Green Pasta (for the kids)

Not sure about other kids, but mine refuse to eat spinach. Or any leaves. They love broccoli and most vegetables but hate spinach. But I've been trying very hard to get them to eat it. This is what we made for dinner tonight and they actually liked it. I wouldn't say loved but they did like it, and that's a huge step. And said they would like to have it again. Sometime.

Green Pasta
(Pasta with a lovely creamy spinach sauce)

1 cup Pasta, feel free to use any kind, cooked
3 cups Spinach
2-3 Garlic cloves
1 cup Plain Yogurt
1 tsp Salt
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese, grated, plus more for garnish
1/2 cup Pine nuts, toasted (optional or feel free to substitute any nuts that you like)

In a blender, add the spinach, garlic, salt, yogurt and parmesan and blend to a smooth sauce.

Put the pasta in a pan on medium heat and add the spinach sauce. Stir to combine and cook together for a few minutes. 

Spoon the pasta into bowls/plates. Top with grated parmesan and toasted pine nuts.

Really quite nice.

Pasta with Brown Butter Sauce

Have you made brown butter? Don't think about the calories for once and go make this sauce. It's one of the best things you would've done. And you can always just smell, taste and then feed your hungry family, friends and neighbors. And let me tell you, they'll come asking when they smell that sauce.

Brown butter is exactly what it sounds like. You cook the butter down until it turns brown and caramel-ly and nutty and sweet and well...It's taking butter to a whole new level.

Well, try this recipe and you won't be sorry. It's a No Regret Move, as the consultants say.

Pasta with Brown Butter Sauce
(Recipe from Saveur)

8 oz Pasta, any kind will do. I used bucatini.
1 cup Butter (I know. It's not for the faint of heart, but trust me)
3/4 cup Pine nuts
4 Eggs
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese
Salt and Freshly ground Pepper, to taste

Cook the pasta until al dente and keep aside, reserving about half a cup of the pasta water as well.

Melt the butter on low-medium heat in a large pan. Add the pine nuts and stir until they turn golden brown. Remove the nuts with a slotted spoon. Now crack the eggs 1 or 2 at a time into the pan. Keep scooping the butter over the eggs until cooked. The recipe calls for fried eggs with a runny yolk, but I'm super scared of the infections that uncooked eggs can bring in India, so I turned it over and cooked it through. (Though I can just imagine that the runny yolk mixing in with the brown butter and coating the pasta must be just amazing).

Carefully remove the eggs with a slotted spoon and keep covered, and warm.

Now add the pasta, half the pine nuts and all the reserved pasta water. Toss to combine and heat pasta. Ladle the pasta into serving bowls, top with a fried egg, a sprinkle of the remaining pine nuts and some Parmesan. Garnish with freshly ground black pepper.

Ricotta Gnocchi

I LOVED my first Daring Cooks challenge. The gnocchi was light and fresh and full of flavor. And, I have to say it was much simpler than I thought it would be. I've made potato gnocchi before which was also delicious, but this was far better! Also, far richer, but hey, once in a while, this is a great indulgence.

I couldn't find fresh ricotta, so used store-bought. Next time, I think I'll try it with paneer. Maybe it might even work with non-fat paneer? Hmm.


Ricotta Gnocchi
(recipe from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook)

2 cups fresh Ricotta
2 large cold Eggs, lightly beaten
1 tbsp Butter, melted
1/4 cup Parmigiano Reggiano, grated
1/4 tsp Salt
All-Purpose Flour for rolling the gnocchi

Tie the ricotta in a muslin cloth and strain it overnight. It took me the night and the entire next day to finally strain all the water out of the ricotta. I resorted to placing a heavy weight on the muslin cloth, which really helped.

Place the drained ricotta in a bowl and mash slightly with the back of a spoon to make it smooth. Add the beaten eggs and mix thoroughly. Add melted butter, cheese and salt and combine to get a smooth and fluffy mixture. Add any flavorings you'd like, though try to keep it simple since you don't want to weigh down the cheese. I kept it simple without any additions.

