A Delicious Birthday

My birthday was last Sunday, and a few days before, a few of my friends asked what I wanted to do to celebrate. After nearly 6 weeks of eating at the dining halls, I decided that the best way to celebrate would be to cook some real food.

So on Sunday morning, my friend Hannah and I left for Publix with no idea of what we were going to make. My parents had given me 50 dollars to do something for my birthday, so we had a fairly flexible budget. The thing that restricted our choices the most was our cooking equipment. We knew that we had a kitchen with a stove in Towers, and Hannah had borrowed two pans from a friend, a large skillet and a 6 quart pot. We wandered through the meat section of Publix looking for inspiration. Eventually I saw some hot italian sausage, which reminded me of a dish I used to make at home, penne with sausage in tomato cream sauce. We agreed that this would be the perfect thing, and set out collecting ingredients. Once we had everything, we jumped on the grocery shuttle back to campus.

When we got back to campus, Hannah went to her dorm to bake the cake, leaving me alone with the ingredients for the pasta. I'm very comfortable with the recipe at home, but working in our kitchen in Towers made it a challenge. I learned that electric stoves take a very long time to change temperature, making browning meat and sauteing onions and garlic much less forgiving. Managing the meal with only two pots was a serious challenge. First, I made the sauce in the 6 quart pot, sauteing onions and garlic, adding canned crushed tomatoes (which I had to open with a pocket knife and a hammer, which was an adventure) and herbs. I then removed the sausage from their skins, browning the meat in the saute pan. I drained the meat and added it to the pot, simmering it for about half an hour before transferring the whole mixture back into the saute pan, clearing out the pot to cook the pasta. Cooking the pasta was another challenge, because I needed to cook 3 pounds of pasta (we were feeding 9 people), and you can't do that in a 6 quart pot. So I cooked the first two pounds of pasta in the first wave, then drained it and set it aside. That was difficult because we had nowhere to store it while the last pound of pasta cooked, so I borrowed bowls and cups from a bunch of guys on my floor to keep it in. Once I had cooked and drained the last pound of pasta, I put all of the pasta and the sauce into the large pot, added a package of mascarpone cheese, about a quarter cup of grated Parmesan cheese, and chopped fresh basil, mixing everything thoroughly. The pasta was done! I split the mixture between the two pans and brought them out to the table in the basement study lounge, where everyone had congregated.

The finished product was exactly as good as I had hoped. It was great to have a homemade meal for the first time in a month and a half. Instead of the dry pasta with "meat" that they serve in the dining hall, we finally had something cooked with good quality ingredients, which wasn't just taken from a box and defrosted. We served the pasta with "pesto bread," which Hannah made, which complimented the pasta really well.

At home, food is the center of most of our celebrations, and on Sunday it was no different. There's no better way to spend a birthday then with good friends and good food.

Here are a few photos of the meal. I didn't get a chance to get a closeup of the actual pasta dish, so I took the picture at the beginning of the post from http://www.lifesambrosia.com/2009/04/creamy-tomato-penne-with-italian-sausage-recipe.html, where the recipe can be found (I deviated slightly from this recipe, but it's mostly accurate).