Bastardized Pasta Salad recipe...

Everyone's been asking me about my recipes for stuff like the Bastardized Pasta Salad (again I can never seem to fully separate my palate & affinity for Mediteranean meets Southeast Asia). SO...since I don't really measure and kind of gamble with portions & ingredients, here's what I used:

Bizzastardized Pasta Recipe!

• GIANT corkscrew pasta (fusilloni)
• heaps of basil, one entire bulb of garlic (~10 bulbs? hahaaah)
• sliced half a red onion
• seasoned Athenos feta cheese (garlic & herb says ze packaging)
• non pareile capers (which I guess means having no equal--but just means it's from the South of France)
  
• halved cherry tomatoes (1 basket)
  
• half a lemon (maybe a little more)
• ....and here's the good stuffs--> FISH SAUCE!!! ^_^ OH YEAAAAAH.
  

Fizzzziiiish. Sizzzzaaauce. THAT's RIGHT--you don't even KNOW ese! ;) ...btw, I really prefer using Phu Quoc fish sauce over the other brands--the crab one is good, i can't remember others. MEH. I'll ask Mama Ly.

Direzione!

Start out sauteeing the giant-ness of minced garlic bulb in a relatively thick layer of oil (just like making the garlic & oil pasta except put on low heat after the garlic gets a little color, throw in the tomatoes, squirt in the lemon juice & fish sauce (i pretty much eyeball it all since I use lemon juice, fish sauce, and garlic a lot so I just...have an intrinsic gauge for what it'll be like I can't describe =/). I also like the tomatoes a little raw still in most the crap I cook but I like to bleed it a little (per se) cuz I guess the glycopene in the tomato makes the sauce congeal a little, and thicken the "sauce" and coat better.
Mix it all around a little, and if you want, throw in the cooked pasta (straight from the pot with a little of the water from boiling too it's still yummy) and mix around. OR, u can saute the red onions before throwing in the pasta but I like it with a little kick and purity in its own flavor in being a little uncooked and whatnot.
If you need to, add in a little more olive oil to coat the pasta, salt & season as u will (i only used pepper, the fish sauce adds a diff kind of salty flavor), and more fish sauce! but not too much b/c you'll get the savory & bite from the capers and cheese too so keep it on the bland side. I also don't add the sliced/shredded basil until the end but I add a little in the beginning to let it wilt and add some flavor. Mix in the other half of the shredded basil, mix mix mix!

Plate, break the feta over the pasta, scatter some capers over, stick some sprigs of fresh basil in it and call it a day.

Birthday Scampi...

happy birfday to moi! (cake from billy's bakery on 22nd & 8th--i lobe it!) 3 layer chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream in lavender (u can't tell but it's a pretty lavender :) with pastel green, white, and yellow sprinkles in a gradation of each color. u likey the comma splice no? ;)

so for bday dinner, I "made" shrimp scampi with my spin on garlic and oil pasta which is just with tomatoes and basil sauteed in garlic w/fish sauce. Yeah--u thought I was lying about using fish sauce in everything didn't you!! *shakes fist!*

I can't rave enough about using fresh basil (fresh dill, fresh herbs blahblah) enough garlic to stink for days. Basil rocks my socks. Basil and dill. SERIOUSLY. I also like arugula--I never took to bitter produce or spicy/hot foods, but man, u can really taste the diff and I eat spicy selectively now.

Back to the bday dinner food--I put "made" scampi in quotations because the scampi was frozen shrimp from Costco :) It used to be my fave b/c it was all seasoned and whatnot and just fantastically *salty* to my taste per se with a really robust flavor. (I also never understood that phrasing, robust, until lately anyway so it's just one of those things that you can't fully get conceptually until you really experience that taste.)

ANYWAY, I have to drain crazy amounts of butter every time I made it. Either way, it was a little disappointing that they altered the scampi to be so bland and buttery but great in that it made the tomato-basil-fish-sauce aspect really pop out more. I was sparing in the fish sauce. :P