The Tryst With Italy!

When you are cooking something for the first time, you always want it to be perfect... so perfect that you begin to feel you can become a restaurant chef. But it is only when you actually get to the grind that you know the tricks and tactics of the game.

I LOVE Italian food... Being a vegetarian, you cannot get too much of it. But that does not in any way reduce my awe and my curiosity to cook those beautiful looking dishes. the reasons I love Italian food is because, it is probably the only cuisine in the world to be as interesting and attentive to detail as Indian food is. The rich look it gives makes you wish you could keep waiting it time and again. Having said this, call it an oxymoron or whatever, but i am a little allergic to eating the usual pasta, although it is the one thing i like to cook the most. I have had many successful pastas at home, but never have i felt like eating it too much. But Spaghetti has always had a very special place in my list of favourite dishes. So after a very long time, I wanted to try my luck in it. I decided to add all my favourite stuff, so that nothing goes wrong, because this is the one dish that i really really love a lot, and i wanted to impress my sister (who has constantly been annoying me by slurping at the various types of pastas in many other blogs) and show her that i do have the talent to make a restaurant quality pasta.

But what I got into was an angel with too much devil inside. So go ahead and take a look at my first blooper in my first baking experience. :)

The Marinara Sauce:
A sauce always tastes better if it has stayed for longer. So it would be much better if it was prepared a day before being served. That would also give you more time to concentrate on the rest of the recipe, unlike me.

Ingredients:
                           
5 tomatoes, finely chopped,
4 onion, finely chopped,
3 cloves of garlic, minced,
2 tsps coriander leaves, finely chopped,
1 tsp red chilli powder,
1 cup tomato sauce,
2 tbsp butter,
salt to taste.

Method:
So start off buy heating one tbsp of  butter in a pan and fry in onions and garlic. then add the tomatoes and cook until the become really soft and tender. now add some salt and chilli powder. Then add the coriander leaves and the tomato sauce.

                         
Now add the rest of the butter. Let it reduce for a while. You can add some water to bring it to a saucy consistency. After it has reduced and cooked, switch it off. You can also add some lime juice to enhance the flavour. And your sauce will be done.

The paneer balls:
Now we come to the paneer balls, and this is where my baking blooper starts. Just for the record, it tasted great. I just didn't know to bake it properly. So people like me, it is better if we stick to shallow frying until we learn baking properly. :P

Ingredients:
                        
3 potatoes, boiled and skin pealed,
100 gms paneer,
few mint leaves,
1/2 tsp chilli powder,
salt to taste,
bread crumbs,
oil.

Method:
First, take the paneer and crush it so that it would be easier to mix. Boil the potatoes and peel of the skin. Now mash both of this together. You can do this with a masher or with you hands (i prefer hands, because i love the smell), till it comes together like a nice soft dough. Now heat a pan and just saute the mint leaves without any oil. this will help in bringing out the flavour and the smell. Roughly chop it and add it to the mixture along with the salt and chilli powder.

                        
Now roll them into small balls. You can roll them on the bread crumbs to make it crispier. Well since i didn't know baking and i tried it for the first time, it was a total failure and my what was supposed to be crispy and light paneer balls turned out to become hard biscuits. :P Then my mother had to come for the rescue and shallow fry the rest of them, to save the family from dental issues. So if all goes well for you, you will get tasty, tempting paneer balls..

The Grand Finale:
                    

Ingredients for Garnishing:

2 tbsp grated cheese,

coriander leaves.

Finally to put it all together, boil the Spaghetti as per the instructions, with some salt. Place it in a plate. Now heat the marinara sauce and add the paneer balls in it. Let it cook for a minute or so, this helps the flavour of the sauce to get into the paneer balls. Now drop this sauce on top of the cooked spaghetti. Add some grated cheese and coriander on top.

