One Pan Pasta

When I saw Donal’s “One Pan Pasta” video, I thought: throw all the ingredients into the pan and wait only 10 mins for a meal? Surely I can’t stuff that up.

Oh boy — was I wrong.

But before I continue this tale of culinary woe, I’d like to highlight my favourite part of cooking: I LOVE prepping ingredients.

The chopping, the slicing and dicing, and the part where I lay out the ingredients in a presentable-yet-hopefully-not-so-douchey-way. I love all of that.

I don’t understand why people whinge over dicin’ n’ cryin’ over onions either. I see it a challenge to hold back the tears. And when the floodgates do open, I welcome them. Chopping vegetables sits on the same therapeutic plane as washing dishes and, ahem, mopping the floor*.

Anywayz, back to the utter failure that was my attempt at Donal’s One Pan Pasta. You see, Donal’s dish, which was inspired by Martha Stewart’s dish seemed easy enough. But my efforts left a lot to be desired.

Here’s where it went wrong:

The Pasta

My pan wasn’t big enough, so the spaghetti was sticking out of the pan like how a tall person’s feet sticks out at the end of a small bed.

At the time I thought this looked photogenic. But what I didn’t realise was that this cooked the pasta unevenly. Because by the time it reached boiling point, the pasta already submerged in the water had more cooking time than the portion that stuck out. When I realised this I hammered the pasta in the water, making room for the rest of the pasta that didn’t have its fair share of the boiling hot tub.

And of course, the cooking times on the video are never accurate as everyone’s kitchen is different. One would rely on their experience of cooking pasta here to ensure it’s ‘al dente’.

But have you forgotten what the title of this blog is? It’s Johnny Can’t Cook.

So of course, my pasta turned out ‘al crape’ instead. T_T

Instead of being undercooked, I left it in a bit longer than suggested. As the pasta parts that were sticking out became cooked, the cooked parts became over-cooked.

Clamp and Twirl

In the video, Donal did this special move where he used the tongs like a mechanical claw in one of those arcade claw games. He proceeded to:

1. Clamp-and-twirl a lump of the pasta
2. Lifted it
3. Unfurled it so elegantly onto a serving plate

I marvelled at his pasta-to-plate ratio. It was perfect. Whereas mine looked like a lump of broken dreams.

3  garlic cloves

I really need to dwell on ‘regular’ sized cloves, because instead of regular-sized garlic cloves, I used 3 GIANT garlic cloves. Result? The pasta was the most garlic-infested garlic-bomb I’ve ever rolled my tongue over. If you ever need a weaponised-garlic dish to repel a horde of vampires, let me know.

Finely sliced

When the recipe calls for ‘finely sliced onions’, then you make sure you give it ‘finely sliced onions’—not ‘lazily sliced onions’. I overlooked this requirement, rationalising that I simply didn’t have a Valyrian steel blade (they’re sharp), nor did I have skill to yield it.

So instead of One Pan Pasta with hints of onions, it was a pan full of screaming “I’M AN ONION SLICE”.

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Quick tip: Do not rest metal tongs on a boiling pan. The heat of the pan will transfer to the tongs. And if you grab onto the tongs, the heat will transfer to your fingers. Then your hand will do the involuntary dance of anguish and pain.

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WINS

• When I took the pasta off the boil, tossing in a few wafers of cheese was brilliant. It added this subtle rich velvety texture.
• The pasta was quite tasteless, no thanks to the MONSTROUS garlic cloves I naively tossed into the pot. My sister, a seasoned kitchen type person, kindly suggested, “WTF is this. You need some salt”. So, salt I added, and boy did the taste lift.

And if you were wondering, I sprinkled the salt as I moved my hand around the pan in a circular motion. I felt like some witch with a cauldron.

^ Broken dreams

Donal Skehan’s One Pan Pasta recipe

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* Yes I do realise the therapeutic activities I listed are quite domesticated…