Spaghetti Bake w Tomato base sauce

Recipe #1 Simple and Yummy

This recipe is so easy because its just putting in whatever you want in your spaghetti into a baking dish, topped it up with cheese and bake away! Nothing greasy or crazy to clean up afterwards either. Plus point.

Main ingredient is
A pack of Spaghetti or any pasta preferred (I used about 2/3 of a 500g package)
2 cans of Tomato Sauce (I used traditional but any flavor is fine too)
Shredded Cheese (I used pre-shredded Mozzarella)  

Toppings - This is where you can have whatever you want to be added in.
A can of Kidney Beans
2 pieces of Frozen White Fish Fillet

Approximately
Prep time : 20 minutes
Cooking time : 20 minutes

First, fill up a pot with water, add a dash of salt and bring it to a boil. When its boiling, put in the Spaghetti and use a chopstick to mix it around a little to prevent it from sticking to each other. Following the instruction on the package on how long to cook it would be the best but for me, when the water reaches a boil again, I will taste it and give it approximately another minute if its not done.

While the Spaghetti is boiling, empty the 2 cans of sauce into the baking dish. I added the can of Kidney Beans, some dried parsley, ground pepper and salt to enhance the flavor. Fill up the empty tomato sauce can to about 1/4 of water and add it in. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degree Celsius. 

Cut up the White Fish Fillet into about 2 inch pieces. Since I am using frozen fish, I season it with soya sauce and cooking wine. By then the Spaghetti should be cooked. Drain, rinse it with running tap water and in it goes into the baking dish.

The oven that is pre-heating should be almost up to temperature. Arrange the pieces with its seasoning on a baking tray and put it in the oven. Mine was in there for about 10 minutes. It is not entirely cooked on the inside.

Meanwhile, try to coat the pasta with the sauce evenly. Put a thin layer of shredded cheese on top. At this stage, you can also load up the cheese and put it into the oven if preferred.

When the fish is almost cooked, layer just the fish in a single file on top of the thin layer of cheese and discard the remaining sauce on the aluminium foil away. 

Last stage.

More cheese. If you want extra cheese, this is the time you want to go crazy. Not too much though, gotta watch the calories. In it goes into the oven. After 15-20 minutes it should be done or when the cheese have golden brown patches, its done!!

So simple! Get out those plates and this is a meal done for a family of 5. Leftovers? No worries just pop it into the fridge and microwave it before eating, it will still taste as good! 

The combination of Mushroom instead of Kidney Beans is good also. Just slices it up and put it in with the sauce. Sometimes I will add some broccoli. Chunk up the broccoli and blanch it in hot water before adding it into the sauce.

Make sure that when everything is in the baking dish there is a one inch gap free because overfilling might cause the sauce to bubble out and onto the oven base during the baking. That is a super duper crazy clean up process.

Ambush @ JEM

"Experience the many tastes of Europe, all at Ambush" Quoted from the menu. This is a causal restaurant. This outlet is kinda a open kitchen concept where you can see the chef cooking. 

The menu is quite special. Its almost like reading a newspaper.

There is a Top of $5.50 to every main course ordered to get the Soup Of The Day & a Drink ( Coke, Sprite, Frizzy Peach, Ice lemon Tea. The soup is Cream Of Cauliflower. Really creamy with hint of cauliflower flavor.

Roasted Pork Knuckle (Half) $18.00 this comes with Mashed Potato, Sauerkraut and Light Brown Sauce. The light brown sauce really remind me of the sauce served with meatballs purchase from Ikea. The Pork Knuckle was really good, its outer skin is crispy and the meat is tender. I think that one person to finish all of this might be a little too much and a little sick cause thats a whole lot of meat. So I think sharing this dish would be a good idea.

Baby Scallop & Flying Fish Roe - Squid Ink Sauce $14.80. Might not be shown in the above pictures but they were pretty generous with the scallop. This is very well season and worth a try if you are eating with someone you are comfortable with cause its gonna get a tad bit messy. We can choose our choice of pasta when we order the Italian Pasta dishes. There is Spaghetti, Linguine, Penne, Fusilli or add $2.80 for Fresh Tortllni with Three Cheese. This is a plus point because not everybody prefer the same type of pasta in the same type of sauce so this give us more freedom of choices. 

This is somewhat unique. Its the Norwegian Salmon Fillet - Thai Basil Sauce $13.20. The sauce really whet the appetite up. Somewhat like Thai Tom Yum which always gives a kick. Thai lover should give this a go!

