Peperoni Arosto

Well, am not sure if this is really peperoni arosto, but this is my version of it, and it tastes pretty damn good.
Can be used as a topping on toasted garlic bread like a Crostini, or can be eaten with lavash crackers. I intend to use this in a pasta, to get a smoked bell pepper flavor next time. Another idea is to add this to a salad, with tons of feta cheese, and may be some pineapple cubes. If all else doesn't work out, you can slip in these smoked peppers into your mouth as it is!

This dish takes a long time to make, but is very easy, and can be made well ahead in time. I've noticed that it stays well in the fridge for up to a week.

Method -
1. Over roast full bell peppers at 200C for 30-45 min, till the skin blackens.
2. Once roasted, keep them in an airtight container for 10 min.
3. When the peppers are still hot, peel the skin off and chop coarse.
4. Mix in washed parsley , oregano, sea salt, red chili flakes, grated/chopped garlic and extra virgin olive oil.
5. Store in an airtight container for up to a week

Baked tomatoes with garlic

Sometime last year, there was this chain-reaction-like thing. Everyone I knew was baking these tomatoes, and posting the pic on their timeline, and I could smell these beauties from within the comp. Yeah, that’s possible ;-)!

There is no recipe to this awesome dish, and there is no decided way in which you can use this too. I have mashed the baked tomatoes and used them as a dip when we feasted on a Mediterranean-type dinner. This goes well with garlic bread, or with bread sticks too. One time, I mashed it well, and used it as a pasta sauce. Then, there are a zillion times these tomatoes didn’t even make it out of this tray. I stood at the kitchen counter and polished off all of them in one go, many times! :)

Here’s how we make this -

1. Cut the tomatoes into halves along the spine and arrange in a bake-safe dish.
2. Crush garlic pods and insert into the tomatoes. ( I inserted an average of 3 thick pods for two halves).
3. Sprinkle sea-salt and pepper generously. Drizzle virgin olive oil more than generously on these halves.
4. I used my herbed olive oil, and even topped the halves with some of those herbs.
5. Preheat the oven to 200 C, and bake this for 60-90 min at 120 C or 140 C. (depends on the oven, I had to bake for 90 min). The key is to get a heavenly smell in the kitchen! 😄

A little bit of Tuscany…

some awesome wine and a great time is what you get when you visit the restaurant Tuscany in Hyderabad’s Hotel Trident.

Having eaten there before and loved their food, I was super excited when I was asked to do a food review, when their Michelin Star Chef Adriano Baldassarre was visiting Hyderabad to do a special food festival based on the theme – Regions of Italy.

Yes, it was really a little bit of Tuscany there, what with some great vegetarian food served along with wonderful wine, enhancing the whole experience. The music was soft, making it possible for us to have a good conversation with Ms.Rajveer Kaur, their Communications Manager and Ms.Aadishree Chury, the Restaurant Manager for Tuscany, both women very knowledgeable about the food they like and serve.

Every meal in Tuscany is served with some freshly baked Focaccia bread, which goes extremely well with the olive oil served at the table.

Fresh Vegetarian lasagna, and a lot of fun!

Tell me which self-proclaimed-kitchen-goddess doesn’t dream of making fresh pasta. Well, moi aussi.
But this post is not about fresh pasta. This is about fresh lasagna, the easier one of the lot!

Couple of days ago, a friend invited a bunch of us, girlfriends over for lasagna in the evening. The evening was fun, full of laughter, conversation and great food. And I sat there and marveled as she counted her recipe of making fresh lasagna sheets. So simple, and I hadn’t tried it yet!

Healthy & Skinny Lasagna

What has melted, almost-roasted cheese on top and makes your heart skip a beat and your mouth drool a bit? Yes, that's right, Sherlock! Its a Lasagna. :-D And vegan one, if you want it to be!

Are you one of those who doesn't try out a lasagna because of all the fatty ingredients in it? Do you think putting up a lasagna is a lengthy process and the result is often something that sits on your hips?

