Pasta with grilled vegetables and Tomato sauce

Another way of relishing the grilled vegetables!

Grilled vegetables like mushroom , zucchini and coloured capsicum.
Tomato sauce
Pasta - al dente
Mix and enjoy!

Tomato sauce for pasta

Italian tomato sauce used in spaghetti and other pasta dishes is made at home with fresh ingredients. Onion, Garlic and celery are sweated and then fresh red roma tomato is diced and added with various Italian spices. Then it is left to stew for half an hour on a low flame.

The taste of this sauce is incredible.

Have it with spaghetti  or any pasta of your choice.

My kids love taking pasta to school and this red sauce comes in very handy. Just make in advance and freeze in portions. The night before thaw one portion in the fridge and presto - red sauce for pasta is ready for the morning rush! All you have to do is boil your pasta and add it to the thawed, boiled tomato sauce. Sprinkle some cheese and you are ready to pack lunch!

Also try this sauce with grilled vegetables.

Ingredients:

Onion - 1 large 

Garlic - 2 tbsp
Celery - 3 or 4 stalks

Tomato - 8 large (1kg)

Tomato ketchup - 1 tbsp

Salt
Pepper - 1 tsp
Rosemary - 1 pinch (opt)
Thyme - 1/2 tsp

Chili flakes - 1 tsp
Sugar - 1 tsp
Olive oil - 3 tbsp

Method:
Chop the onion, garlic and celery finely.

Heat the olive oil in a thick bottomed vessel. Add the onion, garlic, celery and saute on a low flame.

Chop the tomato.

(Some people prefer to blanch the tomatoes and remove the skin before chopping / pureeing)

When the onion becomes transparent (not brown or golden) add the tomato.

Mix well and add the salt, pepper, red chilli flakes and thyme. Add the rosemary, if using, now.

Mix well and add 1 tsp sugar.

Add the tomato ketchup.

Mix well and cook on low flame for approximately 15 minutes.

Then purée the mixture.

Cool to room temperature and store in portions. Freeze in portions, if you desire.

This sauce can be used in pastas, pizzas and in ratatouille.

Serve with spaghetti / any pasta topped with cheese.

Spaghetti with tofu balls

Aubergine roll with Tomato sauce

Pasta with grilled vegetables and pesto

As I had said in my earlier post -Plancha / grilling is the IN thing at home. This was dinner!

Grilling vegetables is easy. Try with different colored capsicum, zucchini and mushroom. Omit the tomatoes and onion. Refer http://www.globalvegcooking.com/2012/06/grilled-vegetable-sandwich-with-lemon.html

Boil pasta , al dente
Make Pesto

Mix the boiled pasta with the grilled vegetables and add the pesto. How easy is that? Enjoy!

Grilled vegetable sandwich with lemon mayo dressing

My husband bought me a PLANCHA!! Yipee!!!
So it is grilling all the way and my daughter takes grilled sandwiches with different dressings to school.
Today it was with lemon mayonnaise.

Vegetables are so easy to grill - just mix with a splash of olive oil and some seasoning (salt and pepper) and keep aside for 2 minutes. Grill.
Important : Tomato must be grilled with only salt on top - do not mix with olive oil and keep aside.

Grill the vegetables and grill your bread.
Mix a tablespoon of mayo with 2 or 3 drops of lemon.
Spread the mayo on the bread and layer the vegetables. Press hard.
Done!

Eggless Self Saucing Chocolate Pudding

Eggless pudding which tastes like heaven. I could not take a nice picture of the same with ice-cream as my kids could just not wait to eat!

Grease a 1-lt tin and keep aside.
Preheat oven to 180 C

Sauce mix:
Brown sugar - 3/4 cup
Cocoa powder - 1/4 cup
Boil 1 1/4 cup of water and mix the above ingredients together to get a smooth paste. Keep aside.

Cake mix:
Maida / all purpose flour - 1 cup
Baking powder - 3/4 tsp
Cocoa powder - 1/4 cup
Sugar powder - 3/4 cup
Milk - 1/2 cup
Butter - 45 gms

Sift all the dry ingredients together and make a well in the centre.
Heat the milk with the butter and once butter melts (milk must NOT boil) add to the dry ingredients and mix well. Pour into the greased tray.

