Penne with Tomato Sauce & Failed Bread Making

I would like to show two things I made last week. First one is Penne with tomato sauce. I used store bought tomato sauce so it is super easy. But I added some sautéed onion, garlic, cherry tomatoes and fresh basil. This makes a huge difference.

My husband loves pasta and he likes those simple pasta very much so he was happy to have this.

Also, I baked bread last week. Or attempted to make one. It didn't come out well and it is a bit embarrassing to show how bad it was but I will show it anyway. Here it is.

Can you tell how thin it is? I was trying to make regular sandwich bread but this is what came out from the oven. It was so thin that I had to laugh.

The taste was good and my husband loves bread also so he was eating this happily despite the shape.

I just wonder how this happened. When I had the second rise, it was rising up properly and pretty big but when I baked, it shrank. I have no idea what I did wrong. Oh well, bread making is not easy and I still need a lot more practice to master this. I hope someday I can make a perfect sandwich bread at home.

Kinpira Gobou & Japanese Scrambled Egg

Since it was too hot to make complicated dish and standing in front of the stove for a long time, I made easy dinner. Kinpira Gobou is Japanese traditional dish. It has thinly sliced burdock root and carrots. Normally this is a side dish in Japan but I can have this as an main  dish. It is a lot of work to slice these vegetables thinly so I bought already sliced frozen burdock root and carrots in Japanese grocery store.
How convenient!

If they are already sliced, it is very easy to make this dish. Add little bit of oil in a frying pan, then add burdock root, carrots and chili flakes. Then, add soy sauce, sake and sugar. Cook until vegetables are soft but not too soft (bit crunchy) then add sesame seeds at the end. That's it!

Since this is a lot of Kinpira gobou I made, I separate them into small containers and froze them. Whenever I want to eat this, I can microwave it and eat it!

The other thing I made was Japanese scrambled egg. Why is it Japanese? Because I added some scallions, soy sauce and sugar. I love eggs with sugar and soy sauce when I am eating them with rice.

It might sounds strange for non-Japanese people to add sugar in scrambled egg but when you eat this with rice, it is so good! My husband doesn't say anything about this sweet scrambled egg and he eats them but I wonder if he thinks that it is strange to have eggs sweet. I have to ask him sometimes :-)

So yesterday, Germany couldn't win the semi-final. But I think it was a good game and they did very well this World Cup. Also, Spain was really good I think. Now, final is Spain vs Netherlands. I am excited about this game. Both of them deserve to win and this will be another great game!

I was never into soccer but this World Cup has been so much fun to watch. I didn't know World Cup is this much fun! I wish I should have known. Too bad this is only once in four years. But again, that might be why it is so exciting!

Indian Butter Chicken

Since I still have some sweet saffron pilaf from the weekend, I decided to make some Butter Chicken to eat the pilaf with. I used the spice mix which I bought the other day.

This is the spice mix I used this time. I had never used this brand before.

First, saute chicken in butter and add this mix with tomato paste.

Add milk and cook more.

Add heavy cream at the end and serve with some rice.

It tasted really good but it was a bit too salty for my taste. Maybe I should add more milk or heavy cream. It was good that the rice was sweet so it evened out.

We had salad with it also. It is just simple salad with lettuce, corn and tomato with cilantro dressing. Tomato is from my garden!

We are having heat wave in NY. Yesterday, we had 98F. It was so hot. I think it will get better today. And we have Germany vs Spain game today! The whole neighborhood is cheering for Germany now because of us :-) I hope they will have a good game today!