thayirsaadham

Hey all,

Am still here. Just buried under mountains of work. Was also busy with some visitors along the lines of cold, cough and fever. That led me to an unplanned break. I am here for a quick announcement - the May edition of Global Kadai. I know this is very, very late. A huge apology to Cilantro.

Global kadai is an event started by Cliantro .

According to her, “This event will bring the creativity of food bloggers to try different recipes from around the globe giving an Indian twist and thereby creating a new look at Indian Influence on Global Cooking.”

The theme chosen for this month is Pasta.

Image courtesy : http://www.art.com/products/p12296550-sa-i1682166/riccardo-marcialis-pasta-italiana-i.htm

A quick confession. I first had pasta when I was in my first year of college. A bunch of us had gone to this restaurant and a friend of mine, S wanted to order for all us. She had been to the restaurant once before and said she loved the food and knew what we should all try. We all (the idiots that we were) said ok. We were all busy yakking and did not pay attention to what she ordered. Sometime later, there arrived 6 huge platters. All of them looked similar - they were all white in colour and looked creamy. Some of them had noodles and some had some other weird shaped stuff inside. A quick taste revealed one other similarity - none of them had any salt or any kind of spice. You should have seen the look on our faces. We had no idea what these were. We asked S and she used words like lasagna, alfredo sauce and we were like “We should have ordered dosai”. We tried hard to eat it. I mean, we were going to pay good money for that. So we tried. But then, they were really bland. We even tried adding salt, pepper and chilli sauce on those dishes. Nope. Did not help at all. S was the only one to finish her dish. We just kept ours away and I distinctly remember coming home and having a plate of curd rice with spicy pickle. Ah.. the bliss!

After I came to U.S for my Masters, I slowly started having pasta. First at home by adding vegetables and Indian spices to it. Then I started having it outside. I still don’t like alfredo sauce. I think I never recovered from the trauma of that experience. But I have started liking pasta enough to have it atleast once a week.

I love the variety that one can get with pasta - spaghetti, macaroni, fusili, rotini (my favorite). You can add vegetables, meat, eggs to pasta. There are a variety of sauces that accompany pasta like pesto, carbonara and the ubiquitous tomato sauce. My favorite way is to simply cook pasta al dente and add olive oil, garlic and butter (of course) and saute it for sometime. Quick and yummy

Here are the guidelines for participating in Global Kadai:

1. Use your imagination and creativity to prepare the above recipe using ingredients familiar with Indian Cuisine. Post your entries on your blog during the months of May-June 2010.
2. If you already have appropriate entry archived, send it along. There is no limit on the number of entries.
3. Provide a link back to this announcement page and also to Cilantro’s page and feel free to use the logo.
4. Email your entry to indhu.thayirsaadham@gmail.com with following details
* Your Name
* Blog Name
* Blog URL
* Recipe URL
* Photograph of final dish.
5.The deadline for this event is June 20 , 2010.
6.If you don’t have a blog but wish to participate in this event, send your entries with a picture, your name and recipe to indhu.thayirsaadham@gmail.com before the deadline. I will post the recipes with your picture in my blog and include it in the round-up during the last week of June.

Eagerly waiting for your pasta recipes

Hey all,

Loooooooooong time. I know. Thank you for all your comments and emails. It definitely helped to know that there are people wishing good things for me. This break was good in more ways than one. I spent some time doing a lot of things that I like - reading, walking, etc. So, the issues that I had mentioned in my last post are still there… but I have come to the zen conclusion that I can only try as much as I can… and the rest is upto … well, I don’t know… God??? not God.. I guess it is upto the people involved… including me… so, I have decided to do as much as I can to help the situation and then take it easy… and I also took this as an opportunity to get it in my mind that life is going to throw me all sorts of nasty challenges and I just have to tackle them as best as I can. Attitude is everything…right?

Anyway, I was catching up on my reading and I read an awesome awesome book - Ponniyin Selvan.It was spectacular. Reading it in tamizh was awesome. I am not sure how the English version will be but am glad I stuck with the tamizh version. Kalki was such a prolific writer. I don’t think I can describe his writing prowess. I am not even going to try.Those of you who can get hold of this book - please, please do read it.. And tell me when you read it, how many of you had a crush on Vandhiyadevan? how many of you had one on Arul Mozhi Varmar? and how many of you had one on both? That would be me

Coming to today’s recipe, summer is giving way to fall.. and I am trying to hold on to the last bits of summer - which means less time in front of the stove and more time outside. I was looking for something quick with pasta and I found this on Veganyumyum . I modified the recipe a little bit to suit my taste and pantry. I am not going to specify the exact measurements because I just eye-balled them and made this for 2 people. You can adjust the amount according to your preferences.

Ingredients

1. Whole wheat linguine - enough for two
2. olive oil - 2 tsp
3. salt - to taste
4. tomatoes - 2
5. cashew - 10
6. green chillies - 2
7. black pepper - to taste
8. capsicum - 1 (chopped)
9. red chillies - 3
10. lemon juice - 2 tbsp

Recipe

1. Chop the tomatoes and green chillies
2. Add the chopped tomatoes, green chillies and cashew nuts to the blender and grind them to a paste. You can add a little bit of water if you want.
3. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
4. Salt it and add the linguine to it and cook according to package instructions.
5. Take a saucepan and add the olive oil and red chillies to it. Saute it for a minute.
6. Add the capsicum and let it cook for a 3-4 minutes (Make sure the capsicum stays crunchy)
7. Add the ground paste to the saucepan. Add salt and let it simmer for 4-5 minutes.
8. Add the pasta and freshly cracked black pepper and let it cook for a couple of minutes.
9. Switch off the stove and add some freshly squeezed lemon juice and serve.

This is a quick dish - the sauce can be made while the linguine is cooking and we can get the dish on the table in under 30 minutes which makes this a winner in my book

As good as this tasted, there are some things that I would like to change the next time I make this. I was in a hurry and I had just one sorry looking capsicum in my refrigerator and thus the measly amount of vegetables. This would taste great with some more bell peppers, carrots, peas, broccoli. Basically, anything you can load it up with. Also, I think I will add some basil to the sauce the next time - make it a kind of tomato-pesto-cashew sauce. Yup… am definitely adding basil the next time.

God.. it feels good to be back