Now pour the sauce on top of the flour mix very carefully and bake in oven for 40 minutes.
Serve hot with vanilla ice cream. Heaven!

Mint coriander chammandi

My aunt, Seetha Ananthakrishnan , believes that every week the fridge should get empty before the next stock of vegetables are bought. And thus all the left over greens (mint, curry leaf and coriander) are made into a beautiful chammandi. This chammandi lasts for 2 days even when left outside. It tastes best with both dosa and rice.

Small onion / scallion - 3, cut
Ginger - 1 inch piece
Garlic - 2 cloves
Red Chilli - 6 or more
Mint leaves - 1 bunch or less
Coriander leaf - 2 thick stalks
Curry leaf - 2 stalks
Oil - 1 tbsp
Urad dal - 1 tbsp
Tamarind - 1 small ball (size of ' Cadbury's gems')
Salt

Heat a thick vessel and fry the urad dal and red chilli till dal turns red. Keep aside.
In the same vessel, heat the oil and fry the onion, ginger and garlic on low flame.
Once translucent, add the leaves and keep frying till they wilt.
Grind first the dal and red chilli with the tamarind and salt.
Then add the fried onions and leaf.
Grind WITHOUT water into a thick paste.

Opt:
 Fry coconut with the red chilli. This increases the quantity of chammandi. if doing this do not forget to increase the quantity of tamarind and red chillies.

Mixed vegetable curry for aapam / idiyappam

Think of Kerala cuisine and I am sure 2 things immediately pop in your head - spices and coconut. Here instead of adding whole spices, I am cheating and using Garam masala!

Boiled vegetables :

Potato -3, medium

Carrot - 1, medium

Peas - 1 cup

Onion - 1 large, cut into long strips and then cut into 3

Ginger - 2 inch slice, julienned

Garlic - 1 clove, chopped

Green chilli - 2 slit

Curry leaf - 10

Chilli powder - 1 tsp

Salt

Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp

Garam masala - 1 tsp

Tomato - 2, chopped fine

Coconut milk - 1 cup

Oil - 2 tbsp

Mustard - 1 tsp

Coriander leaf - 2 tbsp

Heat the oil and pop the mustard seeds.

Next saute the onion, ginger, garlic and green chillies till onions start to brown.

Now add all the powders.

After a minute add the tomatoes and cook covered till it becomes pulpy.

Now add the boiled vegetables and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Be careful that the curry does not burn.

Now add the coconut milk and coriander leaf. Mix well.

Give it just a boil and turn off flame.

Serve hot with Aapam or Idiyappam.

Tomato Basil / Coriander Soup

It has been raining heavily here and what better way to enjoy the rains than by having a hot bowl of soup with crusty bread? And this soup is so easy to make!

Tomato - 1 kg, chopped
(If you have the patience blanch and skin and deseed, otherwise just chop fine, like I did!)
Basil / Coriander stalk - 1 handful
Tomato ketchup - 2 tbsp
Onion -1, chopped
Garlic - 4 cloves, chopped
Celery (opt) - 1 stalk
Salt
Pepper
Sugar - 1 tbsp
Cream (opt) - 1 tsp per bowl
Butter / Olive oil / Vegetable oil - 1 tbsp

Heat the oil/butter and saute the onion, garlic and celery on a low flame till translucent.
Now add the tomato, salt, pepper, sugar and tomato ketchup.
Cover and cook for 15 minutes.
Add the chopped basil / coriander stalk and cook covered on low flame for a further 5 minutes.
Now you need to blend this and adjust seasoning.
Then reheat just before serving.
Serve with croutons and swirls of cream.

Olan

This mild dish called 'silver koottan' in our house has many admirers. It is a coconut based dish and has it's roots firmly fixed in the Kerala soil.

During every sadya, huge quantities of olan is prepared so that the non-spicy food lovers could counter the spicy tastes of sambar and relish their sadya.

No turmeric powder and chilly powder is used while making this curry so that the dish remains white and translucent. 
No mustard is spluttered and nothing is ground and added.

My grandmom and mother-in-law (south Keralites) never use coconut milk while making olan; while my paternal grandmother used the milk of at least 3 coconuts for feeding her entire family the same dish!