This Oktoberfest Platter $17.80 is good for people that wants to try the Pork Knuckle as well as the Sausage. This platter includes Pork Knuckle Cutlets with Smoked Bratwurst & Bockwurst sausages served with Sauerkraut & Mashed Potato. Bratwurst is coarse smoked pork sausage with natural spices while the Bockwurst is finely ground pork sausage with crunchy natural casing. Salad on the side is tossed with Balsamic vinegar. 

Sausage lover can try the Swissgerman Sausage Platter $17.20. It has pan grilled Cheese Knacker, Bockwurst & French Chicken Garlic served with Sauerkraut & Choice of Starch which is Rosti, Mashes Potato, Fries & Pasta. We got Rosti. French Chicken Garlic is chicken sausage with minced garlic & mixed herbs while Cheese Knacker is ground chicken sausage with cheese bits.

Prices are not inclusive of GST and service charge but I think that the price range is not too expensive. Apparently they are quite famous for their mussels and paella. I wouldn't mind checking this place out again to try those. It was quite crowded during dinner time so maybe to avoid queue, its better to head there a bit earlier.

Address :
#04-13/14, Jem
50 Jurong Gateway Road

Madrina Pizzaria @ Farrer Road

This place is a bit ulu (hard to find) as it is a place that's surrounded by HDB flats. This place was recommended by my mom through her friend. They are famous for their pizzas which have a lot of different toppings and relatively big range of alcoholic drinks like beers.

I have to agree that this place have a very unique interior design which I would describe as something towards the English style cum bricks design.

There is also this place where most of the beers, cider and other alcoholic drinks are placed at which makes the whole place really classy and cosy.

The owner was really friendly and he will be glad to introduce some alcoholic drinks to his customers liking. We got a Mango Cider with Dessert Lime. We also got a personal waiter that is in charge of refilling the mugs when its empty hahahaha and that is my lovely brother

We also had Thatchers Rose. In terms of texture, this one is more towards the Sparkling type, almost like a substitute for Sparkling wine if I am not wrong. However as a person that prefer ice lemon tea to coca cola, I prefer the Mango Cider.

This is one of their appetizers, Calamari Fritti Insalata. To be honest, I don't understand the last two words and its basically Calamari with two sauces, mayo based and tomato based. The squid was not overcooked so its was crispy on the outside, soft and tender inside and it goes well with the tomato based sauce.

The first pizza arrive. This is the Ischia ($20.00) which is topped with Prosciutto Ham, Wild Arugula, Crush Pepper, Extra Virgin Oil. They are famous for their pizza because their dough are freshly made and they only do when there is an order and thus the waiting time was a bit longer, around 15-20mins for pizzas. All the pizza sold here are Thin Crust which is a plus point for ladies. We keep a watch on our carbo intake to stay slim Or maybe its just me hahaha 

Out of the two pizza I tried, I must say I love the Grosseto ($20.00) one better. It is topped with Bacon, Mushroom and Egg. Nothing can go wrong with Bacon and Mushroom but whats unique is the center of the pizza, the egg. It brings an whole new level to the pizza and this is not seen often in many pizza stalls. The owner recommended this to us because he said that nowadays not many people wants to do this type (involving egg) of toppings anymore. Since the yolk was runny, the owner taught us how we should eat this which is using the folk and spread the runny yolk equally to every slices of the pizza so that each slices would have extra flavor and at the same time it cooks the yolk a little.

 This is Spaghetti Vongole ($18.00) which is Live Clams that are slowly simmered with White Wine, Garlic, PArsley & Fresh Basil entwined in a nest of Spaghetti & topped with Tomato Concasse. Wow pretty long description for this dish. It is the soupy based kind unlike the usual Carbonara or Aglio Olio wher the sauce is thick and coated evenly among the noodles. Basically if you are a Clams lover, don't miss this. The Clams are generous in this, very generous.

We had Tiramitsu ($10.00) and Grandma's Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream ($10.00)  for dessert. Once again, I have tried better tiramisu before however there is a significant difference between this Tiramitsu and the ones I have eaten before. I believe it is alcoholic where by they most probably use rum to soak the lady fingers with. Grandma's Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream is a pastry casing filled with custard and topped with pine nuts. This was served warm and it went great with the Ice Cream.

This place is great to hang out with friends and family and chill with couple of beers. If I were to visit this place again I will most probably tried out more of their different pizza toppings because their pizza were really pretty good. Although this place is pretty ulu, its actually a walking distance from Farrer Road Mrt Station and for people that drive, the shop is actually above this one level public car-park so it is also convenient in terms of finding lots.

Address :

Blk 3 #02-141, Queen's Road

S (260003)