saturday night dinner

my cousin and his family went to our house for dinner tonight. it's been quite a while since we last saw them, so our creativity in the kitchen went on full blast. ;-)

menu:
pasta alla carlotta ;-)
roast chicken alla teresa
green salad alla josefina
pineapple butter cake (which i made from a wonderful mix; just added pineapple tidbits to it)
decadent cake (bought in a grocery store--yummy too!)

for pasta alla carlotta, what i did was to stew whole tomatoes then just sliced them to get the seeds out. unfortunately i overstewed them so the insides of the tomatoes became quite mushy. scraping the seeds out was quite a messy job, but scraped them off i (and my mum) did. then i minced two heads of garlic and browned them over a generous amount of olive oil, after which i added the stewed tomatoes, dried basil and salt. simmer for about 20 minutes. for the pasta i used angel hair, which only takes all of two minutes to cook. mix the sauce and pasta, sprinkle some parmesan cheese, and voila! a very delicious pasta, if i do say so myself. (despite the mushy tomatoes at the beginning--it wasn't obvious at the end result though) =)

the two roast chickens, (although the bigger of the two roasts was a wee bit undercooked the first time it was served) tasted good as well. my tita used fresh thyme and lemon wedges which she simply stuffed into the cavity of the chickens, added sliced carrots and potatoes into the pan, and roasted in the oven for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours at 350 degrees fahrenheit.

the simplest recipe of all: salad alla josefina: just take some mixed salad greens and arrange them nicely in a big bowl. then just add some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and parmesan cheese to your liking.

needless to say, everyone had a great time together. =) i hope there'll be more times like this in the future.

picture, picture! (finally... hehe)

first plate

second plate (with the pineapple butter cake and decadent cake)