Risotto, with Thai Green curry flavours!

Risotto, like Indian rice is versatile, I’ve gathered. You can make it in a lot of flavours with a variety of vegetables, not to mention the meat options. One idea that I got from GoodFood [May, 2012] magazine is to cook Risotto with Asian flavours, and I was like – why didn’t I think of this before!

This is perfect for families like mine, where one member wants to eat only Indian flavours, and another wants to experiment with the meal. It took me a while before I could actually try this , but when I did try, I knew I had a winning recipe at my hand!

Spaghetti all’ aglio e olio

Only the other day did I realize that I didn’t post the recipe to this pasta, the easiest ever and my most favourite pasta. Its so easy and so awesome that this is my forever back-up dinner dish. If I am down, or if I don’t know what to eat, and am in not a mood for some Khichdi, then Aglio Olio it is… Yes.



Traditionally, this recipe has just the basic ingredients – garlic, chilli flakes and pesto all sautéed in some fragrant olive oil and mixed with a pasta of your choice and garnished with lots of parmesan cheese. And when I make this, there is always a garlic overdose, because of the never-ending love I proclaimed to garlic ! :) And I have omitted parmesan cheese ever since I learnt that parmesan contains calf rennet… all hard cheeses do. I now serve this pasta with a slice of cheddar, and drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on top for the flavour.

Raw Mango & Bell Pepper Risotto

Our Sunday evening routine is simple. I ask the husband what he wants to eat, knowing fully well that the answer doesn’t change. Its always Lemon Rice and Curd Rice, both exactly the same way he likes to eat. If he is feeling magnanimous , he sometimes asks me to make my Huliogare, but that is a very rare case. So imagine how I must’ve grinned when he asked me to make anything I liked, but added the condition that he was in a mood for some rice. Oh yeah, rice it will be, I thought to myself as I grinned the evil grin, and went on to make this Risotto.

Technically, this is rice. And it has all the South Indian flavours too, the slight sweet and tart taste of the raw mangoes, the flavour of the bell peppers and enough spice to please a South Indian. So, I indeed cooked rice. ;-)

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca!

Hehehe. I just love it when I can give such fancy names to my dishes, especially if I don’t have to work at creating such fancy names… ;-)
Imagine the flavours of olives, capers, garlic and smoked tomatoes in your mouth. Now imagine a meal out of these. Yes, it is that yummm…

Pair it with some red wine, and enjoy!

Cherry Tomato & Aubergine Pasta

The search for the best non-tomato pasta base is on. And I think I am getting closer to it. First it was the Hummus pasta, and now this one.



What’s so special about this one, you might ask. Its just tomatoes and aubergine again. Haven’t you already cooked this? Yes, just that this time, its roasted aubergine paste as sauce to bind the pasta ingredients together.

Risotto. For a change…

Last night, for once, I didn’t want to eat pasta. I wanted something else for a change. But then what to do with all the fresh zucchini and the pesto I have. I had to do something Italian, but not pasta. Some asking around on Twitter for recipe ideas (Yes, that’s in these days! :-P), and risotto, it was. That way I could also use up some of the Arborio rice I had stashed away almost an year ago.

The last time I made the risotto, I was slightly put off by the creamy texture it held. Yes, I know, its weird that I didn’t like risotto for the very taste it is known for. I had used wine and vegetable stock then, but this time I decided to do away with all that. It would be with plain hot water, and no cheese. I know this one is beginning to sound like a bit of an Indian rice preparation, but blame it on the Indian roots , I was craving for that. For some reason, cooking with zucchini and pesto and Sona Masoori rice wasn’t on, and hence the Arborio rice usage, and hence the vague resemblance to risotto. :-)

