Tomato 'Anu' biata!

We had Tomato Arrabiata in a nearby restaurant and thought of trying it out. Here is my attempt to reproduce it in my kitchen. I have seen Arrabiata sauce in Nilgris, but I made it with the pizza sauce I had. Well it was not exactly Arrabiata but Anubiata!

Durrum Spaghetti - as required

Fun foods Pizza sauce - 2 tbsp

Pasta seasoning - 1 tbsp

Onion - 1 chopped

Garlic 7 or 8 pods chopped

Vegetables - 1 cup

(Carrot, cabbage - julienned), beans, cauliflower(parboiled in salt water), capsicum

Paneer - just 2 small cubes

Milk - 1/2 cup

Corn flour - 1 tbsp

Oil 1 tbspn

Salt as required

Boil 1 litre of water and add the spaghetti and salt as required. Cook till it is done, strain the water. In a kadai heat the oil, fry the onions, add carrot, beans and fry for couple of minutes then add the cabbage and cauliflower. Add 2 spoons of pizza sauce and keep frying. In the mixie blend together paneer, milk and add corn flour to it(This was not there in the spagetti we had, I wanted paneer in that). Add this and chopped garlic to the veggies. Add salt. Once the vegetables are just done, add the cooked spaghetti and the pasta seasoning. I dint add oil to the cooked spaghetti as we do for noodles as they were not sticking together. Toss for around 2 mins. Finally add the capsicum and remove from fire.

Glass Painting- 2

Glass Painting is not a difficult one, provided you have a good design and and you are able to get rid of the bubbles while painting.

It is not new to me. I did my first painting almost 2 years back. But never framed it. I had wrapped it with a paper and kept it in the loft. Now I have all the worlds time, I thought of framing it. OMG, the paper was sticking to the paint and I couldnt remove it at all. Now I learnt one important lesson about Glass Painting : You should never wrap it with paper and should use only cloth! Lessons learnt the hard way.

I had some left over paints and now that I painted the bottles, I started thinking of a complete painting. Finalized the design and here is my first framed Glass Painting.

Kuzhi Paniyaaram

I am using Kuzhi Paniyaara kal or chatti extensively for making Potato or colacasia(seppan kizhangu) fry. I also use it for shallow frying the appams(not the chettinad aappam). It has been long since I made the paniyaaram. So here it goes...

I made Kuzhi paniyaaram with Onion sambar and tomato chutney.

Par boiled rice(puzhungal arisi) 1 cup

normal rice- I dont know how to call it! (pacharisi) 1 cup

Urad dhall - 1/2 cup

Cooking soda - a Pinch

Curd - 1/4 cup

Salt as required

Chillies as required

Onion 1 big finely chopped

Carrot - 1 grated

Ginger- 1 inch piece finely chopped

Coconut pieces - 1 cup finely chopped

Oil for shallow frying the paniyaarams

Soak the rice for 2 hours and dhall for an hour. Grind them along with chilles, consistency same as idly batter. Let it ferment for a night. I ground the batter in the morning and used them for the dinner. Just while making the paniyaarams add the curd, chopped onions, ginger, carrot, coconut pieces and the pinch of cooking soda. Mix well. Heat the paniyaara chatti, pour just 2 drops of oil, yes, you heard it right. This is more than enough if you are using the non stick version of the kadai.

Pour the batter only till half of the kuzhi or pit. Wait till small pores appear on the surface of the batter. Use the spatula or spoon to turn the paniyaaram and let it get cooked on the other side also. Spongy Paniyaaram is ready!

There is a variation to this traditional paniyaaram. Grind some coriander and mint leaves along with chillies and add to one part of the above said batter. This will give you beautiful green paniyaarams. Make a pulp of a tomato, cook it for some 2 minutes along with some garam masala, chilly powder, turmeric and ginger garlic paste. Add it to the batter. This will give you orange paniyaarams. I have tried these, trust me they will look lovely and taste great!

Stuffed Bread

When going through Chitvish recipes in Indus ladies. I happened to see this one. Made slight variation to suit my taste. I became too greedy and added all the vegetables I could lay my hands on from the fridge and tried it today for dinner! It tasted very very nice.

Bread:

Multi grain atta - 1 cup

Maida - 1 cups
Salt - as required
Sugar - 2 tsp
Olive oil (recipe called for refined oil or ghee) - 2 tbsp
Milk & water - ¼ cup each
Dry yeast - 1 tbsp

Dissolve yeast in warm mixture of milk & water stir well leave for 10 mins. Take atta + Maida + Sugar + Salt + Olive oil and make a very soft elastic dough and wait for 1.5 hours to double

Filling:

Grated Paneer - 1/4 cup
Finely chopped tomatoes - 2

Finely chopped Onion - 1

Green chillies - as required

Sliced Garlic pods - 10 nos
Jeera - for Tempering
Finely chopped Coriander leaves - as required
Carrot and cabbage shredded - 1 cup

Boiled mashed Potato - 1

Boiled Green peas - 1/4 cup

Sweet corn kernels - 1/4 cup

Olive Oil - 1 tbsp

Heat pan and add oil. Add the jeera to it then add onion and green chillies.
Add the tomatoes and fry for 3 minutes. Now add Carrot, cabbage, mashed potatoes, peas, sweet corn, Salt. Fry till the mixture becomes dry. Add grated panner, garam masala and coriander leaves.

Let it cool for some time.

Followed the procedure to make the braided bread as in the original recipe. Recipe asked to keep in a closed cupboard. Didnt know where to keep. So kept it inside the OTG, of course when switched off. It rained today and the temperature was a bit low so thought it would be safe there as the dough also needs warm place to raise. After an hour brushed it with warm milk. I had kept the dough for 4 hours. Prepared the dough by 4pm. Made the braided bread by 5.30pm and baked the bread by 8pm.
Preheat oven to 220 deg celcius and bake for 20 minutes or till brown.

Oats Almond cookies

This is a low fat cookie I baked almost a month back. I followed the recipe from a little bit more religiously. I didnt have oats flour, so just ground the quick cooking oats and neither bothered to sift as the recipe asks and additionally I added the raisins.

It was a guilt free cookie. Never tasted different from any other cookie with loads of butter and sugar!

I totally forgot to take a snap of the cookie to post here till I packed the last cookie in DH's snack box. Didnt have time in the morning to move it to a plate and didnt bothered abt the angles or anything. Just clicked it!

Vanilla cup cake

I am brave enuf to blog about my screwups now!

I cannot really say it a screw up but it was not upto the mark! Of course edible and already gobbled. Only last few pieces left..

This is the first time I am baking muffins. This can be an excuse as I am a first timer for muffins.

Most of the remakes are not working out in tamil cinema! Exactly same thing happened to me. The original recipe was from Jayasree of Kailas Kitchen. The end product was looking heavenly with chocolate chips and wonderful shape. She has even done a coffee version of that. Mine looked famished. But the taste was good, I am emphasizing again.

Not much changes made. I dint have chocolate chips, so substituted with tutti fruity. I just made half of the measurement just to be on the safer side.

Now time for you to have a look at it:

Can you guess why I have cut the muffin into four?? It got blasted on the top!

There were 4 splits on the top of it.. so i had cut it to make it visually pleasing.

Glass Painting

It is appropriate to call it bottle painting!

Painted these Heritage flavoured milk bottles with Glass colors. Initially intended for money plants now it has the colored bubbles!