• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 23:27
CEST 05:27
KST 12:27
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
TL Team Map Contest #5: Presented by Monster Energy2Code S RO8 Preview: herO, Zoun, Bunny, Classic7Code S RO8 Preview: Rogue, GuMiho, Solar, Maru3BGE Stara Zagora 2025: Info & Preview27Code S RO12 Preview: GuMiho, Bunny, SHIN, ByuN3
Community News
Code S RO8 Results + RO4 Bracket (2025 Season 2)3BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack2Weekly Cups (June 2-8): herO doubles down1[BSL20] ProLeague: Bracket Stage & Dates9GSL Ro4 and Finals moved to Sunday June 15th13
StarCraft 2
General
How herO can make history in the Code S S2 finals TL Team Map Contest #5: Presented by Monster Energy Code S RO8 Results + RO4 Bracket (2025 Season 2) Jim claims he and Firefly were involved in match-fixing The SCII GOAT: A statistical Evaluation
Tourneys
[GSL 2025] Code S: Season 2 - Ro8 - Group A [GSL 2025] Code S: Season 2 - Ro8 - Group B RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series SOOPer7s Showmatches 2025 Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament
Strategy
[G] Darkgrid Layout Simple Questions Simple Answers [G] PvT Cheese: 13 Gate Proxy Robo
Custom Maps
[UMS] Zillion Zerglings
External Content
Mutation # 477 Slow and Steady Mutation # 476 Charnel House Mutation # 475 Hard Target Mutation # 474 Futile Resistance
Brood War
General
BW General Discussion BGH auto balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ FlaSh Witnesses SCV Pull Off the Impossible vs Shu StarCraft & BroodWar Campaign Speedrun Quest Will foreigners ever be able to challenge Koreans?
Tourneys
[BSL20] ProLeague Bracket Stage - Day 4 [BSL20] ProLeague Bracket Stage - Day 3 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues [ASL19] Grand Finals
Strategy
I am doing this better than progamers do. [G] How to get started on ladder as a new Z player
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Path of Exile Nintendo Switch Thread Beyond All Reason What do you want from future RTS games?
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Who’s Getting the Effortless-Chic Look Just Right?
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine US Politics Mega-thread UK Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Vape Nation Thread
Fan Clubs
Maru Fan Club Serral Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Korean Music Discussion [Manga] One Piece
Sports
TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion NHL Playoffs 2024
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
A Better Routine For Progame…
TrAiDoS
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Heero Yuy & the Tax…
KrillinFromwales
I was completely wrong ab…
jameswatts
Need Your Help/Advice
Glider
Trip to the Zoo
micronesia
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 17959 users

[The Ghetto Cook] VII: EZ-PZ Pasta

Blogs > Newbistic
Post a Reply
Newbistic
Profile Blog Joined August 2006
China2912 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-10-06 05:03:33
October 06 2011 05:00 GMT
#1
The Ghetto Cook
Episode VII: EZ-PZ Pasta
AKA what DRG would cook if he cooked pasta


Introduction

Hello all! Welcome to the belated seventh installment of TGC. I apologize for the hiatus, I just went though a period of time where I didn't cook anything terribly interesting/lost my passion/etc etc.

Long time readers of the TGC series may have noticed that the recent few installments have all been about making baked or pastry goods, which may not be the most interesting for young budget cooks. To return to the ghetto roots, this installment will be a pretty simple one about making a pasta dish, something most people are probably already familiar with. As a bonus, I will also include how to make a very simple cole slaw that can easily go with any other dish you are making.

Ingredients

[image loading]
As I was laying the stuff out for this pic, I realized that holy sh*t, this actually is a lot of ingredients

Cole Slaw

1 Carrot
1/8 Cabbage*
2 Tbsp Ranch/Mayo
1 tsp Peanut Butter
1 tsp White Granulated Sugar
Salt
Pepper

Pasta (Serves Two or Three)

1 lb package short, non-stringy pasta**
1/2 Large Onion, sliced thin
~2 Cups Frozen Peas
2 Tbsp Butter/Margarine
2 Tbsp Flour
3-4 oz Cheese***
1 can Tuna****
Bacon*****
Salt
Pepper
Garlic/Garlic Salt
Milk

*Can be green/red/mixture of both
**Ideally not spaghetti or linguini or long pastas like that. I used rotinis, feel free to use macaroni, ziti, or a bajillion other short, forkable pastas.
***A good melting cheese preferably. I honestly have no idea what is the optimal cheese for a cheese sauce pasta, if anyone can clue me in that would be great. I used mozzarella since it was on hand. You also want about 50% to twice as much as I have shown in the picture for best results.
****The shitty cheap canned tuna I bought completely disintegrated and made the sauce texture kind of crappy. You may wish to buy higher quality canned tuna or use another source of fish. Pretty much any chunky protein is acceptable, including cubed/stripped chicken, ham, tofurkey, etc.
***** I didn't have any on hand, but this is highly, highly recommended. Pre-cooked and broken into small pieces.

