#also im trying a gluten free version for the first time ever

[modernmutiny]

The honey cake making has commenced. Batters are in the oven, first check is T-5 min. This recipe is wonderful and I love it but also it does require me to sit in front of my oven checking the cakes every 5 min for half an hour so. I'm just glad I only have to make it once a year lmao

[clatterbane]

More not so photogenic lowish-spoons food tonight, but very tasty!

(I wouldn't normally want to put both things in the same pasta bowl, but we were low on clean dishes and I didn't feel like dirtying anything else up. Time to eat the broccoli first, to make room to maneuver the spaghetti around!)

Except I don't actually like it to get very crispy around the edges, and also just had frozen to use, as detailed here:

Bottled lemon juice is much better than nothing, and that's what we had today.

As for the basic comfort food type meaty spaghetti, I decided to try an easy one-pot version in the Instant Pot (again!). I know a lot of people really don't like the idea of doing that with pasta, but I've found that it does give consistently pretty good results once you get liquid proportions and timing down for a particular brand/shape.

The major reason, though? It's so much more accessible a cooking method for people working around various disabilities in the kitchen. Way easier--and safer--than fooling around with big boiling pasta pots as a wheelchair user, that's for sure! Or even asking someone else to handle the draining part at just the right time. 🥴 Which, of course, is just not gonna work with nobody else there to do it.

Garofalo and Barilla's gluten free pastas are the best for things like this, IME. They just behave a lot like the "regular" wheaty kind all around, and you don't need to worry about them turning into gross mush if you so much as look at them wrong. Some others are tricky enough with regular cooking, never mind pressure cooked.

Anyway, this basic recipe looks pretty close to the proportions I like to use:

Just about any pasta shape should work fine. And it also works great to just use frozen/refrigerated prepared meatballs, added right before the pasta layer. If they're still frozen, it'll just take a few more minutes to come up to pressure.

I was feeling ambitious enough today to chop up some onion, celery, carrot, and garlic to saute in with the meat. Took my own seasoning approach, as usual. For about anything like this, you will probably thank yourself if you use at least part broth (from crushed up cubes/powder, fresh, you name it) for at least half of the liquid--and adjust the other salty seasonings accordingly.

I find that it usually works best to cook pasta under high pressure for half the time you would normally boil it--plus an extra minute or two, especially if it's being cooked with tomatoes or other acidic ingredients. Usually let it sit for like 3 minutes before releasing the pressure. Better to err on the side of undercooking to start out with. You can fix that easily enough.

Once the lid is opened, time to evaluate and adjust as detailed here:

I like to let any kind of absorption cooked pasta sit and rest for 5-10 minutes before digging in, just like most saucy things straight out of the oven. IME it's good for both texture and flavor, besides not burning your mouth as easily! 😊

This ended up longer on the cooking tips than intended, but hey. I've been getting a lot more experience with these kinds of dishes now that I can eat them again, and some of it might be useful. Especially for other disabled/chronically ill people trying to stay decently fed.