Ditch It–my take on store bought pasta sauce

I started out cooking pasta the typical Singaporean way–buy some spaghetti and a bottle of tomato or cream based pasta sauce and put them together. It is a quick and fuss-free way to get your lunch or dinner settled, in a 'home-cooked' way. Well, it's not wrong to do so. But there's so much more to good pasta sauce that those bottled stuff can't give. I have since stopped using those bottled stuff and have created plenty of flavours that go well with pasta. Let me give you a few reasons to ditch them.

1. You have no control over the quality and taste of store-bought sauces.
2. You take out the fun of preparing a good pasta dish!
3. Home-made sauces taste much better and do not take long to prepare
4. You can have so much more variety with home-made sauces

It's pointless to say how good home-made stuff is if I don't provide a simple recipe to follow.

Spaghetti tossed in a slightly spicy tomato and vodka sauce, served with pan seared chicken breast.

Spaghetti with simple tomato vodka sauce.

Ingredients
1. 2 fresh tomatoes, quartered
2. A shot glass of vodka
3. 1 handful bunch of spaghetti. I only use Barilla, for the quality
4. Chicken breast
5. Salt and pepper
6. Olive oil
7. Crushed dried chilli

Steps
1. Bring some salted water to a rolling boil and add the spaghetti to it. Keep the heat high and let it boil. This will allow the pasta to not clump and stick together as you cook it. Keep time.
2. Heat up a pan and add some olive oil to it. Place the quartered tomatoes in the pan, and allow them to sear. Add a dash of salt and pepper to season.
3. In the same pan, lay the chicken breast skin side down and let it sear. Sprinkle salt and pepper evenly over the meat side as it cooks. Leave it to cook for about 4 minutes, depending on the thickness and size.
4. Sear the other side of the tomatoes. Turn the chicken breast over and cook for another 3 minutes.
5. Remove the chicken breast and let it rest on a plate. Do not slice it yet.
6. To the tomatoes in the pan, add the vodka. Tilt the pan to one side such that the alcohol catches fire. This burns off the alcohol in the vodka and chars the tomatoes a little. Add some crushed dried chilli to give some kick to the sauce, and a dash of the starchy pasta water.
7. Drain the spaghetti after about 8 minutes of cooking, or till al dente. Add the spaghetti to the vodka-tomato mixture. Give it a good toss and a dash of pepper.
8. Serve up the spaghetti. Slice the chicken breast and arrange it atop the pasta.
9. Drizzle some olive oil to finish it off. Serve and enjoy.

There you go! More sauce recipes and ideas to come, and stop buying those bottled pasta sauces!