A really simple pasta!!

Pasta is one of the dishes, I like to make anytime of the day. What I like most about pasta dish is it's so versatile, that you can really be creative and can make thousands of your own different versions. When I make pasta just for me and my hubby, I try to make it healthy by adding as much vegetables as I can, and by using wheat pasta. I live the variety of wheat pasta you get in Trader Joe's.
As a party menu, I go little beyond my healthy instincts and try to make everyone happy.

So here is one of the healthy kinds I make for just me and my hubby..:)

So you can use pasta of any shape you like. This time I used the one you get at Costco. It comes with a pack of 6 , 1LBS each. There is a combination of radiator and Fusilli or combination of other varieties.

I used radiator for this pasta.
I cooked pasta in a boiling water with some salt in it. If you are using less amount of sauce or a homemade sauce, then this is the only time to add salt to pasta, so that pasta can absorb the flavor. Cook the pasta until it reaches to al dente.
Before draining the pasta, keep a bowl of water aside, to make the sauce later.
Now drain the pasta and keep it aside.
While you are boiling the pasta you can work on sauce and and the vegetables you want to add in pasta.
I don't measure the quantity for making the pasta, usually half a pound pasta is enough for 2 people for a lunch or the dinner. I just eyeball the vegetables and the sauce. My experience tells me that it never goes wrong. There is nothing to go wrong in this delicious dish.

So cut onion, green beans, red bell pepper, yellow bell pepper, sweet pea pods and broccoli. Asparagus goes very well with pasta.
Chop all the vegetables.

Heat some olive oil in the pan. Add chopped garlic, around 2-3 cloves. Fry for a minute, and add onions. I use dried Italian seasoning. Sprinkle it on onions, mix well. Then add remaining vegetables one by one. After adding all the vegetables, add the water from pasta that we kept aside. What we want to do is, cook vegetables in such a way that it will maintain it's crunchiness.
So add about 1/4 cup of water and cover the pan with the lid until the vegetables are partially cooked. Now it's time to add sauce to the pasta.

This time I bought the pasta sauce from Costco. It's homemade style marinara with imported Italian plum tomatoes and Napa Valley Cabernet.

It's delicious. A perfect combination of wine and tomatoes in to your meal. Again while adding the sauce just eyeball it. I added about a cup and a half I guess. Mix the sauce well with all the vegetables, take some help from remaining pasta water. Now add your pasta to the pan. Make sure that your sauce coats the pasta very well. Keep it on medium flame for couple of minutes more, and add shredded Parmesan cheese. Turn off the heat and serve hot sprinkling some cheese on top.

As I said, a simple pasta recipe never goes wrong. So doesn't matter whether you are a master cook, or a beginner, or someone who likes to experiment just like me...:)
You can never go wrong with this dish.
It's the simplest and the healthiest.

You got to try this out.
Enjoy!!!


Coming Up:- Blueberry yogurt muffins

Vegetable Manchurian and Jeera Rice

An- Indo- Chinese Cuisine

Not many people out side of India know that this type of cuisine does exists. It's a very unique Chinese cuisine with an excellent Indian touch to it. I love it from bottom of my heart. Of course it's spicy, but the beauty is you can always control the spiciness when you are cooking it at home.

That's one of the reason I love to cook food at home, I can control the ingredients, the spiciness, and almost everything. Indo- Chinese food needs lot of time and and lots and lots of preparation.

But it surely is worth the effort.

There are no Indian restaurants around Los Angeles that serves Indo- Chinese cuisine. There is one in Artesia, but it's nowhere close to good. San Francisco is the place where you can see some of the Indian restaurants serving Indo- Chinese food. Last time I had it in the restaurant was about an year ago..sometime in May 2007. So whenever I am craving for Indo-Chinese Cuisine, I try to cook it at home.

Let me describe about the dish a bit.

The dumplings in the recipe are made with the different kinds of vegetables, dipped in the manchurian sauce. It looks similar to meet balls. But tastes totally different.

I usually make this dish from scratch. But this time I took a little help from the Indian Store. I bought manchurian sauce powder from the store. I made dumplings from scratch though.

For manchurian dumplings you will need-:

Vegetables like cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, green beans, red bell peppers. You can use the vegetables of your choice. Cabbage is a must though.
Black pepper powder- 1 tbsp
Cornflour
3-4 green chillies- chopped
Spring onion- chopped
Soy sauce
Chili paste
Ajinomoto- I know it's not a healthy ingredient to be part of your diet, but a little goes really long way, so just add half a pinch to give your dish an Indo-chinese flavour and texture. I feel bad whenever I use ajinomoto in my food, since it is a carcinogenic ingredient, but guess what I try to eat broccoli at least 3 times a week anyways, which is proven to be a cancer fighting vegetable. So the key is to balance your eating habits.
Salt to taste.

and last but not least 1 cup boiled rice. Rice helps to bind all the ingredients together while making the dumplings.

