Bread Dosa

Happened to stumble upon this on one of my recipe viewing sessions and was bored of eating sandwiches, so tried this out and it was really nice. You don’t really need the curd either, just water is fine till you get the right dosa pouring consistency.

If your tava is too hot you can’t spread this at all – it solidifies really quickly, even more than the normal dosas, so maybe keep the tava on medium heat or pour a larger spoon of the batter? I don’t know 🙂 – maybe I’ll update this next time.

Spaghetti [tomatoes, olives and capers]

This is the first recipe from Jack Bishop’s pasta book that came out quite wonderfully. I’ll try writing the main bits out:

1. Cook spaghetti (use whole wheat noodles and not refined flour) in salted water to the consistency you like – there is no perfect time to cook, it varies – just learn what your tenderness level is by cooking more and more.
2. Fry a little garlic and some chilly flakes until you the garlic browns. Take it off the stove.
3. Add a can of tomatoes (28 ounces of them, with the juice). I don’t think this is a must if you can make some tomato sauce but as of now I can’t – so I’m using a can.
4. Add chopped olives and capers to this and mix it all
5. Add the chilly flake flavored garlic oil from Step 2.
6. Add the spaghetti to it and mix well. Eat 🙂

This tasted quite great frankly, given that I don’t particularly love tomatoes that are cooked. Its all about the proportion of the tomato sauce and the spaghetti – make sure that’s a good balance – you always want the spaghetti to sit in the sauce and not there be too much spaghetti and too little sauce. If that’s the case – you won’t get enough of the sauce flavors.

Spinach puree pasta

I bought this Italian vegetarian cooking book at Half Price books a while back and have been trying to make a few dishes it mentions – mainly pasta dishes to be frank. This one came out really really well. I’ll write out the recipe briefly since it’s in a book.

1. Cook the pasta. I used mini farfalle but you can use anything really – just make sure you taste it to ensure it’s cooked perfectly to the consistency you like.
2. Roast a few pine nuts (these are really expensive for some reason) to get the flavor out, without burning them. This is true of any nuts really – I think it helps get the oil in the nuts out as well.
3. Chop, clean and drain the spinach and puree it along with some garlic and the pine nuts to form a puree. Add olive oil to it as you blend it, to give it a nice smooth texture.
4. Add the ricotta cheese from the previous recipe, or add any cheese you buy from the store. Mix it all well.
5. Add the cooked pasta, salt it like you want and add any more cheese or spices as you please (chilly flakes, oregano etc etc)
6. Mix well and eat :).

I found it interesting though that you don’t boil the spinach at all – you can just grind and puree it to prepare your base.

Cashew ricotta cheese

It’s not really cheese but its a similar texture to that. It came out really really well though and I strongly recommend you try making it. Recipe copied from here.