                       
And serve it up restaurant style. :)

The Mysterious Aroma- South Indian Style

Going on the lines of favourite ingredients, here is another one. This is not a vegetable as such, but there is almost no cooking possible without it. It is one ingredient i simply can't survive without. But its a tricky one. If you overdo it even a little, that's it. Your entire cooking is a waste. If you add it in the correct quantity, your recipe is a clear winner. The funny thing about this ingredient although people don't realise, is that it is 80% to do only with its aroma. The actual taste is only secondary or sometimes even tertiary. It is almost never considered as a main or key ingredient, but it makes the difference between a brilliant dish and a good dish. We mostly don't realise all these specialities while cooking with it, but blindly add it as one of the other ingredients. This mystery ingredient is... Garlic, the master flavour enhancer.

This recipe is a dedication to my long time love for garlic. It is a mouth- watering South Indian dish, one of the very few which use it as the main ingredient. The Garlic Rasam.

Ingredients:
For grinding into a paste:
12 cloves of garlic,
a small lime size tamarind ball,
3 tsp of coriander seed,
3 tsp of toor dal,
2 dried red chillies,
2 tsp of black pepper.

For boiling:
8 cloves of garlic,
a pinch of turmeric,
few curry leaves,
salt to taste.

For garnishing:
2 tsp of ghee,
1 dried red chilli,
chopped coriander leaves,
2 tsp mustard seeds.

Method:

                      
First soak all the ingredients to be ground into a paste in about, 1/4 cup of water.  Let it soak for at least 10-15 minutes.
In the mean time, add the garlic, turmeric powder, curry leaves and salt to 2 cups(aprx) of water and bring to a boil. By this time the ingredients soaked in water would become more soft and read to be ground. So filter the water and grind the ingredients to quite a thick paste. When the turmeric and water mix comes to a boil, and this paste and mix well. On top add the chopped coriander leaves and let it boil. After some time you will see that the coriander leaves come together, and it starts to boil up. That brings us almost to the end.

                      
But no recipe is complete without garnishing. So, now in a small pan, heat the ghee and add mustard seeds and dried chilli. Let it splutter and add it on top of the rasam. You can also use oil instead of ghee, but the ghee adds a great deal to the aroma. Nobody would complain about that!!!!

So, whats next? Just grab a plate of rice, and relax in the light aromatic splendour of the crowning glory of Indian cooking, garlic...

The Express Potato Comeback!

I am finally back too the ONE THING i love doing the most in my life. After four months of torturous studies, life is finally back to some sanity, and i am back to my cooking. It would be a very very difficult task to put in words how much i have missed cooking and blogging during these months, especially when everybody else can still continue with their usual hobbies during exam days. But its not the same for me. My cooking has a very special place, and it deserves a lot more time and affection than people normally give their hobbies. So i am not going to waste anymore of my precious time.

I am going to start off once again, this time focusing more on the intricacies of cooking. Those things about cooking that i love so much, but don't seem to share that often.

This recipe is a very simple but extremely tasty vegetable. It has been cooked time and again in many many hundreds of styles. Every cook has their own idea of this Vegetable. This i would say is one of the plenty successful experiments i have had with the same vegetable. According to me, this is an express way of making it, and believe me it does not loose out any of its glories. Say hello to this weeks version of POTATO!

Cooking potatoes can be classified into two types in the Indian style. One would be the type which you cook for chapathis. The second is the type you make for rice. But this recipe on the other hand goes perfectly with both.

Ingredients:
5 potatoes- diced about 3 inches in size,
3 onions- diced,
red chilli powder- 1 tsp,
turmeric- 1/4 tsp,
mustard seed- 1 tsp,
oil- 3 tbsp,
salt to taste,

Method:
Heat oil in a frying pan, and add some mustard seeds. Let them splutter.
                  
                   
Now add the onions. Wait till it turns really transparent.

                   
Now add the diced potatoes. Add the turmeric and salt and mix well. Now close the pan and leave it for 3 or 4 minutes.

                  
When you open, you will see that your potato is already semi cooked.
Now the common mistake that everybody makes is add the chilli powder before it is semi cooked. This does not allow it to be crunchy and crisp. So you add the chilli powder after it is semi cooked. Now close the pan after mixing well, and let it fry for 3 minutes or so.
                             
                  
Now your potato is ready in a matter of  a few minutes. You can also add a pinch of chaat masala if you like. This would be a subtle garnish for the crunchy potatoes.

Sit back and enjoy the express crunchy potatoes.