Ingredients (Serves one very generously)
Arborio rice – 1/3 cup
Zucchini – 1/2 of a medium sized one, chopped with the skin on for all the pieces
Red bell pepper – 1/2 of a medium sized one, chopped into one cm big pieces
Onion – 1 medium sized , chopped fine
Garlic cloves – 5-6, chopped very fine lengthwise
Dried Sage/Thyme – 1 tbsp, or any herb of your choice
Ground Black pepper – 1 tbsp
Sea Salt – To taste
Boiling water – 1.5 cups
Basil pesto – fresh or frozen – 1 tbsp or one ice-cube
Olive oil – 1/2 + 1/2  tbsp

Instructions
In a deep pan, heat one half of the olive oil and sauté the onions and some garlic. Once they are softened, add the rice and sauté till the rice is covered with the oil. Add half a cup of the boiling water to this, mix and let it be on medium heat for 5 minutes. Once this water is absorbed by the rice, add some more water and let it be on heat for another 5 mins till this water is absorbed too. Add salt to taste. Repeat this step 4-5 times, till the quantity of rice increases, rice is cooked but still does not resemble a pulp. Once cooked, close this pan and let this rice sit for 10 mins.

Now prepare the vegetables. In another pan, heat the remaining olive oil, add the garlic and the herbs , pepper and sauté the zucchini and pepper till they are soft and cooked. Add salt to taste.

Once the vegetables are prepared mix the rice with the vegetables, and swirl the pesto into this mixture at the end.

Serve hot.

Lasagne , with Fennel-Aubergine …

And Pepper-Pesto base! Sounds awesome, no? :-)

The first ever time I tried roasted aubergine (eggplant or brinjal as it is known in India), I fell in love. With the burnt taste that lingers even after you peel off the burnt skin from the vegetable. Trust me, for all my culinary escapades (all 3 of them!:-P), I haven’t made Baingan ka Bharta before, and when the cook made an awesome job at it this week, it was like I rediscovered the taste of roasted brinjal all over again.

And when I spotted the fresh Fennel bulb in the grocery counter last week, I decided to marry these tastes. Fennel with roasted aubergine, that is. And it had to be with pasta.

I’ve already done the pasta with roasted aubergine in the base , so this time I wanted to try it as a filling in Lasagne. And to alternate it , I used some left over Pepper-Pesto base from the Pasta with pesto recipe.

Fennel with Roasted Aubergine combined with Peppers in pesto sauce , it was going to be. A total medley of flavours , no?

Ingredients (Serves 2)

Fennel Bulb – 1, washed and chopped to 1/2 cm pieces
Eggplant – 1 big, stove roasted and skin peeled off , chopped
Garlic cloves – 4-5 crushed
Olive oil – 1 tbsp
Dill – 1/2 tbsp
Sage – 1/2 tbsp
Pepper-pesto curry – Recipe from here – 2 cups
Lasagne sheets – 6 sheets, cooked and dried per instructions on the box
Cheddar cheese – 3-4 slices, enough to cover the lasagne in the last layer

Instructions

Prepare the garlic, aubergine and fennel pieces together by sautéing them in olive oil till the fennel is soft, and aubergine is mashed. Add some Dill and Sage to this while sautéing to give a herb-y flavour to the base. This should be a thick yet spread-able paste.

Grease an oven-proof bowl with a little olive oil, and pour one thin layer of the Aubergine-Fennel. Place the lasagne sheets , Pepper-Pesto base and the roasted aubergine-fennel base alternatively in the bowl. Top it with cheese.

Bake this in a pre-heated oven at 200C for 30 mins, or till the cheese becomes a golden brown on top.

Cut , garnish with pepper , sage or dill if required, and serve hot.

Pesto. Lots!