So for manchurian dumplings, you need to start with shredding all the vegetables you have on hand. I used cabbage, green beans, carrots, cauliflower. Bring 2 cups of water to boil, and add all the vegetables to it. Cover it with a lid, and keep it for a couple of minutes on a medium heat. Drain all the vegetables on a cheese cloth. Make sure that you squeeze out all the water. Save the water for making manchurian sauce later. You can use the water as the vegetable stock.

Mix together all the shredded vegetables in a large bowl, add salt and very little ajinomoto to it. Add green chillies, black pepper powder, chopped ginger, soy sauce, chili paste,spring onions and some cornflour. Last ingredient to add in those dumplings would be mashes boiled rice.
Now make small dumplings of a size of tennis ball.
Heat some oil in a pan, and deep fry those dumplings until they get nice golden brown color.

As I mentioned before, I took a little help from the Indian store for making the manchurian sauce. I bought Knorr manchurian sauce packet, and just went according to instructions on the packet. In 4 cups of water, I added the powder from the packet, and on a medium heat, I kept on stirring continuously until it reaches to a boil.

Add the dumplings in to the sauce before serving and heat them for a couple of minutes.
Your vegetable manchurian is ready.

Serve hot with Jeera rice.
Recipe for Jeera rice goes like this-

1 cup of basmati rice
3 tbsp. jeera that's Cumin seeds
2-3 Black pepper whole
2 cardamoms
1 stick of cinnamon
1 bay leaf
Some Olive oil

If you want you can add some spring onions to the rice, or you can simply stick with nicely chopped onions.
I usually add spring onion for the great flavor and to add some green color in my rice.

Wash basmati rice 2 times in water. Drain it and keep aside.
In a pan heat some olive oil, add cumin seeds. Cumin seeds are the essence of this rice so add as much as you want.
When cumin seeds splutter, add cardamoms, cinnamon, black pepper, bay leaf. Fry them for a minute and add onion to it. fry for another couple of minutes, and then add washed basmati rice to it.Also add spring onions at this time. Fry for 1 more minute and now it's time to add water. Watch out for the quantity of water.
Usually when you cook rice outside of a pressure pan, like the way I cooked for this recipe, the quantity of water should be double than the rice. I used 1 cup of rice, and added 2 cups of water to it.
Add salt as per taste.
After adding water, bring the water to a boil on medium to high flame, then cover it with the lid and lower down the heat. Keep it on the lower heat for 15 minutes.
and your Jeera rice is ready.

The Jeera rice and vegetable manchurian is a great combination. Try it sometime.


Coming up: A really simple pasta!!

The give away at kettle and Cup by Marye

Marye from Kettle and Cup is giving away the new book from the Coffee House Mystery Series. I really love this idea of giveaway's, what a great way to appreciate all those who are readers to your blog on the web. I love reading, I have never read any of the series though. This book has recipes in it and it's mysterious at the same time. Wow!! I am so excited to read it.

The last day of entering in the give away is Friday August 1st, 2008 at midnight cst. I recently started reading her blogs and I love it. She also writes baking delights and Simply Home Remedies.I love the pictures, and her creative ideas.

Mung bean Pancakes ( Hirvya mugachi dhirdi)

A healthy spicy adventure- Mung pancakes.

Yes, I said pancakes and that too spicy. So let the adventure begin.

Mung beans are rich in protein. Usually all different kinds of beans are used to prepare dal in Indian cooking, but this is the kind of variety which is sometimes ignored from our diet.
When I was a kid [that includes all the years until my wedding...:)...] my mom used to soak these great little kids overnight in the water and then in the morning, we used to eat them along with little salt and lemon squeezed on them. I used to love that morning snack. I wasn't aware of the enormous health benefits that these guys offer though. But now that I know, my cravings for eating healthy gets fulfilled whenever I indulge myself in these pancakes.

Those who are strictly vegetarian usually experience lack of protein in their diet since they exclude meat completely, this recipe is a good substitute for them.


Recipe goes something like this-:
1 cup of green whole mung beans( hirave mug)
Soak them overnight in water.

