From God's Own Country to Italy!! Happy 2008!!!

Happy New Year!!!!

Phew!!! i have been such a lazy bum that i just couldn't bring myself to sit and write again. My excuse was to have a couple of recipes in hand and write em in one go..once i got a couple of good recipes and made some delicious treats, i just dint have any more excuses to not start writing again... :)

Eventhough i was not active on my blog, i dint stop blog hopping... i was sooo overwhelmed by all the holiday cooking and baking in most of the blogs, that i was happy just gazing at all those mouthwatering goodies ( in the pics!!). Thats when i came across "Low fat christmas sugar cookies" by Nags. ( original recipe is here ). The word "low fat" caught my eyes. Especially now that i have taken a break from working and my fav pasttime being lazing around, i try not to have as much fat in my food as i used while back in India . For these cookies, I used about a lil more of sugar, cos i like it sweeter and used some vanilla extract as well. To have some variety, i made a small indent on some of those cookies, just before putting them in the oven and filled it with some strawberry jam.

I have been wanting to make Kerala parotta for a loong time and was looking for a good and easy recipe. I came across this easy recipe here. It has the step by step process for making good parotta with pics.

I used: 1 cup maida, a lil sugar, salt to taste, 1 egg, oil and some luke warm water.

Combine all the ingredients and make a dough like for rotis. Keep it in the refrigerator for about an hour. Divide the dough into 6 -7 small balls. Roll them out real thin and fold each one of them like saree pleats and spiral them up. Use enough oil while you roll out and fold them. Once this is done, roll out like rotis, but thicker. Make sure not to lose the folds / layers. Cook on a tawa with little oil until golden brown on both sides.

The best combination for this is egg masala. You will need boiled eggs ( halved), chopped onions, chopped garlic, chopped tomatoes, turmeric powder, red chilli powder, garam masala powder, scraped coconut.

Saute the onions with garlic and the masala powders. Add the chopped tomatoes and saute till done. Add the coconut and a little water to make a gravy. Finally, add the egg halves and let it cook in the gravy. Garnish with fried curry leaves.

This goes to Currybazaar's RCI : Cuisine of Kerala.

Pasta with tomatoes and carrots

Last Sunday we had invited two of our friends over for dinner. This is what i made for our first ever dinner party at home.

Ingredients:

250 g penne

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil,

3 - 4 shallots, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 carrot, diced

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon dried parsley

1 1/2 cups frozen peas, thawed

some grated Parmesan

1/2 can tomato paste + 3 tbsp salsa or 1 can campbell's tomato soup

Cook pasta according to package instructions. Drain well. Heat oil in a frying pan. Add the shallots, garlic, carrots, salt and pepper and cook until the veggies are tender. Add the tomato paste + salsa or the tomato soup. Add the herbs. Gently add the pasta, peas and cheese. Serve hot with garlic bread.