Make a bed of all-purpose flour about a 1/4" thick on a baking sheet or tray. Also put a saucepan of water, heavily salted, on the stove and let it begin to simmer.

Take about 2-3 tsps of the mixture and gently push it out onto the bed of flour. With the spoon or the tip of your finger roll the cheese over the flour, so most parts of it get coated with a thin film of flour. Gently pick up the cheese and cradle it in both hands and move it from one hand to another being careful not to squeeze too tight or the gnocchi won't be light. Try to get the gnocchi into an oval shape.

Gently lower the gnocchi into the simmering water. It will sink and then rise to the top. Let it cook for about 3-5 minutes. If the gnocchi falls apart, there was too much water in the ricotta - add one egg white to the mixture and beat it in - that should hold it together.

If it doesn't fall apart (mine didn't), then great. Go ahead and make the rest of the cheese into gnocchi and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Let it rest in the refrigerator for an hour and firm up.


Bring the water back up to a simmer and slip 3-4 gnocchi into the water at a time and cook for 3-5 minutes (as in the test done earlier). Remove with a slotted spoon.

Serve warm with your choice of sauce. I really wanted to do pesto, but was afraid it might be too heavy. So I just drizzled with a little bit of olive oil and grated some fresh Parmesan on top with some black pepper.


I don't think there's any doubt I'll make this again. It was simple and delicious and a sure crowd-pleaser. Thanks to Ivonne and Lisa for a wonderful first challenge and I'm excited to be part of the Daring Cooks!

Gnocchi

Gnocchi is a pasta made primarily with mashed potatoes and a little bit of flour. When it's good, they can be little pillows of heaven - light and flavorful. But when they're badly made, they are just lumps of lead. The key to making good gnocchi is a light touch and lots of practice! Let's just say the recipe I used from Smitten Kitchen was absolutely fantastic but I need lots of practice - mine were definitely not pillows of heaven, but they were full of flavor and we loved them.

Gnocchi
(recipe from Smitten Kitchen)

2 pounds Potatoes (the more flour-y the potatoes, the better. We don't get russet here, so I made do with large golden potatoes)
1 1/2 cups Flour
1 tsp Salt
1 Egg, lightly beaten


Preheat oven to 200 deg C. Pierce the potatoes all over with a fork and bake in the oven until tender. Allow to cool slightly and peel the potatoes. Grate the potatoes using the large holes of a box grater.

Add the salt and the egg to the potatoes and mix well. Spoon the flour into the potato mixture a little at a time, just using enough so that the dough comes together and doesn't stick to your hands. Transfer the dough out onto a kneading surface and knead the dough for about 3-4 minutes.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces. On a lightly floured surface, with a very light touch, roll each piece into a long rope about 3/4" thick. Cut 1" pieces from the rope.


Now comes the part that requires a lot of practice. Gnocchi has little ridges that are, I think, mainly there for cosmetic reasons, but they also trap sauce very well. And, hey, it just doesn't look like gnocchi if it doesn't have the ridges.


To get the ridges, pass each piece on the inside of a fork, pressing slightly on the tines. I was afraid of handling the dough too much and so didn't put enough pressure. The ridges were there, but not very prominent.

The gnocchi can be frozen at this stage. Remember to first freeze them on a tray and then drop them into a ziploc bag once frozen. If cooking them right away, drop the pieces into a pot of salted boiling water. The gnocchi will start to float to the top, let it cook for another minute and then remove with a slotted spoon.

I tossed the gnocchi with homemade spinach-walnut pesto and grated some fresh Parmesan over it. Delicious!


For some lovely unusual gnocchi, see the Celery Leaf Gnocchi at Ideas in Food, Sweet Potato Gnocchi at Wild Yeast, Olive Gnocchi at Vegalicious and Peach Gnocchi at 101 Cookbooks.


