Po-tay-to, po-tah-to

After the success of last week's pasta sauce, I decided to make another dish that I've been wanting to do but never got round to: baked herbed potatoes :)

Based on this recipe given to me by a friend, I washed and scrubbed three large Idaho US Russet potatoes and cut them into cubes and wedges with the skin on. For the herbs I used paprika, oregano, dill, thyme, and rosemary. It only took about 30 minutes to bake in my little electric oven and it turned out pretty good!

I will have the penne al'arrabbiata

Ever since I saw this video, I've liked arrabbiata sauce on penne pasta. Normally, I would buy a bottle of prepared sauce and just add mushrooms for my penne enjoyment. Today, I finally tried my hand at making a pasta sauce from scratch. Since arrabbiata is one of the simpler sauces around, I decided that it would be a fitting choice.

After reading a few recipes, I basically got the gist of it and just winged it. Here are the ingredients:

There was also some paprika but it was an afterthought and didn't make it into the picture (sorry, paprika).


I used six cloves of garlic finely chopped and one small red onion coarsely chopped. Could probably have gotten away with more garlic, but it was ok.

Now, arrabbiata sauce doesn't actually have mushrooms in it, but I like mushrooms, so I put some in anyway.  I sliced up four large portobello mushrooms and sautéed them for a while before adding some water to let it simmer. After most of the water dried up, I put the mushrooms aside.

Next up was boiling the penne. I used some small tricolore penne. After the pasta was almost al dente, I drained it and set it aside (saving some of the water) and started making the sauce.

First went in the garlic and onions with some olive oil until the garlic turned slightly brown.

Then went in some water from the pasta boiling

After a short simmer, in went the tomatoes and the mashing commenced. It was a bit difficult to mash without a proper mashing tool, but eventually it got done. I prefer the sauce quite smooth so the tomatoes suffered much.

I seasoned with salt, a generous sprinkling of oregano, a pinch of thyme, about a half teaspoon of paprika, and about a teaspoon of ground chilli powder.

It took quite a long time to simmer away the liquid but eventually it was thick enough for my liking.

Mushrooms and tomatoes blended together in tasty matrimony and were blessed with much penne.

Some extra oregano completed the dish and it was goooooood. A tad too spicy but quite nice nonetheless. I'm not sure if it was worth the cost and effort over buying a bottle of prepared sauce, but it was fun to make and gave me +1 to cooking :)