Its no news to readers of this blog that I love Pasta, right? And that I dream of Basil? Well… That and that I also love pesto. I’ve never tried it, but I guess I can eat basil pesto in almost everything, if you feed me. :) But then, fresh basil is little hard to find in Hyderabad. You need to be present when the vegetable load is being stored in the super market. You get there even 10 mins late, and Basil’s all gone. Guess am not the only one in love with this herb.
So during this week’s grocery shopping, I was delighted to find bunches of fresh basil , which I promptly picked. All of it. And made pesto with it all. Right now, I have enough pesto to make pasta for a full week. And the entire fridge is smelling like basil , inducing mouth-watering feelings in my head. :)

When I decided to finally drag my lazy self into the kitchen today, I decided it has to be dry pasta, with no sauce, and only pesto as the seasoning. I added the veggies and sautéed them in lot of olive oil, added garlic, and just a little oregano and red chilli flakes. And two big scoops of pesto. Needless to say, I am currently a very happy woman, with her stomach full of awesome pasta, and house smelling of fresh basil. :-D

Ingredients (Good enough to season Pasta for 5 people)

Basil Pesto - 4 Tbsps
Olive oil – 4-6 tbsps
Onions – Diced thin, 2 medium sized
Green , Red and Yellow Peppers – Sliced very thin – 1 each
Cherry Tomatoes – sliced into half – 10-15
Aubergine/Brinjal – Stove roasted, and mashed into a pulp – 1/2 cup (optional)
Red Chilli Flakes – 1 tbsp
Dried Oregano – 1 tbsp
Sea Salt – To taste
Garlic cloves – sliced very thin , 10-12

Pasta – Cooked per instructions on the box – 1 cup (for two people)

Parmesan cheese – 1 tbsp worth shavings

Instructions

Sauté the onions, peppers , garlic and cherry tomatoes till they all are cooked.
If using roasted aubergine, add it to this mixture.
Add the pesto this , and mix well to coat all the vegetables
Season with Oregano and chilli flakes and add salt to taste

This mixture can be cooled and saved in the fridge for later use also.

Mix 1.5 cups of this sautéed mixed vegetables with cooked pasta, and serve hot.

Garnish with Parmesan cheese, if using.

Spaghetti with roasted tomato and aubergines…

 

I know its no news to whoever reads this blog that I love pasta. And pasta is dancing in my mind’s eye all the time. In its spaghetti form, in its fusilli form and as Lasagne. (Yeah, Penne is not a personal favourite). What makes or breaks the pasta is its sauce. The freshness of the ingredients, the right balance of the herbs in the sauce and the method of making the sauce, that determines the taste of the pasta.

While searching through my blog for some red-sauce based pasta, I found this recipe in which I blend all the ingredients after they are cooked. That looked like the best way to make my own sauce back then, but on giving more thought, I came up with this one. Puree the tomatoes separately. And then adding them to the onion-garlic mixture with herbs. Trust me, this one tastes so much better, and you can feel all the veggies.

Also serving the pasta with mozzarella chunks was something I read on a site, and thought was a cool idea. If you love Mozzarella but think that its stringy texture will interfere with the texture of the pasta, sprinkle the chunks after your pasta is done.

I added aubergines to this to have another flavour in the sauce, but you can totally omit them and make yourself a Arrabiata pasta. Typically, you’ll need two ladles of this sauce to make one serving of pasta, for one person.

Ingredients

(Serves 4-6 people for main course)
Ripe red tomatoes – 1 kg
Aubergines, diced into thin slices – 1/2 kg
Onions, large – Diced – 2-3
Garlic cloves – crushed – 15
Dried basil – 2-3 tbsp
Dried oregano – 2-3 tbsp
Red chilli flakes – 2-3 tbsp
Sea salt – to taste
Olive Oil – 3tbsp

Instructions
Pierce a fork into the tomato, and put it on a high flame directly. The skin of the tomato starts burning, and it gets roasted. Do this for the entire batch of tomatoes, and let them cool.
Once they cool down, peel the skin off and crush them in a mixer/blender.
Heat this liquid till the water evaporates, and you are left with thick tomato puree.

In a pan, heat the oil, and sauté the onions and garlic. Once they turn baby-pinkish, add the aubergines to this, and sauté till all are cooked. Add the herbs for flavour, and salt to taste.

