Cheese | Riham's Messy Kitchen!

It’s the weekend. We have guests coming over. I’m making the dinner and some treats as it’s somebody’s birthday too!

I made the truffles in the morning (and I got the right ratios this time for the orange intense truffles! And I’m quite pleased with myself 🙂 )

They’ve asked me for the spicy bisque style shrimp fettuccine so I’m working on the sauce.

And in the midst of this my son asks for a pull-apart bread!

I hadn’t made that in a while and I did have a gorgeous sour dough loaf on the counter, so why not?

It’s easy, yummy, delicious and it takes about 20 min prep…the same amount of time I’m sitting around waiting for my sauce to finish simmering!

I’d first come across this in an article hubby sent me. 29 Ooey Gooey, Cheesy, Chocolatey And Delicious Pull Breads To Make…the title itself is amazing!

Just looking at the photos made my mouth water and we tried one and it was awesome!

Since then I’ve played around with the “toppings” as I love the garlic/cheese/mushroom flavor combination but you can dress it whichever way you want! Even make it sweet not savory!

Use store bought bread or make your own loaf, either way it turns out delicious!

Here’s the link to the original recipe I adapted from “Very Culinary”

The great thing is you can prep it and just leave the adding butter and baking bit till you want to eat. It only takes 25min in the oven.

This is sharing food at its best, yummy and messy 🙂 eaten with hands, not a knife & fork 😉

But sharing with loved ones, who cares about messiness? 🙂 Dig in and tear out the bread “fingers” and enjoy!

Which is exactly what we all did!

Yum!

Crusty yummy pull-apart bread

Cheers!

The beauty about pasta is it comes in so many shapes and sizes and matching them with different sauces, toppings and fillings makes it a dish where the possibilities are endless!

It does freak me out though how people can actually ruin such a simple and amazing ingredient!

My rules for non ruined pasta are easy:

Boil in lots of salted water! Duh!
Don’t rinse it under the tap! (Unless your going to leave it for hours! Which you shouldn’t anyway!)
If for some reason you will cook the pasta and leave it a while, then cook it a little less, then after you strain it, rinse it quickly in cold water to stop carry-over cooking. Reserve all the cooking liquid. When you are ready to serve, bring the reserved cooking water to the boil, and add your pasta back in. It shouldn’t stay in the boiling water for more than a minute or two since you’re just reheating it.
Add your pasta to your sauce while it’s hot immediately after you strain it! (If you’re making a lasagne give it a min to cool but keep it covered so it doesn’t dry out)
Always always keep some of the cooking water! It’s starchy and is great to use to adjust the thickness of your sauce & helps the sauce cling better to your pasta.
Oh and of course never over cook it! Time it! Usually it cooks aldente between 5 to 10 min based on the type.

So now we’ve covered the basics, here’s one of my fav pasta dishes.

I call it semi carbonara since it has a little cream and no bacon. And beef bacon, at least what we have here, is more akin to shoe leather than bacon!

My substitute of choice is basterma 🙂 A middle eastern (armenian???) preserved lean meat, it’s salted then covered in a beautiful spice paste and hung to dry.