Yogurt based Carrot-mayonnaise salad and Garlic Toasts

This dish was made as part of “No Fuss American” menu. Please see here for the other dishes as part of this menu.

Yogurt based Carrot-mayonnaise salad

Ingredients to serve 4 adults

Thick Yogurt/Curd: 2 cups
Carrot: 2(medium size, grated)
Eggless Mayonaisse: 2 tbsp
Salt to taste

Procedure

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl just before serving.

Garlic Toasts

This is actually celery-garlic toast in the book. As I don't get celery here, I just made with garlic. Nevertheless, it tasted nice.

Ingredients

Bread slice: 10
Garlic: 3 to 4 cloves(chopped) or around 1 tsp chopped
Butter: 1/8 cup(at room temperature)
Salt to taste
Grated cheese to top the bread while toasting(optional)

Procedure

1. Grind the garlic and butter in mixer. Grinding was bit of a challenge for me as the quantity was very less without the celery.
2. Add salt to the ground mixture and mix.
3. Apply the ground paste on the bread slices. Add grated cheese if desired.
4. Bake in a pre heated oven at 180 degree C for 10 minutes or till the toasts are evenly browned.
5. Cut into halves and serve.

Pasta and vegetable casserole

This dish was made as part of “No Fuss American” menu. Please see here for the other dishes as part of this menu.

This pasta is a combination of vegetables and cheese sauce, baked with cheese topping. It was one of the best pastas that I have made. Instead of cutting and toasting the onions and tomatoes as per the book, I chopped the vegetables into very small pieces in the food processor and sauted them with some olive oil.

Ingredients to serve 4 adults

Cooked pasta: 2 cups(I used fusilli)
Tomatoes: 2 cups(chopped)
Onion: 1/2 cup(chopped)
Capsicum: 3/4 cup(I used red and yellow, cubed)
Garlic: 2 tbsp(chopped)
Oilve oil: 3 tbsp
Salt to taste
Grated cheese: 4 tbsp(used while baking. I used britannia cheesiza)

Ingredients for the cheese sauce

Maida/All purpsose flour: 1 tbsp
Milk: 1 1/2 cup
Grated cheese: 4 tbsp(I used britannia cheddar)
Butter: 2 tbsp(at room temperature)
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Procedure to make the cheese sauce

1.Melt butter in a pan, add flour and saute on a low flame for ½ a minute or till you get the aroma of the cooked flour.
2.Add the milk gradually while stirring so that no lumps form. Bring to a boil, by increasing the flame, but constantly stirring.
3.Add cheese, salt, pepper and mix well and heat till the sauce thickens.(around 10 to 15 minutes. It is OK if it is semi solid. When cooling down, it solidifies to a thick sauce)

Procedure for preparing the vegetables

1.In a pan/kadai, add olive oil.
2.Add the onion and garlic and saute.Then add the tomatoes and saute.
3.Once it is cooked, add the capsicum and saute for some more time.
4.Add salt and mix well. Put off the stove and keep aside.

Putting everything together

1.pre heat the oven to 200 degree C
2.Spread a layer of vegetables in a baking dish.
3.Tp with the cooked pasta.
4.Cover with the cheese sauce and top with the grated cheese.
5.Bake for 10 minutes or till the cheese is browned and serve hot.

Verdict: This was the best of all preparations for the dinner menu. Only negative point is that it is too in high in calories. May be the next time, I will reduce the amount of cheese used.

Ratatouille Lasagna

I first tasted lasagna at a restaurant called Little Italy in Bangalore, that specializes in Italian vegetarian cuisine. One interesting fact about the restaurant is, all the dishes are listed with their Italian names in the menu card with a description of each item in English. Until and unless one knows italian, they would have a tough time ordering food. So there is an ID for each dish. Its enough if we provide the ID number to the waiter and the ordered dish would reach us. Three years back when we went to the restaurant, I only knew pizza and pasta that were Italian food. So my husband took charge of ordering the food. All the items that we ordered including the lasagna tasted too good. The dishes were heaven in disguise..The cost!!!!that tells why we haven't gone there again...

When I had the lasagna at Little Italy, I wouldn't have even imagined that one day I would be making my own. But here I am with my own vegetarian Ratatouille lasagna as adapted from the mini series cookbook by Tarla Dalal called "Pizza and Pasta".

It look solid 3 1/2 hours to make the lasagna, though the cookbook said 30 minutes preparation time and 10 minutes cooking time. I knew it is not humanly to make the lasagna from scratch in 40 minutes. Still went ahead and started at 7 in the evening and the lasagna was ready at 10:30 in the night. It was worth all the wait and effort..It was just fabulous and my husband too endorsed my opinion. :-)

I made few changes to the ratatouille based on preference and availability.. Ratatouille it seems is a french dish and the cookbook used brinjal(egg plant) and celery leaves to make a traditional Ratatouille.. Since I don't like brinjal, I substituted it with spinach and did not use celery leaves as I don't even know if we get it here. I don't know after these main substitutions, I can still call it a Ratatouille.., but it just tasted fantastic. The lasagna with creamy white sauce and aromatic Ratatouille with mixed herbs was just heavenly.

Here is the recipe for Ratatouille lasagna as adapted from Pizzas and Pasta by Tarla Dalal. Since I had very less time to prepare the lasagna, I first made the dough for the lasagna sheets and rested it for 20 minutes..When the dough was resting I made Ratatouille. I also prepared the white sauce. It took a bit more than 1 hour to prepare the Ratatouille and sauce. So the dough ended up resting for that much time..Next I rolled the dough and prepared the sheets. Finally did the layering and baked the lasagna..