Next morning, strain them through the colander, and blend them with little amount of water. Blend the mixture until a smooth paste is made. Keep it aside.

2-3 Green chillies ( Now watch for the spiciness of chillies, for the Indian readers this should be fine, but for my American friends, cut the quantity to 1-2 counts.)


1/2 an inch of ginger

1-2 cloves of garlic
A handful of Cilantro (Coriander)

Put everything in to a separate blender and grind it, along with a pinch of salt. Salt will help the mixture to blend nicely.

Add this paste to the mung beans mixture. Mix well. According to your taste add more salt to it.
Add about half a cup of rice flour to the mixture for the crispiness.

And don't forget to add water to make it in to a batter in such a way that you can pour it on to a griddle, or a fry pan. Just to give you an idea, it should be little thicker than dosa batter and thinner than uttappa batter.

Spray your hot griddle or tava with cooking oil spray. Spread the mixture on tava to make round pancakes, cover each for 2-3 minutes and just flip them on the other side until they get nice golden color. Keep in mind that they will still look green, retaining their original color.

This is a perfect recipe to enjoy as a breakfast or include in the lunch.

Enjoy them while they are hot along with yogurt or a mint chutney.



Ohh...and the bowl with the yogurt in the picture is a gift to me from my friend, Sunny from Peru...:)

Thanks for the gift Sunny.


Coming Up: An Indo-Chinese treat!!
Vegetable Manchurian and Jeera rice.

yeeeeeee!!! A new Camera!!

Yeeeeeee.....
I am getting a new camera. I deserve a good camera. I want my blog to look good with all those pictures.


With so many trips lined up in near future and with so many blogs to write, I really deserve a good SLR....:)

I am so excited. :)


Coming Up : Mung Bean Pancakes (Hiravya Mugachi Dhirdi)

Zucchini Soup

One of my dreams is to have my own garden sometime in the future, where I can relax and breath fresh air. Recently we had been to my friend Geeta's house in Pasadena. She has a beautiful house and even more beautiful garden. It was really a treat to see her hard work and passion for plants. I could find Mint, zucchini, tomato, corn, strawberries, green chillies, and many more everyday fruits and vegetables in her garden. I was really inspired by all this and was more happy to know that I will be preparing zucchini soup produced from her garden. :)

Long time back I bought some really interesting recipe books from borders. They were on sale, super cheap, $2.99 each and are super useful, for soup lover like me. So this recipe is from one of those books called soups and stews.

So here it goes-:

2 Zucchini sliced I used 1 from Geeta's garden and other I bought from the store.
half onion chopped
2 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of all purpose flour.
2 cups of chicken stock
1 and half cups of milk
dried/ fresh thyme
half a cup of cream
Parmesan cheese.

It can make 5-6 servings.

Start with buttering a pan on low- medium heat. Add onion and cook for 2-3 minutes. Don't allow onion to be brown. Then add sliced zucchini. Cover it and continue for 5 minutes. Add all purpose flour and cook for one more minute. Now it's time to add chicken stock and milk stirring it after every addition. Add the thyme and crank up the heat to bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Allow the mixture to cool. Puree the mixture in batches until smooth. Reheat gently and add cream and Parmesan. Add salt to taste. Garnish it with fresh thyme leaves and shaved Parmesan cheese. Do not allow the soup to boil.



You can store this soup in the refrigerator for about 1 day without adding cream and cheese.

Serve it with garlic bread. I will save the recipe of garlic bread for some time later.

Thanks to Geeta for her home grown zucchini.

Enjoy!!!

Watermelon Juice

A really simple recipe to keep you off the heat.


It was really hot this afternoon here in Los Angeles. That's when I came up with this amazingly simple recipe. I happened to have 2 watermelons that we bought from Costco yesterday.

I started with making a puree of watermelon chunks until fairly smooth. Added freshly ground black pepper and 2 tablespoons of honey, added salt to taste.
Oh and I minced fresh leaves of mint and added it in to the grinder along with the watermelon chunks.

After grinding the chunks I squeezed 1 juice of lime in to it. Mixed well and kept it in to the refrigerator. To keep the chilling factor I added ice cubes.

Made my afternoon really refreshing.

Green Rice (Pulav)

Today, I am craving for Green Pulav, an extremely aromatic dish made up of rice and all kinds of spices and vegetables. I can't imagine how many versions of pulav one can find in India. Peas pulav, vegetable pulav, keshar pulav to name a few and the list is unending. All the regions in India have local taste to this dish. Usually basmati rice is used for it's rich flavor. One can really be creative and find endless ingredients to make this dish scrumptious.

