Week 2 - Noodles

The Week 2 challenge, noodles, was one of those themes where it's so easy to find something to fit that it makes choosing something really difficult. I ended up picking ketchup spaghetti / spaghetti Napolitan from Just One Cookbook, something we've never had before. I had no idea that ketchup-flavored pasta was a thing in Japan, but it seems that ketchup became popular for the sauce because tomato sauce was rare in the post-war era. According to the recipe notes, it's still a fairly popular yoshoku (Western-influenced food) dish there, so it sounded like a good one to try!

I didn't make many changes to the recipe here so that it would be as authentic as possible, and combined some tricolor spaghetti with garlic chicken sausage, green peppers, mushrooms, and onions. The sauce was predominantly ketchup with some Worcestershire sauce, pasta water, salt, and pepper.

This was a very simple dish to make, perfect for a school night. While a ketchup sauce can't match the richness of a well-developed tomato sauce, I don't really think it's fair to compare, as they felt like two very different dishes. We really liked this, and it's nice to know now that ketchup is another option for pasta sauce!