Procedure

Begin by making the cole slaw. Whisk together ranch/mayo, peanut butter, and sugar until smooth:

[image loading]
Use spoon if psychic, not Asian, or goes by Battle.Net handle Thorzain

Unlike lettuce salads, where it is best to hold off the dressing until just before serving, I prefer my cole slaw to be slightly wilted and the flavor of the dressing to penetrate the cabbage. Shred both carrots and cabbage, and toss them in the dressing. Salt and pepper to taste.

If you don't have a shredder, you can use a knife. First, slice the carrot lengthwise. Then, slice both halves thinly along a diagonal:

[image loading]
I believe Thorzain would use a spoon for this step too.

For the cabbage, chop thinly along the latitude, like this:

[image loading]
GET TO DA CHOPPA NAOW

The final product:

[image loading]
A bright orange and purple dish, you'd think this was shredded poisonous amazonian tree frog or something similarly less than healthy

Once the salad is tossed (wink wink nudge nudge), set it aside to marinate. Begin on the pasta. Pour about a gallon of water into a large pot, add salt, and turn on the heat.

In another pot, melt two tablespoons of butter at medium heat. Long time readers of TGC may realize where this is going. We're going to make a roux, just like in the first ever installment of TGC for broccoli and cheddar soup. Slowly whisk two tablespoons of flour into the melted butter, and push this mixture around the bottom of the pot for a couple of minutes. The mixture should look like yellow sand:

[image loading]
Visually identical to the bane of vaginas everywhere

Sometimes, cooks will cook this mixture until it is brownish and gives off a nutty scent. I won't be doing this, however, because I am using a white cheese, and this is going to be a white sauce. After a few minutes, slowly whisk in enough milk so that you get a thick, velvety, sauce-like consistency:

[image loading]
The shine is from the butter. No sticky fingers here.

Continue cooking and stirring the mixture, adding in more milk if the sauce becomes too dry. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add in the onions, salt, pepper, and garlic salt. Garlic salt is cheap and keeps for a long time. Use fresh garlic if you have it. Overall, you want the sauce to be slightly on the salty side because it will be used to flavor the pasta, but keep in mind that cheese, canned tuna, and bacon all contain salt, so do not over-season at this point in time. Cook for another 5 minutes or so.

By now the pasta water should be close to boiling. The timings for this dish are starting to converge. As soon as the water starts boiling, dump your pasta into the pot. Follow the instructions for how long the pasta needs to cook to reach al dente, but cook for 1 minute less than the shown time. Immediately also dump your frozen peas into your sauce. Cook this for another 5 minutes or so, turn the heat down to LOW, then dump the cheese, tuna, and bacon into the sauce:

[image loading]
The PZ part of EZPZ pasta. Yeah, I know you saw that one coming.

Taste the sauce. If it is too bland, now is the time to add salt and pepper before combining with the pasta. Cook the sauce until the pasta is 1 minute away from al dente. Remove pasta from water, and dump the sauce into the pasta. Fold sauce into the pasta and cook everything together for the last minute. Remove from heat, plate, and serve.

The Result

[image loading]
A meal fit for a ghetto cook.

4.5 / 5 Nothing spectacular, but still very nourishing and good. In hindsight, I think chicken would be even better suited for this dish, but oh well. Despite the large number of ingredients, overall the dish is quite fast to make, maybe 40 minutes total with plenty of time in between to work on several other dishes if you are multitasking.

Conclusion

There you have it folks, simple pasta with a simple side dish. As always, questions and comments are welcome, especially if you know what I'm doing wrong or what I can improve on. I know from reading other food blogs that there are quite a few culinary elites on TL, so if you can provide some input I'd greatly appreciate it! Especially if you know what kinds of cheeses are best for this type of sauce, and what additional spices would elevate the sauce to a different level.

If you wish to read more about how to make edible dishes using budget ingredients, please check out the previous installments of TGC:

Broccoli and Cheddar Soup
Cheapass Chili
Scallion Biscuits
Fake Fried Rice
Pan Fried Buns Part I
Pan Fried Buns Part II
French Fucking Toast

Keep your eyes peeled for the next installment of TGC, which will be something totally sweet! Until next time, This is the GSL.

*****
Logic is Overrated
BLinD-RawR
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
ALLEYCAT BLUES50107 Posts
October 06 2011 06:15 GMT
#2
its a new edition of TGC! yes this pasta is ezpz indeed.
Brood War EICWoo Jung Ho, never forget.| Twitter: @BLinDRawR
TL+ Member
Grettin
Profile Joined April 2010
42381 Posts
October 06 2011 07:39 GMT
#3
GET TO DA CHOPPA. Loving the blog.
"If I had force-fields in Brood War, I'd never lose." -Bisu
iNViCiOUZ
Profile Joined January 2011
Germany364 Posts
October 06 2011 09:18 GMT
#4
now i am hungry

Think I try it this week!
Velr
Profile Blog Joined July 2008
Switzerland10668 Posts
October 06 2011 10:42 GMT
#5
Hm.. When I do a kinda similar sauce things I go "faster" :p (but I LOVE cheese so that’s why I probably don't need the "roux-base" to get a decent consistency ):


1: cook/fry/bread the Oignons/Vegetables/Bacon/Whatever other ingredients a little (not too much of anything, this is no vegetable/whatever sauce :p).
2: Put some white wine or/and water in and let all of it cook for a while (depends on the ingredients you used, I for instance don't like "uncooked" peperoni in my pasta).
3. Add Cream (or Milk, but cream is just better).
4. Add Cheese.. (until the consistency is as you wish, tons of cheese..nomnom cheese... Or some Flour.. but then you better would have started with a Roux anyway ).
5. Eat.
6. Awesome!

