Pasta with pepper stuffed with cheese and sundried tomatoes.

Vegetarian Pasta with pepper stuffed with cheese and sun dried tomatoes . 

This recipe was to try out using the stuffed peppers and sundried tomatoes I came across in Cold Storage.

1. Stir fry Chopped onions, capsicums, cauliflowers on high heat with pepper and very little salt . the pesto will have salt on its own and so one needs to be very careful on salt.  I added the sun dried tomato half way through and the stuffed pepper towards the end when I felt the vegetables had cooked .

2. Add pesto and mix properly . Be careful not to break the stuffed peppers. I  used James Olivier's garlic chilli pesto ..

3. Add the cooked  pasta ( boiled al dente) to the vegetable pesto mixture and serve warm.

Bon Appetit! 

Pumpkin raita

Pumpkin raita... Steam pumpkin, mash it, add mustard paste .  My  friend's mom used to make fresh paste, I used readymade english mustard paste.  Now add a little sugar and  salt to taste .. I had no chillies at home to chop and add... to this mixture  add an equal amount of yoghurt/ curd. I have added a chonk / temper of dry red chilli, mustard and kadi patta/ curry leaves... was not sure of adding kadi patta / curry leaves but did it all the same as I love the smell of kadi patta / curry leaves.....  anyway the tang of mustard as u take a spoonful of the raita is awesome and makes this raita a winner... Whenever I eat this, I remember my friend's  mom's cooking fondly ...😊😊

Bengali Raw mango chutney / Aamer chaatni

Pulao in our house is invariably accompanied by chutney.. Tomato and date chutney/ chaatni as we Bengalis call it or  Mango ( called Aam in Bengali )  chaatni or Pineapple chaatni.

Abhit cooked a very delicious Multani biryani. I made an aamer chaatni  and warm lemon pudding cake to do justice to the biryani.

To make the mango chutney, cut a raw mango into long slices and boil it with a little turmeric and a little salt. Once cooked and softened, mash it up with a spoon. Take a pan and add a little oil to it. When it heats, temper it with paanch phoron . Paanch phoron is a combination of five spices which Bengalis use for tempering.  Add the mashed mango  mixture . Add water more or less depending on the sonsistency you want. Once it comes to boil, add sugar to taste. It should be khatta meetha .. ie sweet and sour.. the sugar should not drown completely the sourness of the mango. In the mean time, heat another pan. Dry poast a teasoon of paanch phoron and half a dry red chilli.  When it starts emitting an aroma, shut the gas. Let the spice cool and then grind it to a powder. When the sugar has dissolved in the chutney and the chutney is ready, put off the gas/ fire and sprinkle the powdered spice. It is the aroma of this ground spice which gives a totally different flavour to the chutney. Bon Appetit! 

Warm lemon pudding cake

Baked this from a recipe Swati Palekar had shared on face book. The original link to the recipe is

http://www.seasonsandsuppers.ca/warm-lemon-pudding-cake/?m&m

Paneer Pasanda

Paneer Pasanda

1. Chop Paneer into triangles

2. Make a stuffing of crumbled paneer, chopped coriander leaves, chopped cashew nuts and raisins , salt sugar to taste.

3. 

Slice the triangles from the centre , and place stuffing between the two slices

4. Smear tandoori masala on both sides.. You may smear any masala as per your choice . Bake in a preheated oven at 180 deg C for ten minutes on each side.. Brush each side of the paneer with oil or butter

5. You may serve them as kebabs directly with coriander chutney , onion rings, lemon wedges

6. Or you may make a thick curry and pour over the paneer kababs to be had with rice or rotis.. For the curry, fry onions, ginger, garlic, chopped tomato, turmeric, salt to taste till the tomatoes soften . Cool and make a paste of it . In a little ghee or oil, add the ground paste along with chopped cashew nuts and raisins, kastoori methi, a little crumbled paneer.. Till the oil / ghee comes out from the sides.. I kept the gravy thick as we had it with pulao. Bon Appetit!

Garlic and black pepper Tofu

Today's lunch was inspired by Fat free vegan's recipe with the same title . The link to the original link is  http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2012/05/thai-black-pepper-and-garlic-tofu.html

I had bean sprouts at home which I had to use before they got spoilt and wasted  . I also wanted to make a one pot dish of veggies and proteins . And the aforementioned recipe gave me just that . But knowing me, I tweaked it with whatever I had at home ...

Since the meal was just for two , I took a slab of 200 grams firm tofu . I chopped them into rectangles and marinated them in a mixture of dark soya sauce , one crushed garlic, crushed pepper corns , rice wine and regular vinegar . When I was adding rice vinegar , I was startled to smell an  aroma  of spirits. I took a closer look at the bottle I had just opened and it turned out to be of rice wine . Oops ! So added a little regular vinegar to make do ..😁😁

I marinated the tofu just for half an hour . I then baked the tofu in the oven at 200 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes , turning over the tofu after 15 minutes.

In a pan , I heated  a teaspoon of oil, swirling the oil to grease the entire pan . After the oil had heated to a high point , I added two finely chopped ( in length ) onions . After a minute when it had started browning , I added a zucchini chopped in squares. Stir fried it for two minutes . I then added a mixture of crushed garlic ( five very large pods) and crushed pepper corn . After a minute I added sliced mushrooms . After another minute I added 200 grams of bean sprouts and one capsicum  chopped lengthwise. In the mean time I had some light soya sauce, a small teaspoonful of spicy Sriracha sauce , a teaspoon of honey, a little vinegar . I next added this mixture to the vegetables and continued to stir fry for five minutes. By then the tofu had got baked .

While I added the tofu to the vegetables , the next time I will be tossing the baked tofu with the vegetables for a minute to let the tofu become a little soft .

It was filling for lunch  , tasty , not to mention quick to make and good to eat . This is a keeper too ! 😊😊

Bon appetit !

Tuna Avocado Sandwich

With just AB and me at home , my search for recipes is for ones that is just enough for two , with no left overs .. And also a healthy one with us getting younger by the day .. ;) ;) .... And the third of course is one with minimum effort and maximum taste . Hit on a keeper yesterday . I love eat Subway sandwiches here ( have not enjoyed as much the Subway products in India and Singapore) . My favourites being egg mayo and tuna melt . I had a tin of spicy tuna and an avocado  available at home and so googled for avocado tuna sandwiches.. And this is what we ended up eating ..

Toast bread absolutely crisp.
In a bowl, mash an avocado . To it add sunflower seeds, finely chopped onion, cranberries, finely chopped  tomato , drained tuna from one can ( I used the Lite Spicy Tuna) . I added a teaspoon of mayonnaise as I was not buttering the toasts . This quantity will suffice for  five open sandwiches.

Spread on your toast and Bon appetit! 😊😊