Check out my fellow marathoners:
DK, Siri, Srivalli, Ranji, PJ, Curry Leaf, Medha, Priya, Bhawna, Raaji, Ruchii, Kamala, Roopa, Divya Kudua, Rekha, Divya, Lakshmi, Raaga, Lakshmi, Sripriya, Viji, Kamalika, Pavani, Karuna and Roochi.

Tomato Pasta

I love pasta. Any shape or form. My favorite kind of pasta is without sauce and tossed with pepperoncino, garlic and a little drizzle of olive oil. I'm not huge on heavy sauces and particularly tend to stay away from the cheesy white sauces.

This is a recipe I bookmarked ages ago from Lolo, and finally got to use it. Finally I found a pasta sauce that I love and it's super easy too. And the pasta isn't drowned in the sauce, it only adds to the flavor.

I made the pasta at home with 50% whole wheat and 50% all-purpose flour, using my recipe.


Tomato Pasta
(original recipe at Vegan YumYum - I made a couple of changes)

1 Large Tomato, cored and chopped
1/4 cup Raw Pine nuts
1 tbsp Pureed Tomato
1/4 cup Water
1 tbsp Olive Oil
4 cloves Garlic, minced
5-6 ounces Pasta (I made a fettuccine-ish shaped pasta)
2-3 tbsp Water

For Garnish: Fresh Ground Pepper, Basil Leaves (torn)

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil. Add the pasta to the boiling water. Cook until al dente, strain and set aside.

Blend the chopped tomato, tomato puree, pine nuts and water (the 1/4 cup) in the blender. Blend well until you get a smooth sauce.

Heat a pan with some olive oil. Add the garlic and saute until slightly browned. Add the mixture from the blender and saute until the raw smell of the tomato is gone (about 3-4 minutes). Add the 2-3 tbsp of water, if necessary, to thin out the sauce.

Add the cooked pasta to the saute pan and toss to coat. Remove from heat. Garnish with fresh black pepper and basil leaves.

This is one of the best pasta sauces I've ever had. It was creamy and delicious. And look at that gorgeous color! Thanks, Lolo!

Now check out what wondrous stuff my fellow marathoners have cooked up in their kitchens:

DK, Siri, Srivalli, Ranji, PJ, Curry Leaf, Medha, Priya, Bhawna, Raaji, Ruchii, Kamala, Roopa, Divya Kudua, Rekha, Divya, Lakshmi, Raaga, Lakshmi, Sripriya and Viji.

Having Fun With Whole Wheat Pasta

It's so much fun to make pasta and the flavor is so much better than store-bought plus you can control what goes into it.

This time my daughter wanted to help me. I used 100% whole wheat and made the dough, adding a little olive oil (2 tablespoons of oil for 1 cup of whole wheat flour), since whole wheat has a tendency to be dry. We also added about a tablespoon of dried basil into the dough.


My daughter helped rolling it out, and then we cut up the pasta into her favorite shapes using Play-Doh cutters (nope, I don't have cookie cutters at home - but you can use whatever you have on hand). We made moons and bears and butterflies...


Just drop into heavily salted, boiling water and cook till done (about 5-7 minutes). Drain and toss with your favorite pasta sauce or just cheese, butter and herbs. It was an easy and delicious dinner.

Homemade Pasta

I've been wanting to try my hand at making pasta for a very long time. Ever since I got a little confident after baking bread at home. A friend gave me a pasta machine - which I had yearned for - but to my utter amazement, I never took it out of its box! After wanting it for 6 months, I'm still surprised that I never did take it out.

And then I saw this video and wondered why I had even wanted the machine. It looked so simple to make pasta even without a machine. And it was very simple. It really was! For anyone else who is as apprehensive as I was, do try it and you'll be as happy as I am!


Homemade Pasta

1 cup All-Purpose Flour OR 1/2 cup All-Purpose + 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 egg

Make a little mound of the flour and make a well in the center. Break an egg carefully into the well (as you can see from the picture, I wasn't very careful!).


