Spicy Cheesy Spaghetti

Look! Another spaghetti! What a surprise (I hope you see the sarcasm). Actually, that is the main reason I'm posting this dish. It was surprisingly interesting.

Remember that spaghetti I was supposed to make two days ago? Well, I finally got that sauce from Safeway. What's funny about spaghetti is that I never make the same spaghetti. It always changes with what I have in the fridge and spice rack. This time around, this is how it turned out:

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 package of spaghetti noodles
• 1 large bottle of Ragu Super Chunky Mushroom
  
• 1/2 bottle of spicy Jufran (banana ketchup)
  
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1/2 large lemon
• 1 1/2 cups Monterrey jack cheese, grated
  
• 1/4 of large onion, chopped
  
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp chopped pickled jalapenos
  
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
  
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp garlic salt
  
• 2 tsp black pepper
  
• Parmesan cheese for garnish

Directions

Bring hot water to boiling in a large pot. Put in spaghetti noodles and follow package directions. Once cooked, drain the noodles in colander and put back into pot with the heat off.

Bring skillet with olive oil to high heat. Add garlic and onions and cook for 1 minute to unleash flavors. Add ground beef and cook for 5 minutes, or until fully browned.

Add ground beef to large pot along with Ragu, Jufran, Monterrey jack cheese, butter, and jalapenos. Cook on medium-high heat and stir occasionally until cheese and butter are fully melted. Add soy sauce, lemon, sugar, salt, and black pepper. The measurements of the last five ingredients are just estimates so add in cautiously and adjust to personal taste.

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I would say this is one of the best spaghetti's I made and I don't even know why. Maybe I just got lucky with the proportions or there is something about this recipe that just gives it the wow factor. Like I said I am normally never able to recreate the same spaghetti each time, but I hope I can with this. Some people are caught off guard by the soy sauce, and I was the same way when I saw my friend's sister put it into her spaghetti long time ago. But I just love the flavor it brings. Also, I'm glad I added the lemon and small amount of butter. Some other things I added to live up to the name: jalapenos, Monterrey jack cheese, spicy Jufran, Parmesan cheese. And all others are pretty typical for my spaghetti's. I usually use Prego but Ragu was a worthy substitute. Things I wished I put in were mushrooms and sweet bell peppers. I guess that's why I got the chunk mushroom sauce and added jalapenos.

Disclaimer: if you make this and it doesn't come out as good as I am describing, I'll have to go your place and do it myself because I normally don't cook my experimental stuff with measurements. I just kinda toss in certain things until it tastes good, hahaha.

Cabinet Stir-Fry

I'm going to try documenting more of my experiments because someone called me out. So here is one.

Starting off, last night was a failure. Despite planning with my Google Task list at work all day, nothing was working out. But I'll just talk about my food failures.

At work, I wrote everything I needed from Safeway with everything I was sure that I had at home. I wanted to keep it simple with a simple spaghetti. Mind you, this is the first time I've cooked for myself at home since Thanksgiving because Aaron and I decided that we didn't want to buy loads of Costco food and have it go bad over the break. The spaghetti sauce that I thought was not there! Great, that failed. So then I decided to make chicken stir-fry. I ran out of soy sauce! When did that happen?! And how can I make a stir-fry without soy sauce? Sesame oil, where are you? You are gone too?! I guess I just have the worst memory because everything that I thought would be in abundance in my kitchen were not there!

Okay, so what do I have that would be useful for a stir-fry: hoisin sauce, seasoned rice vinegar, Chinese black vinegar, and Sriracha. Alright, let's do this.

Ingredients

• 1 tsp unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp garlic, minced
  
• Handful of green beans, chopped to 2-inch pieces
  
• Handful of baby carrots, chopped in quarters, vertically
  
• 1 lb of boneless chicken breast
• 3 tbsp Hoisin sauce
• 1 tbsp seasoned rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar
• 1 tbsp peanut butter
  
• 2 tbsp Sriracha (optional)
  
• Salt and black pepper for seasoning
• 1 cup of rice
  

Directions

Before anything, put the rice in the rice cooker.

Chop the chicken into small 1-inch pieces and mix into a bowl with the hoisin sauce, rice vinegar, and black vinegar. Let it marinate for about 5 minutes to coat.

Place a pan with the olive oil and butter on high heat. Once the butter melts, place the chicken and the marinade into the pan. Cook for about 2 minutes, or until there is no more visible pink on the outside. After that, toss in the carrots and green beans. Cover the pan and let it cook over medium heat. After about 3 minutes, toss in the garlic and stir and let it stand on medium heat for another 3 minutes, or until the vegetables appear to have softened. Once this is done, put the peanut butter into the pan and let it melt and coat over the stir-fry. Serve over steamed rice.

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I remember trying to make beef and broccoli at the Marriott with the ingredients and it was a horrible mess. The beef was tough and the broccoli was sourly over-seasoned. Apparently the combination of the hoisin sauce, rice vinegar, and black vinegar was a perfect proportion. It wasn't overly sour. But what really topped it off was the peanut butter. It was random because I wanted to get a drink from the fridge and I saw the unopened peanut butter. And I thought to myself, "Hey, this could work. It would taste Thai-inspired." And it did! I wouldn't call this my best dish, but for what I was expecting, I was shocked beyond belief. Even more so than my Pico de Gallo Spaghetti, hahaha. It was a different kind of stir-fry. It was more on the sweet side, but I enjoyed it. I definitely have ideas to fix it up. I'm not even sure if soy sauce or the sesame oil would be a good addition to it, but I'll try it out. Maybe I'll add some actual nuts like cashews or peanuts. Definitely more Sriracha. Maybe ginger? I'm not sure. And I think I want to try it out with shrimp next time. But wow, it has opened my eyes to new possibilities for stir-fry and I'm excited!