, if I hadn’t been using up what was in the fridge I would have opted for either chicken or vegetable stock.

So – the sauce was excellent (of course), and easy and all done in hardly any time at all. One thing to note – when using tinned tomatoes I do find it a good idea to let the tomatoes cook for a little while. Not only does this reduce and thicken their juices but it also cooks out the slightly weird ‘raw’ taste that you sometimes get with tinned tomatoes.

The pasta, with its twisty shape and little crevices, held on to the sauce really well. It didn’t collapse from a little extra cooking, and I felt that it still had a good bite to it. It also definitely tasted better than the average dried pasta (and also better than many ‘fresh’ pastas available).

One note: San Remo clearly thinks us South Australians are big eaters! The packet says that a serving size is 125g (so four servings in a 500g packet). I used 100g per person and we still had a very generous amount of pasta left over. Unless you’re very, very hungry you might want to adjust the serving size appropriately. Of course, if you don’t, you’ll have some left over for lunch!

Un Caffe Bar, Hallett Cove

- Alex 1 Comment

 

 

This café has now closed.

date of visit: Saturday 22 June 2012

I work on the premise that venues are either open or not. If a venue is open and a customer walks in that customer gets treated the same as a paying customer at a different time of day.

I daresay you can guess where this is heading. We turned up at Un Caffe Bar in the Hallett Cove Shopping Centre somewhere between 3 and 4pm on a Saturday. I know this isn’t prime time, by any stretch of the imagination, and I know, from having worked in retail, that people who turn up close to closing are really pretty irritating. However, the Hallett Cove branch of Un Caffe Bar is open til 5 so you’d have thought our visit would not pose a problem.

Not so – the baby and Andy ensconced themselves at a table and I headed over to order coffee and cake. There were two staff – one of whom was chatting to some friends, and showing no sign of getting a wriggle on to attend to any other customers (that would have been me). The other member of staff was busy making coffees for these friends. To her credit, she did apologise a couple of times. Unfortunately, short of reminding her colleague of their core business in a rather public fashion, I appreciated that there was little she could do.

Order finally placed, I sat down to be informed that the high chair was ‘filthy’ (Andy’s exact words) and so we began our wait. Our order was for 2 coffees, a babycino, a biscuit and slice of lemon curd cheesecake. The wait was far longer than you’d expect and when our goodies turned up we were short a biscuit. Because the staff were ‘busy’ (which means that they were standing by the coffee machine, chatting and eating some of that same cheesecake) I had to go up to the counter to ask after my biscuit.

I doubt I need to go into any detail about exactly what I think of that level of service.

On the plus side, the coffees were definitely passable, the cheesecake was tasty and I was impressed that I was asked if we wanted marshmallows with the babycino. But, having parted with $17 and being treated so poorly I doubt we’ll be heading back.

The Hallett Cove Shopping Centre has more than its fair share of places to have coffee – and I know from personal experience that one rates as very good (I’ll go again and then write it up … I’m a martyr in that way …). So there’s just no need for anyone to put themselves through slow, shoddy service.

Un Caffe Bar on Urbanspoon

Cafe Balthazar

- Alex 1 Comment

Balthazar

date of visit: Saturday 30 June 2012

So, I used to have a cat called Balthazar – I was naming cats after sizes of Champagne bottle (prententious? not at all – the current cats are named after physicists …). And when I spotted the newly opened Café Balthazar on Fiveash Drive I wanted to visit purely on that basis alone. Despite the massive renovations of the complex (now called Pasadena Green), Café Balthazar, which is very black, silver and sparkly, is easily visible from the road.

We used a trip to do a weekly shop as an excuse to check out the café. After a particularly unpleasant half hour or so in the supermarket, I was more than eager to have a sit down and a coffee and cake.

As I was dropping the shopping in the car, Andy was in charge of my coffee and cake ordering. This meant I had a coconut macaroon tart (yum!) and a cafe latte, which is my standard coffee ordering. However, Café Balthazar offers the discerning coffee drinker quite a choice, including filter coffee (yawn) and siphon coffee. I was pretty ticked off that I missed out on the siphon coffee because, as far as I know, I’ve never had it before. That – and the kit for producing it looks pretty cool.  I guess that’s an excuse for another visit …

The cafe latte was good – no reservations at all about it. I see that the coffee also gets the thumbs up over at Coffee Snobs. The coconut macaroon tart (which, judging by the broad selection of cakes, is probably bought in rather than made in house) was good too although I thought that the pastry was a little bit thick. Andy’s coffee éclair looked really tasty and must have been because I didn’t get to try any.

The baby’s high chair matched the décor (black and much more stylish than he’s used to!), and both the babycino and my tart got the seal of approval. The café seems very family friendly – there were plenty of other babies and children around (but, thankfully, NOT running amok).

In a wise move, the café also has an ice cream counter which opens directly into the supermarket entrance. I can imagine that in summer they’ll be doing a roaring business there!

Café Balthazar also does proper lunches and the food I spotted on other tables looked like good, solid servings.

The people of Pasadena should be thrilled to have this café on their doorstep. I always get the impression there’s not too much in Pasadena (I’m happy to be corrected) and the busy, happy vibe of Café Balthazar can only be a plus.

Balthazar Cafe on Urbanspoon