I get really satisfied when I smell this dish way before it gets ready to eat. So let me start with the recipe otherwise I will be satisfied right at this moment just by imagination.

Ingredients you will need-
2 cups of Basmati rice
1 bunch of Cilantro (we call it coriander in India) roughly chopped
4-5 leaves of mint (optional) I really like the smell of mint.
half lemon, lime will also do, whatever you have on hand is fine. I used lime here.
Olive oil 2 tbsp.
salt to taste.
Spices-

2 cloves
2-3 Cardamom whole
3-4 peppercorns whole
1 stick of cinnamon
1 bay leaf


1 and half inch ginger- roughly chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic- roughly chopped
2 green chillies ( If you think it will be too spicy for you, I would suggest start with 1 chilli )

4 cups of water.

Indians are comfortable with all these spices. If you feel that it will be too spicy for you palate , you can cut down on spices to half than what my recipe suggests.

Start with washing the basmati rice and keeping it aside.

We are going to make a paste of some ingredients which will give the green color to this rice. So put Cilantro, mint leaves, chopped garlic, chopped ginger, and green chillies in to a blender/ mixer, or a food processor. Blend it to make a paste. Squeeze lime on it. Lime holds the green color of the paste.

Take a deep heavy bottom pan which has a lid on it.
Coat the pan with olive oil. Add cloves, cardamom, peppercorns, cinnamon stick, and bay leaf. After a minute add onion to it. Fry for a minute and then add green paste that we made in a blender. Fry it for couple of minutes, and now its time to add vegetables that you like. I usually add cauliflower, potato, peas, green beans, but today I ran out off those, so I made my today's version with only onions. After you add vegetables mix all the paste and the vegetables together. Now add salt as per your taste.

The rice which we kept aside by washing it, now it's time for it to go in to the pan. Mix rice well with all the mixture in the pan. The measure for water is 1:2. So add 4 cups of water for 2 cups of rice. I always heat the water before adding it to the pan. This way, rice immediately starts to cook, keeping the temperature of the mixture constant. This tip is shared by my mother in law. Thanks to her, it made sense.

Allow rice to cook for about 10 minutes on a medium to high flame. I always check after 8-10 minutes, that way I feel comfortable. It' a good idea to take off the lid and check in between. But usually it takes about 10-12 minutes.

Your nose will know when it's ready. Turn off the flame. I usually add fried onion on top of it for crispiness. You can also add cashews if you want.
Serve it with yogurt, or a pickle. For me this rice is so full of flavors that I really don't think it needs any side dish.
Just enjoy it with plain yogurt.

Coming up: Zucchini Soup

Fruit puff

I have been on diet for a while. Although this dessert is not meant for the people who are dieting, fruit can always be on the top of the list.

The recipe is an updated version of my mother's recipe. She is one of the those cooks, who has the magic of taking any simple dish to an extraordinary level. May that be an Indian staple food or any delicious party menu, she has it all. So here it goes to her.

Pineapple Puff recipe-:

1 can of Pineapple chunks
1 Jello, preferably strawberry
3 cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup to 1 cup of Sugar depending on your taste.
About half a palm full of almonds
4-5 walnuts- powdered
Saffron to decorate

You can use any kind of fruit you like as chunks as well as in the jelly. I think the combination of strawberry and pineapple goes very well with each other.


The key to prepare this dessert is to make it ahead of time and give it some time to settle . Let's say you want to get the dessert ready for lunch. Start with making Jello first about 24 hours before. Per the instructions on the packet make the Jello. A really smart tip I want to share with you all here, is when you add the water while making the jelly, use the syrup that is already in the pineapple can.
If the packet says, add 2 cups of cold and 2 cups of hot water, then measure the syrup in the can, if it comes out to be 1 and a half cups, then use that syrup and add the remaining measure as a water. This incorporates the flavor of pineapple in to jelly. Set the jelly aside in the refrigerator for at least for 4 hours.
Whip the cream, while adding sugar in to it. whip it until it stands still and does not drop.
Remove the jelly from the refrigerator, and smash it with a fork or a spoon so as to divide it in to small chunks.

Setting the dessert altogether-:
Take a big deep bowl.
Start layering with Pineapple chunks, jelly chunks, whipped cream, almonds one after the other up to the top. Do not forget to sprinkle walnut powder on top of the cream in between two layers.
Decorate the dessert with saffron.
Keep it in to the refrigerator overnight and enjoy!!

Coming up: Green Rice (Pulav)