Start by beating the egg with a fork while slowly incorporating the walls of the flour around until all the flour has been incorporated and it has come together into a dough. Pour the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Cover and let rest for 1/2 hour.


Roll out the dough with a rolling pin to as thin as possible. This is where the video was invaluable. It is amazing how well that chap rolls out the dough. I did a fairly good job.


With a sharp knife, cut the dough into the desired shape. I wanted tagliatelle, and so I folded the dough down from the top until the middle, and fold the bottom half until the middle, like so:

And then cut into pieces. To unravel, slide the knife down the underside of the pieces and lift the knife up.


Voila! Perfect pieces of tagliatelle. I tossed the uncooked pasta with some olive oil because I was scared that the pasta would clump together when cooked.


Throw the pasta into a pot of heavily salted boiling water. When they rise to the top, or after about 5-7 minutes, they're done. Drain and cook with preferred sauce or no sauce at all (like I did). I tossed it with olive oil, garlic and crushed red pepper. Delicious!


Here's another entry for DK's AWED: Italian!

Spaetzle

My love affair with spaetzle started years ago when I went to visit a friend in Germany. We were having lunch in a lovely little restaurant and spaetzle was one of my options as a vegetarian. It tasted lovely - thick egg pasta with a lovely butter and herb sauce. When I came back from my holiday, I searched everywhere in the US to find German restaurants that served spaetzle and though I found a few, they were never as good.

I bought dried spaetzle from specialty grocery stores and tried to recreate it at home, but there's no substitute for fresh pasta, is there?

On the other side of this story, a friend and I have been talking about how it would be incredible if we could make our own pasta at home. I decided I just had to try before deeming it too difficult. And my favorite kind of pasta has to be spaetzle.

I came across the most wonderful recipe in a blog that I read religiously, Eating Out Loud. Allen whips up the most delicious food and makes it all sound so easy, his photographs are great and his writing is so simple and straightforward, that you want to go back to the beginning and read every single post of his.

And, thanks Allen for this recipe because it was perfect and as easy as you described. The spaetzle was outstanding, and I can never go back to eating the store-bought version.

Spaetzle
(original recipe here)

I made a few changes to the recipe - I wanted to recreate the butter and herb sauce, so I omitted the veggies and the poached egg. And we had this for dinner as a full meal. But the basic dough remains the same:

1 cup All-purpose Flour
2 Eggs
1/4 cup Milk
Salt, to taste

First set a saucepan to simmer with salted water.

Make a well in the middle of the flour and add the eggs and milk.


Start slowly folding in the flour, eggs and milk from the inside out, until everything is fully combined. The dough will have a sticky consistency. Set aside the dough for 15-20 minutes.


Now came the part I was dreading. You have to squeeze the dough out of a press and into the boiling water. The general way to do it (in lieu of a special spaetzle maker) is to press the dough through a wide-holed colander into the boiling water. I tried this and got pasta that looked quite bad (it still tasted great, but looked nothing like spaetzle). And then my husband had a brilliant idea to use a Murukku Maker. Murukku is a south Indian fried snack that also requires a special mold which is somewhat like a noodle maker. You can read more about it here.



I tried it with the Murukku mold with fantastic results. I now had noodle-shaped pasta floating in the boiling water (looked a little too much like worms!). Now you have to wait for about 3-5 minutes while the pasta gets cooked and starts rising to the top.


Once its at the top of the water, skim it off and put it into a cold water bath. Let them chill for a bit to stop the cooking. This part seems to be optional - some sites suggest it, while others don't seem to do it.


Heat a saute pan with some butter and minced garlic. Add the pasta and toss around until coated and slightly browned. I added a blend of dried herbs and sauteed for a little while (about 5 minutes).


Plate and serve warm with cheese sprinkled on top (I shaved some Parmesan on top). Its absolutely authentic-tasting and so easy! Do try it at home - it's a keeper!

Want a closer look?


(I also found these sites to be very useful for the actual step-by-step photos - check here and here).