Now add the tomato puree and boil. Check the salt to taste.

This sauce can be saved or frozen in the refrigerator to be used later.

To make pasta, cook the pasta per the instructions , and toss it with the sauce. Serve hot with Mozzarella cheese chunks.

The freshness of the tomato will hit you, and before you can recover , the cheese will melt in  your mouth. And then its the savouring of the other herbs and spices in it… Trust me, this recipe will never go wrong.

Eggplant Lasagne. My first ever!

 

I’ve cooked pasta many times but never lasagne. At first , it seemed to be a very complicated dish. Cooking the sheets, the vegetables and then lining them seemed to be a lot of work. Little did I realize then that this is what happens with a regular pasta also, and the only thing different with lasagne is that it is baked.

So when I made up my mind to actually cook Lasagne, the search for the perfect sheets began. They had to be eggless, and should not be close to their expiry date (if you shopped in the super markets around Kothaguda junction in Hyderabad, you’d know what I am talking about). After a lot of search, I found the a batch of eggless sheets, which were bought right away. And the keeda to cook lasagne has been fed into this brain of mine.

Last week, when I was clearing up my fridge on a lonely evening, I made a big batch of red sauce, in the hope of it easing my work on a Pasta day someday. It happened to be today, and the entire assembling of lasagne took me exactly 20 mins. And another 40 mins to bake it. There, sumptuous dinner was ready in 1 hour.

I did not follow any recipe to do this, except just the basic idea on how to cook the sheets, the lining of the lasagne and the vegetables in the dish, and the baking time. It was all guesswork on how the ingredients would be lined up, and I think that is what happens in all the cases.
In order to appeal to the Indian palate, I decided to season the eggplants when they were being roasted, so that there would be a distinct flavour and a taste when we get to only the eggplants. I also poured some salt on the cheese to ensure that the cheese does not render the dish salt-less. And that worked in my favour. I also sprinkled some black pepper powder along with the salt to make the cheese have some spice too.

I baked this in a 9x4 inch very thick glass dish, and the contents served the two of us, with a little more left. Guess it will be good for 3 also.

Ingredients
Red sauce (homemade or store bought) – 2 cups
Lasagne sheets – 8-9, cooked per instructions on the box
Eggplants – 8 small sized ones, washed and diced to be thin inch long pieces
Olive Oil – 2 tbsp
Cajun seasoning – 2 tbsp, or a mix of Oregano and Red chilli flakes
Sea salt – Per taste
Black pepper – if required, per taste
Mozzarella cheese – 1 cup
Cheddar cheese – 2 slices



Instructions
Pat the lasagne sheets dry with a kitchen towel.
In a deep pan, heat the olive oil and roast the eggplant slices in it. Add salt and seasoning to this, and let it be on heat for a while.
Meanwhile, pour one layer of the red sauce into a deep baking dish, and line the lasagne sheet on it.
Remove the eggplant from the stove and line a layer of this in the dish on the sheet.
Line the dish with lasagne sheets, Mozzarella cheese, red sauce, lasagne sheets, eggplant layer and a lasagne sheet lining.
At the top, spread the red sauce in a thin lining and top it up with Mozzarella and Cheddar cheeses.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 185 for 40 mins, or till the cheese gets a golden brown colour.

This particular photo was shot after I was done half eating. I loved the look of the layers in my plate so much that I couldn’t resist shooting this.

The minute I put a fork full of lasagne into the mouth, there was a medley of cheese, tomato sauce, the seasoning on the eggplants and it was heaven. :-)

Tomato Cream Pasta and a good life…

 

Apparently this is the Cook-For-Self-And-Eat-Alone-Week at home, starring yours truly.

So instead of sitting and moping around the whole weekend all by myself like a lazy bug on the couch, I’ve lined up a zillion activities to do, most important of them being a spa appointment and planning to make an entire Lasagne for myself :) And when one has such important activities to do in a jam-packed weekend, one has to plan in advance. And that planning started tonight.

