Now, this isn't a
recipe so much as it is a
guideline for creating this fine dish. Mind you, I'm fairly certain it's not found in the world's most
hyped, exclusive restaurants.
You'll need:
1. About half a bag of macaroni noodles, or rotini.
2. A pound of lean ground beef.
3. One can of corn niblets. Not Cream corn.
4. One diced green pepper.
5. Two small onions, chopped.
6. Tomatoes. Now, this can go a number of ways. You can get cans of stewed, whole tomatoes, or diced tomatoes. My suggestion is for you to use a couple of cans of diced tomatoes, and maybe one can of tomato paste, just for giggles. Don't use crushed, though. That's a disaster.
7. Three chopped green onion stalks for flavour.
8. About a tablespoon of chopped chili pepper flakes.
9. Salt, pepper, chili powder, cayenne, and whatever else you like to taste. The chili powder is essential, however.
10. A can of mushrooms is nice, but not necessary, if you're not partial to them.
What you gotta do:
1. Fry your ground beef, tossing in whatever spices you'd like as you go. Don't overspice the meat. You want to leave a bit of it - the spicing, I mean - for the rest of the ingredients.
2. If you don't want to used ground beef, sliced hot italian sausage works, too. Very, very well, I might add.
3. And if you're vegetarian, forgo the meat. I've never tried this meal like that, but I'm sure it's still pretty good.
4. Next, you're going to want to toss all the rest of the ingredients aside from the noodles in a pot. If you feel as if it needs a bit of water, have no fear. Keep the water from the canned corn and mushrooms, that should help. If not, put a half-cup of water in at a time. This is important, and I'll get to why towards the end.
5. This concoction should be fine if you set your stove to medium, and leave it uncovered. Some of the water will boil away, but that's fine.
6. Next, get some boiling water going, and toss in your noodles. Now, here's where stuff gets tricky. You're going to want to keep a close eye on the noodles; you only want them to be about half-cooked. When they're half-cooked, drain the excess water, and toss everything else - ground beef included - in the same pot, and turn the heat up to about 3/4 of the way, stirring as frequently as possible.
The idea is to let the noodles soak up some of the excess water from the tomatoes etc., and to get some of the flavour through the noodles, too. This is tricky. If you think it's too dry, add a little water. If it's too wet, well, you're going to have
Mexican Hot Pot with a lot of excess water in it. But you don't want the water. As is clearly shown above, this is a very
experimental meal, but it's a little different that your
average, run-of-the-mill ghoulash. So have fun with it, it's really quite
tasty.