Life and Times of Calvin: New PASTA recipe!

I had to prepare my own dinner tonight as Kenny was out for a party. I felt like eating pasta today so, I went out to a grocery shop to pick up some ingredients for my dinner. I don't think I told you guys that the house that I am living now is right next to "Jim's Foodmart" which is a medium sized grocery shop. So, shopping for ingredients was just a 1 minute walk away.

When I was in Malaysia I really loved pasta but over here I was sick of it cause they serve it daily in the dining halls. But right now it's break, so I haven't been eating pasta for some time.
Today, I made up a new dish. It was inspired by Seed Cafe's Anchovy Pasta(forgotten it's real name". I never knew what they actually put in their pasta but for sure I know there are sun dried tomatoes, dry chilli, oyster mushroom and anchovies.

Their sauce is the dry type, not really tomato based I think. Lotsa olive oil and it was pretty spicy.

So, here goes... My newly created pasta dish.
Shrimp and Mushroom with Anchovy Sauce Spaghetti (serving size: 2)

Ingredients:

- 1 small (7oz) pack of pasta - This sauce is best eaten with Spaghetti
- 1 small can of tomato sauce (not ketchup!)
- 1 small (1.6oz) tube of anchovy paste
- 1 cup of water used for cooking pasta (after the pasta had been cooked)
- 2 Cups of Sliced fresh white button mushrooms
- 2 Cups of small sized shrimps (i used a small pack of frozen cooked shrimp - commonly found in USA)
- 4-5 pieces of roasted bell peppers
- 1 tablespoon of sun dried tomatoes cut into strips
- 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
- 2 tablespoon of White wine - I didn't have this so, I used chinese cooking wine

- Italian herbs (basil, parsely, chives, etc)_ - I bought a small bottle of dried italian seasoning which had all in it)
- Salt to taste

A few of the ingredients I used.

Steps:

1. Cook the pasta until it cooks. Try and take it out just before it starts become soft completely. This is because while you cook the pasta with the sauce later on, thew pasta will soften more. Drain the pasta and run it under cold water, this will wash away the starch and also make the pasta more "bouncy/springy".

2. Now for the sauce. First, sauté the minced garlic in some heated oil. Once it is fragrant, throw in the mushrooms and stir fry it. Sprinkle some salt and sugar to it. Control the amount of salt as the anchovy paste used later will be salty too.

3. Next throw in the tomato sauce, sliced sun dried tomatoes, roasted bell peppers and the "pasta water". Try to simmer for about 10-15mins at low-medium heat to ensure that all the flavors from the sun dried tomatoes get into the sauce.

4. Next, squeeze in the whole tube of anchovy paste into the sauce. You can control the amount of anchovy paste to use as it may be to "fishy" for some people. Once the sauce starts thickening, throw in the shrimps. make sure you constantly stir the sauce to ensure the sauce wont burn and also to make sure the ingredients are well blended together.

5. Finally put in the pasta into the sauce and stir fry them together. To finish it off, put in the wine. Once the sauce has covered every strand of the spaghetti, it is now ready to serve.