All through the drive back home from office, I kept on thinking on what I’d like to have for dinner (oh yes, food is on my mind ALL.THE.TIME! Either am thinking about what to cook, or how a particular dish tasted or generally craving for food. Basically, I think I only think about food! :))
Something that I really love to eat which the husband doesn’t greatly love. Something savoury , coz after having polished off an entire loaf of Banana bread this week I was in no mood for  any more dessert. And Providence gave me the answer – Pasta, of course! :-D
But tonight, I wanted to make something I haven’t made before, something new. I scrounged through the Must Try page of my Recipe notebook in OneNote (a very clever product placement, right? :)), and found some pasta recipes that I had wanted to try. And when you have great plans like this, and zero patience to stop at the farmer’s market en route home and your fridge tells you in not so many words to STFU about making anything fancy and stick to something basic because it can provide only for that, and you gotta listen to it, which is what I did, obediently.

What I could salvage from the fridge could provide for a tomato based pasta. So I decided to go ahead with it, but with a slight twist. Something creamy, and yet tomato-ey. And with lots of herbs. And something that will be done in 10 mins flat.

The recipe is a very basic creamy tomato sauce recipe, and I did nothing new except of course alter the amount of ingredients to suit my taste. Which means, more garlic and oregano and aaaah basil!

Ingredients

Fusilli – 1 cup
Tomato paste – 1 cup (I just put the tomatoes in a mixer to get the paste)
Thick cream – 1/4 cup
Olive oil – 1 tbsp.
Mozzarella cheese – For garnish
Garlic cloves – 4-6, chopped very small or crushed in a mortar-pestle
Oregano, Red chilli flakes, Basil, Black pepper, Sea salt – All per taste

Instructions
Boil a pot of water, and add salt to this once the water starts boiling. Now add the fusilli to this and let this boil for 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a pan, heat the oil and sauté the garlic. Add some oregano, chilli flakes, pepper and basil to garlic and let this mixture become roasted in the oil.
Now add the tomato paste to the oil, and let it boil. Once the paste starts boiling, add the cream and boil more till the paste thickens. You can add the herbs and spices again now if you wish, for some enhanced taste.
Season this sauce with some salt and add the boiled pasta to this sauce. Toss this well till the pasta is coated with the sauce.
You can garnish this pasta with any of the following - fresh basil leaves, parsley, cheese, pepper.
Serve hot.

And when I was making this pasta, I also made a big bowl of red sauce, hoping it will ease my first time lasagne efforts. Lots of onions and garlic, the tomato paste and all the herbs I could lay my hands on yielded me this sauce, and I cannot wait till I try it out.

The entire house is now smelling of fresh tomatoes and basil, I just licked off the remaining sauce from the plate, Kolaveri is playing in the background on the laptop as I am typing this, and I have enough books that will take another 20 years for me to read.

Life is good! :-)

Hummus Pasta, an instant mood-lifter!

