La vie est belle

Life has kept me busy. Busy in a good way. We had family dinner at my place on Saturday and yesterday we attended a baby shower.  I’m feeling a little unwell at the moment — itchy throat and coughing a little. I haven’t seen the doctor yet.

My parents stayed with me last week. I’ve finally satisfied my cravings for poisson salé (salted fish) hehe  :) We had it in a “chatini”. I still have salted fish in my fridge. I will make a rougaille poisson salé next time.

Mum and I baked Jamie Oliver’s  cheesy zucchini spinach tuna pasta the other day and it was pretty good. It’s not too cheesy or buttery.

Baked Cheesy Tuna, Zucchini and Spinach Pasta

Ingredients

• 400 g Penne pasta (you can use other types of pasta)
• 20 g Butter (about 1 tablespoon)
• 2 tablespoon Flour
• 250 ml cup Milk
• 130 g Cheddar Cheese
• 1 Zucchini (medium, grated)
• 2 handfuls baby Spinach
• 8 oz Tuna (tinned)

Method

1. Put a large covered pot of salted water on top the stove, and get it started to boil.
2. Wash the zucchini, grate it skin on, and set aside in a colander to drain.
3. Wash the spinach leaves. If they are large, tear them up into somewhat smaller pieces. Set aside.
4. Add the pasta to the pot of boiling water and let it start cooking. You want to cook it until it is just barely tender to the fork.
5. Put butter in a pan and let it melt. Stir in the flour well, then whisk in the milk a little at a time. Continue to whisk until the sauce is thick. Stir in half the grated cheese, season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Turn your oven’s broiler / grill on and get it heating.
7. The pasta should be ready to drain by now. Drain it, return it to the pot, and add to it the sauce, the zucchini, the spinach and the tuna. Stir to mix everything in, then turn into a shallow, ungreased ovenproof dish and sprinkle the remaining grated cheese over top.
8. Place under broiler / grill and leave there until everything is piping hot and the top is starting to turn golden. This should take somewhere in the range of 5 to 7 minutes. Serve hot.

Now, back to my short weekend getaway part 2 …

We had breakfast first thing in the morning, followed by a complimentary body massage at the Hotel’s Spa. The rest of the day was spent at Cosmo’s World theme park as Berjaya Times Square.

I was in the first row. I rode this twice – first alone, then with the husband. It was fun :)  My favorite was the roller-coaster ride.

We took Aeroline bus back to Singapore but we felt that their seats were not as wide and comfortable as Grassland Express bus.

Tags: baking, family

This entry was posted on Monday, July 27th, 2009 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Family, Food, Me 2 U, Vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.