Btw. the most important rule about cooking:
Everything tastes better with bacon and/or cream.
Newbistic
Profile Blog Joined August 2006
China2912 Posts
October 06 2011 20:05 GMT
#6
On October 06 2011 19:42 Velr wrote:
Hm.. When I do a kinda similar sauce things I go "faster" :p (but I LOVE cheese so that’s why I probably don't need the "roux-base" to get a decent consistency ):


1: cook/fry/bread the Oignons/Vegetables/Bacon/Whatever other ingredients a little (not too much of anything, this is no vegetable/whatever sauce :p).
2: Put some white wine or/and water in and let all of it cook for a while (depends on the ingredients you used, I for instance don't like "uncooked" peperoni in my pasta).
3. Add Cream (or Milk, but cream is just better).
4. Add Cheese.. (until the consistency is as you wish, tons of cheese..nomnom cheese... Or some Flour.. but then you better would have started with a Roux anyway ).
5. Eat.
6. Awesome!

Btw. the most important rule about cooking:
Everything tastes better with bacon and/or cream.


I think this is actually the better way to make cream sauce for pasta. But cream, wine, and cheese are all far more expensive than a bit of flour and a bit of butter.

One day sometime in the future I will do it with wine and cream.
Logic is Overrated
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
OSC
00:00
OSC Elite Rising Star #15
TBD vs ArTLIVE!
xJustxJordanx4
Liquipedia
Replay Cast
00:00
uThermal 2v2 Circuit: May
CranKy Ducklings116
Liquipedia
OSC
21:00
Mid Season Playoffs
ArT vs ReBellioN
HonMonO vs Ziomek
Shameless vs LunaSea
MilkiCow vs GgMaChine
Moja vs HiGhDrA
Jumy vs TBD
Demi vs NightPhoenix
Solar vs Cham
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
PiGStarcraft355
Nina 135
SteadfastSC119
Ketroc 25
EnDerr 13
NoRegreT_ 6
StarCraft: Brood War
JulyZerg 124
Icarus 9
Dota 2
monkeys_forever510
LuMiX1
Counter-Strike
Stewie2K1128
taco 482
Other Games
summit1g11351
C9.Mang01679
shahzam1238
ViBE244
ToD149
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Secondary Stream1740
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 17 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Berry_CruncH281
• Hupsaiya 76
• practicex 32
• IndyKCrew
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• sooper7s
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• RayReign 23
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
• BSLYoutube
League of Legends
• Doublelift5794
• Stunt201
Other Games
• Scarra1523
Upcoming Events
WardiTV Invitational
7h 33m
HiGhDrA vs Nicoract
MaNa vs HiGhDrA
HiGhDrA vs Reynor
Nicoract vs Reynor
MaNa vs Nicoract
MaNa vs Reynor
MaxPax vs Spirit
Krystianer vs Spirit
OSC
9h 33m
BSL 2v2 ProLeague S3
15h 33m
Korean StarCraft League
23h 33m
SOOP
1d 5h
sOs vs Percival
CranKy Ducklings
1d 6h
WardiTV Invitational
1d 7h
Cheesadelphia
1d 11h
CSO Cup
1d 13h
BSL: ProLeague
1d 14h
Hawk vs UltrA
Sziky vs spx
TerrOr vs JDConan
[ Show More ]
GSL Code S
2 days
Rogue vs herO
Classic vs GuMiho
Sparkling Tuna Cup
2 days
BSL: ProLeague
2 days
Bonyth vs Dewalt
Cross vs Doodle
MadiNho vs Dragon
Replay Cast
2 days
Wardi Open
3 days
Replay Cast
3 days
Replay Cast
4 days
RSL Revival
4 days
Cure vs Percival
ByuN vs Spirit
RSL Revival
5 days
herO vs sOs
Zoun vs Clem
Replay Cast
5 days
The PondCast
6 days
RSL Revival
6 days
Serral vs SHIN
Solar vs Cham
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSL Season 17: Qualifier 2
BGE Stara Zagora 2025
Heroes 10 EU

Ongoing

JPL Season 2
BSL 2v2 Season 3
BSL Season 20
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 2
NPSL S3
Rose Open S1
CSL 17: 2025 SUMMER
2025 GSL S2
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25
BLAST Rivals Spring 2025
MESA Nomadic Masters
CCT Season 2 Global Finals
IEM Melbourne 2025
YaLLa Compass Qatar 2025
PGL Bucharest 2025

Upcoming

Copa Latinoamericana 4
CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
K-Championship
SEL Season 2 Championship
Esports World Cup 2025
HSC XXVII
Championship of Russia 2025
Murky Cup #2
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.