I love hummus. I love pasta. Well, that’s not news for the readers of this blog, right?
I also love garlic and cherry tomatoes. Sometimes I wonder if I am really born in a community which abhors garlic, and if I was really lifted off someone else’s hospital bed like Mom always claimed. Yeah, the things I love to eat are not what Mom would generally make at home or dream of it. And I don’t even cook or eat meat!
The flavours, the ingredients , the cuisines. All of them. This just strengthens Mom’s case, right? Sigh.
So before I drifted off to talk about my confused origin, I was talking about the flavours I love. I was known to have the biggest sweet tooth on the dining table. Any dining table. But off late, I have discovered quite joyously that the sweet tooth was just an implication of a medical condition which required me to stock on sugars, and that I really do not enjoy desserts as much I thought I do. But yes, the love for pasta and anything Italian , well that’s not changed over time. Thankfully. For me, and for the husband who, once in a while relishes non-Indian food, pasta being one of them.
Yesterday, when I was passing by Q-Mart (In case you don’t know what it is, which means you are not a Hyderabadi, this is an overtly pish-posh grocery store where prices of everything is atleast thrice of what you would get in a regular grocery store. Slight exaggeration aside, this is not a place I go to everyday, in case you were thinking ;-) ), I got reminded that I had to buy one particular species of Dancing Bamboos to add to my Bamboo collection. But Providence has different plans for me (sigh. I’ll never stop being the drama queen, right? :-)) The minute I entered the store, I was drawn to the vegetable section. This place always stocks the freshest of the veggies and greens and I laid eyes on a fresh bunch of basil leaves, which I picked up almost immediately. And then there were a basket of cherry tomatoes there. Needless to say, I picked them too.
Once back home, I made some basil hummus and was wondering what I should make next to use the cherry tomatoes and fresh basil leaves whose smell was wafting appetizingly in my kitchen. Aglio Olio with spaghetti was the first thing that I thought of , its easy to make. Making this with dried basil leaves is good, but there is nothing better than this pasta with fresh basil leaves. Moreover, I can use all the garlic and basil I want, and its a house-favourite.
But then, I also wanted to use up the hummus as the sauce. I remembered reading this recipe by The Cilantropist , one of my favourite food-bloggers and decided to get inspired by it.


Hummus pasta it was, then! With generous amounts of basil thrown in. I generally add a variety of herbs to any pasta I make, but I wanted to just retain the smell, flavour and taste of Hummus and the tomatoes for this one. The thought appealed to my almost-hungry stomach so much that it started rumbling instantly! :)

Ingredients
Basil Hummus - 1 cup, slightly thinned but not pouring consistency
Whole wheat Spaghetti – a fistful
Cherry Tomatoes – 250 gms
Fresh basil leaves – a handful. Chopped.
Garlic cloves – 10-15. (You can change the quantity per your taste)
Olive oil – 2 tbsp. Just enough to roast the Hummus and Garlic
Black pepper – to taste
Salt – to taste
Olives – pitted or sliced, quantity as you desire , completely optional
Red chilli flakes – One tbsp

Instructions
Cook the pasta per the instructions on its cover.

Meanwhile, pour the oil in a pan, and char the tomatoes for about 5 mins with pepper and salt on it. Once its slightly charred, add the garlic and roast a bit. Now add the basil leaves to this and let it be roasted along with the garlic and tomatoes.
Add the hummus to this and let it be on heat for a minute. Now add the olives and pasta and toss well.
Serve hot. And tell me how you like it. :-)

Oven-dried Tomatoes

 

The other day I was blog-hopping and bumped into this post by PurpleFoodie. Having always loved the taste of sun-dried tomatoes, I immediately tried this on half-a dozen tomatoes that I had in the fridge, and lo.. they were ready – my own first batch of oven-dried tomatoes.

They tasted awesome, and yes, this was what was left by the time I got around to photograph them. That is a testimony of how good they were! :) I haven’t used them in a pasta or a pizza yet, but I plan to make another batch soon and use them for that purpose.

The only deterrent, if at all, that can stop me from making these would be the time. It takes atleast 2-3 hrs of prep time, and 2 hrs of electricity and oven running. For all that effort, it seems like a little return :)

Tomato Pasta Cheese Bake

 

Readers to this blog, by now would have known my love for anything which would be remotely related to pasta, right? :)

So one evening, I was wondering what to eat, and as usual my mind suggested I make pasta. But having had pasta for the major part of the week, I knew the husband would crib if I fed him the same thing again. Some googling and some imagination led me to this recipe, and I immediately tried it.