The way the vegetables are cut into thin slices for this dish.

Slit green chilli(es) is the only spice allowed.

Pumpkin, ash gourd, string beans, chembu (Arvi)  and 'van payaru' (red cow peas) are the usual ingredients used in varying combinations to make olan.

Pumpkin (less), ash gourd (more) is one combination.

Ash gourd and van payar is another combination.

A grand variant is pumpkin, ash gourd, colacasia and string beans mixed olan.

Ingredients:

Van payar / red cow peas - 1/2 cup, soaked for 6 hrs

Pumpkin - 1 cup

Ash Gourd - 2 cups

Green chilli - 2

Salt

Chembu / Arbi / Colacasia - 3 small

String beans - 1/2 cup

Coconut milk - 1 cup, thick

Coconut oil - 3 tbsp

Curry leaf - 10

General instructions:

1. Van payar is soaked overnight and cooked first until soft with some slit green chillies.

2. If using colacasia, boil this with salt and green chilli before adding any vegetable as this takes time to cook.

3. After van payar / chembu gets cooked add the rest of the vegetables and cook till soft and there is almost no liquid / water in the dish.

4. Coconut milk is added and just heated ; not boiled.

5. In the very end raw coconut oil and curry leaf is mixed in.

Pictorial of  making Olan with white pumpkin and vanpayar:

Undiya

There is something about Gujarati food - the smell, the look and the taste which makes it an absolute MUST MAKE at home. Undiya is a very traditional gujarati dish made with many vegetables and Muthias (pakoras). But when I had the whim to make it, I did not have have the right vegetables traditionally used.
But the craving was HIGH! So I tweaked the recipe and made the same with vegetables at hand.
My home smelled incredible and my daughter ended up eating supper instead of dinner!
My sincere apologies to all gujjus. Please take no offence. I will mention all the right ingredients to be used along with the variations I made.

Methi Muthiya - 1 portion

Masala:
Coriander leaf - one handful / 10 tbsp
Garlic (opt) - 4 cloves
Ginger - 2 inch
Green Chilli - 8
Roasted peanuts without skin - 5 tbsp , powder this
White til seed - 3 tbsp
Salt to taste
Sugar - 2 tbsp
Juice of 1/2 a lime

Grind the coriander leaf with the ginger, garlic and green chilli.
Mix with the rest of the ingredients.

Vegetables traditionally used:
Yam / chena
Violet elephant yam / kachal
Sweet potato
Avarakkai / Broad beans
Small Brinjal
Potato
Green peas
Small potato

Vegetables I used:
Carrot - 2 medium
Potato - 2 large
Payar / string beans - 4 tbsp cut into 1 inch pieces
Brinjal (no one enjoys this here) - so only 1
Bhajji chilli - 2
Green peas - 5 tbsp

Other Ingredients:
Oil - 4 tbsp
Asafoetida / Kayam - 1 tbsp
Fresh Coconut - 4 tbsp

The vegetables like potato, brinjal and chillies have to be cleaned and stuffed with the masala.
The yams, sweet potato  and carrot can be diced and coated with masala.
Leave the string beans/ kothavara and green peas alone.

Heat oil (preferably the one in which the muthias were fried) in a heavy bottomed vessel with tight lid ( I used a cooker) and add the asafoetida.
Then add the string beans / kothavara (whichever you are using) and stir well on a high flame.
Next goes in the green peas. Stir this also well.
No more stirring after this step.
Next goes in the coated vegetables and and next the stuffed vegetables.
On top go the muthis and now add a glass of water.
Cover and simmer till the yam gets cooked or cook till one whistle.
Decorate with the freshly grated coconut and serve hot.

Methi Muthia

This is a sort of pakoda made by gujaratis. This can be had as a snack with green chutney. Undiya uses methi muthiya as a chief ingredient.

Methi leaves / Fenugreek leaf - 2cups
Wheat flour - 1 cup
Kadala mav / besan/ chickpea flour - 2 tbsp
Sugar - 1 1/2 tbsp
Coriander powder - 1 tbsp
Chilli powder - 2 tbsp
Turmeric powder - 1tsp
Salt to taste
Juice of 1/2 a lime

Mix all the above and make a stiff dough with little water. Make small oval balls and deep fry.