Ingredients to make lasagna sheets

All purpose flour/Maida: 3/4 cup
Spinach Puree: 2 tbsp(I pureed in an electric mixer)
Olive oil or Refined Oil: 3 tbsp(I used olive oil)
Salt: 1/4 tsp
To cook the pasta: 1 tbsp oil and 1 tsp salt(I used olive oil)

Ingredients to make white sauce

Milk: 1 cup
All purpose flour/Maida: 1 tbsp
Grated cheese: 2 tbsp(I used cheddar)
Butter: 2 tbsp
Salt and coarsely powdered pepper to taste

Ingredients to make Ratatouille

Chopped Onions: 1/2 cup
Chopped garlic: 2 tbsp
Finely Chopped Spinach/Palak: 2 cups
Chopped tomato: 3/4 cup
Dried mixed herbs: 1/2 tsp
Tomato puree: 2 tbsp(optional)
Tomato ketchup: 1 tbsp
Olive Oil or Refined Oil: 2 tbsp
Salt and coarsely powdered pepper to taste

Some cheese is needed to sprinkle on the layered lasagna before baking. I used Britannia Cheeza for this.

Procedure to make lasagna sheets

1. Combine all the ingredients in lasagna sheets in a bowl and knead to a very firm dough. Add water only if necessary. I kneaded for 15 minutes and did not add water at all.
2. Rest the dough under a damp cloth for 15 minutes.( I rested it for almost an hour)
3. Divide it into 3 equal parts and roll out each portion as thinly as possible.  The size of the sheet depends on the size of the baking dish. I had a square baking dish. So after rolling the dough, I cut it with a pizza cutter to get 3 square sheets.
4. Add water in  a wide pan(that can hold the lasagna sheets) and add salt and oil. Once it starts boiling, cook each sheet of lasagna for 2 minutes, one after the other.
5. Drain and transfer the lasagna sheets in a pan of cold water.
6. Drain again and keep aside.

Procedure to make white sauce

1. In a pan, heat butter if it is hard. Once it melts, add flour and saute for a minute.
2. Slowly pour in the milk, whisking it continuously so that no lumps form.
3. Add the grated cheese, salt and pepper and mix well.
4. Remove from the fire and keep aside. It will thicken to form a creamy white sauce.

Procedure to make spinach Ratatouille

1. Heat oil in a pan. Add onion and garlic and saute for 2 minutes.
2. Add spinach and salt. Just sprinkle very little water. Let the spinach cook for sometime. (around 10 minutes)
3. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and mixed herbs and mix well. Let it cook for another 5 minutes in medium flame. Just see to it that it does not get stuck at the bottom of the pan.
4. Once the mixture looses most of the water content(it need not be dried completely), add ketchup, salt,pepper and mix again.
5. Put off the flame and keep aside.

Putting it together

1. Pre heat the oven to 200 degree C.
2. Place one sheet of lasagna on a greased baking dish.
3. Top with half the Ratatouille and then spoon some white sauce.(around 4 tbsp)
4. Place the second sheet of lasagna and top it with the remaining Ratatouille and spoon some white sauce.(around 4 tbsp)
5. Place the third sheet of lasagna and top it with the rest of the sauce and sprinkle some grated cheese.
6. Bake for around 30 minutes or until the cheese starts browning..(Mine took almost 40 minutes)
7. Allow it to cool a bit. 
8. Should I even say what to do next???Attack!!!!

Note: The ingredients and procedure are that of my adapted version. When I cooked the lasagna sheets, one of them tore at the side. I used that in the middle layer. I actually got 4 lasagna sheets, 3 the size of the baking tray and one a bit smaller. I got that one extra by making dough out of the left overs from the 3 lasagna sheets after cutting them into squares I kept that extra sheet in the bottom most layer while setting the lasagna...After removing the sheets from the cold water, I just kept them in 3 plates to drain..When I set the layers, the sheets were not completely dried, but as our appetite was increasing with every passing second, I just went ahead and used the half dried sheets for setting the layers..But the overall result was just too good..

Vegan creamy soy milk pasta

I made soymilk pasta today for breakfast. I learnt this recipe from my neighbour. Once I tasted this creamy pasta at her home, I just loved it and got the recipe from her immediately. Till then I used to make pasta, the Indian way, with onion, tomato and garam masala. The pasta is so easy to make and it does not require butter or cheese, hence its very healthy too.. I generally make the pasta using milk, but this time, since this recipe is my entry to Vaishali’s It’s a Vegan World-Italian event, I replaced milk with soy milk. The soy milk pasta was equally creamy and tasty.

Ingredients

Pasta: 2 cups (I used MTR macaroni pasta)
Vegetables: 1 cup (mixture of green, red and yellow capsicum and carrot very thinly sliced)
Pepper powder: ¼ tsp(optional)
Soy milk: 1 ½ cups
Corn flour: 1 ½
tbsp Oil: 2 tsp
Salt to taste
Pasta seasoning

Procedure

1. Boil pasta as per instructions in the package and keep aside.
2. In a bowl, add soy milk and corn flour and mix well so that there are no lumps.
3. In a sauce pan/kadai, add 2 tsp oil.
4. Once it is hot, add the vegetables and sauté till the vegetables become soft.
5. Add salt and pepper powder and mix well.
6. Pour soy milk into the pan and stir until it mixes well with the vegetables and becomes creamy. (Less than a minute)
7. Add the boiled pasta and mix well. Put off the stove.
8. Sprinkle pasta seasoning on the pasta while serving. If pasta seasoning is not there, add chilly flakes and oregano.

Pasta tastes the best when served hot.

This goes to Vaishali’s It’s a Vegan World-Italian Event.