So as a college kid living away from my parents, I sadly no longer have the luxury of being fed by my parents. For this reason, I have had to learn to cook on a smaller budget than I would like--especially since I love to cook--but I've been doing pretty well for myself. The most difficult, I've found, is the whole idea of dinner parties. I would love to have more of them, but, tragically, I have classes, homework, and a job (not to mention a thesis), so putting a lot of time into these things is not quite so easy. To make things more difficult, there's the problem of money. I can cook for myself well, and relatively cheaply, and it certainly helps that I'm small and don't eat a ton, but cooking for larger groups of people can be a little trickier. Here are my latest discoveries:
1. Have other people bring stuff--wine, bread, salad, dessert, etc, and delegate each course/item out.
2. Pasta is always good. If you make pasta, you really don't need to have anything else. I mean, you can certainly add a salad or some bread, but then again, you've got the
carbs already in the pasta, and toss in some veggies and you've got the salad part basically covered.
3. And on the pasta note, here are some favorite recipes:
Pick your favorite kind of pasta and start cooking it (in boiling, salted water until you can throw it against a wall and it sticks OR it tastes right). To determine how much you need, check the box for portions, or think a big handful of dry pasta per person. For sauce you have several options:
a. Get some of that
Safeway brand (
cheap!) vodka sauce (or tomato sauce but I don't like it as much)--about a jar/box of pasta or a little less. Start heating it on the stove after the pasta's been cooking for a little bit. Add salt, pepper, whatever herbs you like (especially basil and oregano), maybe a few splashes of beef broth, some canned tomatoes if you'd like, and mix everything together. To kick this up, cook some spicy sausage in a bit of olive oil and cut it up (you can rip it apart while it's raw but this is difficult and messy and you gotta wash your hands afterwards) and add it to the sauce a few minutes before serving. Grate
Parmesan or whatever cheese you like on top. *if you have vegetarian/kosher friends, just keep it on the side and add it after
b. Cook your pasta, when done, pour out water/drain, return to pan, add enough cream to moisten all the pasta but not so much that a lot pools on the bottom (or milk would probably work, we just had cream on hand and it looked more exciting), chopped up fresh basil if you have it, dry if not, salt, pepper, rosemary, stir all together and then grate cheese on top (preferably something stronger). *Add cooked chicken maybe?
c. Slice cherry tomatoes in half and place in a large bowl. Add olive oil, red wine vinegar, finely chopped red onions, salt, pepper, fresh basil to coat all tomatoes with a little extra but not so that it gets soupy on the bottom. Let marinate while you cook the pasta. Once pasta is cooked, add the pasta to the whole tomato
mixture and toss. Grate some cheese on top if desired.
