Datasheet: This week in cooking with Ruit

It has been quite a while since the last datasheet, a series of articles in which several cooking enthusiasts of the Vonk editorial team share their latest culinary findings to the public. It is now my honor, as self-declared cooking enthusiast and founder of the best cooking show on Snapchat, to share with you a recipe for which you need to check Ohm’s Law, because it is guaranteed to be irresistible!

Cooking is a quite underrated skill that goes quite hand-in-hand with the student life. Some people may have had plenty of nice meals provided by their caretakers and are now having to figure out how to replicate it themselves, some people may already have cooking as one of their hobbies/skills before entering the student life and some people call it a win when their kitchen does not smell of smoke. All of these different backgrounds are thrown together in a student house, which makes the kitchen a wonderful place where much can be learned, much can be regretted and much blood and sweat can be spilled over the stove.

For me, I too hardly ever put anything on my stove before moving into Enschede, so I too had to learn much of the culinary world by trial. I had a really good time learning how to cook, so I decided to document this educative journey for my friends on Snapchat. Every week whenever I cook something, I take a crappy picture somewhere in my cooking process and slap a caption on it only to share it with too many people, and thus “Koken met Ruit” (Cooking with Ruit) was born. Quite quickly I learned that the public apparently can find joy in regular annoyance, and eventually I received several positive remarks on my Koken met Ruit snaps. Therefore I would like to declare this show a success, which allows me to dub it as the best cooking show on Snapchat.

Okay, I will administer my adtje-selfhype later. Let’s get cooking! In this datasheet I would like to present a recipe that some enthusiastic borrelaars may recognize. This recipe originally comes from the SCEER committee: Scintilla’s Committee for Electrotechnicians Eating Regulars. This committee provides an alternative to often expensive and unhealthy meals during drinks, they cook cheaper and healthier meals with much love. This meal was made in their first trial, it is a nice and simple vegetarian meal that can easily be made for small and large groups: ideal for a beginning chef in a student house or a large group of hungry borrelaars!

Luigi’s Component Kit (pasta pesto with tomatoes)

Ingredients: (for 4 persons)

• 300g penne (or any other similar pasta you have lying around)
• 500g cherry tomatoes
• 1 yellow onion
• 85g arugula
• 95g green pesto
• Freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese
• Freshly ground salt & pepper

What to do:

1. Cook the pasta according to the instructions of the pasta, add some salt to the pasta water before boiling. Reserve 100ml of pasta water before straining the pasta when done.
2. While the pasta is cooking, cut the cherry tomatoes in half, dice the onion and roughly chop the arugula.
3. Once the pasta is done cooking, mix it with the pesto and the reserved pasta water. Mix to combine, then add your tomatoes, onions and arugula. Bring up to taste with salt & pepper.
4. Serve with some freshly grated Parmesan Reggiano cheese.

This is a quite simple meal that tastes really good on itself, but can also be expanded on. For example, I added roughly 300g of chicken thighs to the mix (this step is not recommended for vegetarians), which I cooked in an olive oil coated pan together with my onions and some salt, pepper, dried oregano & parsley and some MSG: a spice that always goes very well with chicken.

If you too are a cooking fanatic, you can share your recipes by sending them to The Vonk and maybe the editorial team will try it out and possibly feature it in a future Datasheet! And if you are even more enthusiastic about cooking, you can follow @rickruitenbeek on Snapchat to subscribe to Koken met Ruit, my OnlyPans could be opening soon ;)