And as usual, the husband told me that it was the best pasta I ever baked! :) (He does that for every new pasta recipe I make, always the same words! :))

Ingredients:

1 5’x5’ baking pan. I used a Borosil glass one
4 tomatoes, cut into quarter pieces
4 tbsp Olive oil
1 tbsp each of Oregano, Sage and Basil dried herbs
1 tbsp chilli flakes
Sea salt – To taste
1 cup boiled and made pasta. I used whole-wheat penne and fusilli.
Britannia Masala Mania cheese cube – 1, cut into pieces
2 tbsp shredded mozzarella cheese
Crumbs out of 1 wheat bread slice

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C
2. Place the quarter-cut tomatoes in the baking pan, sprinkle the herbs , chilli flakes and sea salt on the tomatoes. Drizzle this with the olive oil and bake for about 15-20 mins, or till the tomatoes are cooked, and are mashable
3. Once baked/cooked, mash the tomatoes into a sauce-like paste, with a spoon.
4. Mix the crumbs and the shredded mozzarella into this paste. This would thicken the sauce, if its too watery.
5. Add the cooked pasta into this paste, mix well.
6. Top this with the Britannia cheese pieces. Alternatively you can use cheddar also, but I love the flavours in this cheese, though its processed.
7. Bake for 10 mins, or till the cheese pieces turn into a golden brown. They are a serious treat! :)
8. Enjoy this pasta as it is or with a slice of warm bread.

The above pic is from the second time, when I used some zucchinis(I cooked them in olive oil and some herbs separately, and added after I mashed the tomatoes) and whole-wheat penne. I loved this version also equally. I even stored it to eat it as breakfast the next day, and it tasted better the next day.

Pasta with red sauce

 

As already wrote here, pasta is my ever favourite food to eat. Its something I cook when I am bored or when I am feeling excited or when I have time to cook or when I am too busy – just about anytime.

I used to buy the canned red sauce by Barilla and make the pasta before, but after bumping into a ton of recipes on the net for it, I decided to make my own. Now, there is nothing new in my recipe, but I just tweak around the ingredients, the quantity of the herbs to suit our palate and cut through some long routes :) . The result is always a good pasta, but something I can never replicate, because of the runtime alterations I do to the recipes.

I am sure I am not going to follow the same recipe the next time I make pasta, but this is the basic framework with which I am going to work around :). The changes I do are generally with the herbs, the
This recipe has more vegetables than is generally found in a regular pasta, and serves two for dinner.

Ingredients & Procedure:

For the sauce:
2 medium sized onions, chopped
4 large tomatoes, chopped
2 green chillies, diced
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsps olive oil
Salt to taste
1 tsp each of Oregano and basil

In a pan, heat the oil on medium flame and put in the chillies and crushed garlic. After 2 mins, put the onions in the oil and roast till the onions turn to a pale pink color. Add the herbs to this. Now add the tomatoes to this and let these cook in the oil. After about 5 mins, when the tomatoes are cooked, add the salt, take the pan off the stove and let this mixture cool. Pour in a mixer and blend to a thick red paste.

For the pasta:
2 cups whole-wheat pasta(fusilli, penne or spaghetti), cooked al-dente
1/2 cup each chopped vegetables (green, red and yellow capsicums, zucchinis, cauliflower florets)
1 medium-sized onion, chopped into long pieces
1 cup washed and chopped spinach leaves
2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp each Italian herbs (I generally use oregano, thyme, basil, sage)
1 tbsp basil pesto
Salt to taste
2 cups red sauce(made from the recipe given above)

For garnishing:
Cheese grated or diced. (I generally use the Britannia Masala Mania cheese cubes or Cheddar slices)

Heat the oil in a thick bottomed pan and add the onions to this. Add the herbs and basil pesto and let these roast in the oil. Put the capsicums in the pan now, and roast them for 4-5 mins. Now add the other vegetables like cauliflower florets, spinach and zucchinis and cook for another 4-5 mins. Now add the red sauce to this mixture, and let it cook till the sauce boils. Add the salt to taste in this mixture. Add the cooked pasta to this and mix this well, but careful to not crush the veggies.
Garnish with the cheese and serve warm.