NANI Cooks! — We Tried A Recipe From Cooking Mama!
I was first introduced to Cooking Mama through my cousin’s Nintendo DS., and I must say that I was immediately hooked! The game definitely sparked my passion for cooking at such a young age, and it was the closest I can get to feeling like I am a chef.
From steak to ebi-fry, or from easy meals you can whip up to fancy extensive courses, Cooking Mama has no shortage of delicious recipes, with each of them down to the finest cooking techniques. The original Cooking Mama’s recipes are a mixture of traditional Japanese foods or Western foods with a touch of Japanese influence; a concept that is called yōshoku.
NANI Cooks! Is our latest cooking series where we recreate Japanese recipes at home to show you that you don’t need fanciful ingredients and equipment to create an authentic and delicious Japanese meal. The recipes shared are quick and easy, most of them using minimal effort and/or taking less than an hour. You can anticipate so much from this monthly series!
Let’s kick start with Spaghetti Neapolitan this time! This recipe is closely followed by the one in the Cooking Mama game! Read through and join us as we whipped up a quick and easy pasta dish that takes less than just 15 minutes for preparation and cooking! Or if you are a visual person, scroll through the end for a video introduction about this recipe.
What is Spaghetti Neapolitan?
Source: The Spruce
Spaghetti Neapolitan is a Japanese-style pasta dish made with ketchup. This particular style of Japanese pasta falls under yōshoku cuisine. Everyone has probably seen popular yōshoku dishes such as hamburger steaks, omurice, and curry rice in many restaurants in Singapore. However, Spaghetti Neapolitan is less commonly found.
Spaghetti Neapolitan is extremely unique, and quite unlike your regular Italian-based pasta. Instead of marinara or tomato sauce, Spaghetti Neapolitan uses ketchup instead! Bell peppers and white onions are tossed and sautéed with either ham or sausages. This dish takes a total of (less than) 15 minutes from the preparation of ingredients to cooking and final presentation.
This pasta was invented by Head Chef Shigetada Irie after World War II ended. Its name comes from Naples, Italy, and the dish was heavily inspired by the U.S. troops who were eating tomato-based pasta overseas. In order to appeal to the Japanese population, he used ketchup and maintains that the ketchup gives the dish a uniquely Japanese flavor that cannot be recreated with regular tomato sauce.
Without further ado, let’s get cooking!
Ingredients Needed:
Based on 2 pax
3 Sausages (You may substitute with bacon or ham if you prefer!)
4 tablespoons of ketchup
50g of spaghetti pasta
1 green bell pepper
1/2 a white onion
Step 1: Boil your pasta
Boil a pot of water and throw in your pasta.
Pro Tip (1): Boil the pasta 1 minute less than the package’s instructions, making it slightly undercooked, since we will be stir-frying the pasta later!
Pro Tip (2): After draining your boiled pasta, you can run them under some cold/room temperate tap water. This is to prevent the pasta from sticking to each other and reduce the chances for them to get too soggy.
Step 2: Chop your ingredients
Chop 1/2 a white onion.
Pro tip: To prevent yourself from crying while you chopped onions, you can chew gum!
Remove the seeds from the bell pepper and chop them into little bite-sized cubes.
Chop up the sausages. We found this amount to be just right for two pax servings, but do adjust the amount accordingly to your liking.
Pro tip: If you aren’t a fan of sausages, you can switch it out for bacon or ham!
Step 3: Sauté your chopped ingredients
On your medium heated pan, drizzle over some (olive) oil and add your chopped onion.
Once you can smell the aroma of sauteed onions, you can start adding your chopped bell peppers. Sauté them till the bell peppers begin to look “softer”.
Once the bell peppers have softened, add in your sausages!
Step 4: Add in your pasta
Add in your drained pasta into the pan, and sauté lightly to loosen up the noodles.
Step 5: Add in your ketchup
Add in 4 tablespoons of ketchup and keep tossing till each strand of pasta is blended with the sauce.
Pro tip: Add in a few spoons of pasta water from time to time to prevent the dish from drying up!
Step 6: Plate up, and you’re done!
Voila, you are done, easy peasy! All there’s left to do is to dig in!
The mix of the savouriness from the sausage and the sweetness of the ketchup, white onion, and bell pepper was extremely tasty! Though quite similar to traditional bolognese, the Spaghetti Neapolitan has a nice touch of an added sweetness.
While ketchup noodles might sound odd, try it for yourself, and you might find yourself loving it as much as we do!
