Vegetarian Pasta

Hi Friends, after a short break I am back here with a Italian dish “Pasta” which is very famous word. In my home almost in every week one night menu should be Pasta. Of course, after marriage and after coming to US only I came to know about this.So let us just have a look at how this pasta came into existence and some of the different varieties of pasta we have.

Source Adapted from: Wikipedia

Pasta is a generic term for foods made from an unleavened dough  of wheat or  buckwheat, flour and water, sometimes with other ingredients such as eggs and vegetable extracts. Pastas include noodles in various lengths, widths and shapes, and varieties that are filled with other ingredients like ravioli and tortellini. The word pasta is also used to refer to dishes in which pasta products are a primary ingredient. It is usually served with sauce. There are hundreds of different shapes of pasta with at least locally recognized names. Examples include spaghetti (thin rods), macaroni (tubes or cylinders), fusilli (swirls), and lasagne (sheets). Two other noodles, gnocchi  and spätzle, are sometimes considered pasta. They are both traditional in parts of Italy. There are different varieties of Pasta, I am writing the recipe for Penne Pasta. Penne (pronounced /ˈpɛni/ [UK], or /ˈpɛneɪ/ [US]) is a type of pasta with cylinder-shaped pieces. Penne is the plural form of the Italianpenna, deriving from Latin penne (meaning "feather" or "quill"). Penne is a popular ingredient in pasta salads. Penne makes excellent and versatile pasta for many applications because of its very practical design. The hollow centre allows it to hold sauce, while the angular ends act as scoops

Even though there are different varieties of preparing the dishes with different pasta shapes. Below is one recipe which I follow:

Ingredients:

·  Pasta – 1 small packet (basically of any shape, I used Penne Pasta shape)

·  Olive Oil – 1 tbsp

·  Carrots – 2  medium sized cut into small pieces of 1” inch length

·  Tofu – 1 small square block cut into small cubes like paneer cubes.

·  Onion -1 medium sized cut into small pieces .

·  Pasta Sauce – 1 cup (there are many varieties of this available in market; I used Classico Brand (Tomato & Bail flavour).

·  Black pepper  - crushed 1 tsp

·  Black Olives – 8 (I Used TJ’s Black ripened Olives )

Method to cook Pasta:

·  Take a large vessel and fill with water. The more the better - pasta only sticks when cooked in too little water.

·  Add salt. Salt makes pasta taste better,

·  Bring the water to a rolling boil. This means a boil you can't stop by stirring.

·  Measure the pasta you need. Pasta generally doubles in size when cooked, so 1 cup uncooked = 2 cups cooked.

·  Slowly add the pasta to the boiling water. Ideally, the water shouldn't stop boiling, but if that happens, it's ok.

·  Stir and stir some more! Pasta will stick together if it isn't stirred during the crucial first moments of cooking.

·   Most pastas cook in 8-12 minutes.

·  You can regulate the heat so the pasta/water mixture doesn't foam up and over the vessel sides.

·  Really the only way to tell if the pasta is correctly cooked is to taste it. It should be firm, yet tender, with a tiny core in the middle.

·  Now drain the pasta and remove the water from it and shake off excess water.

·  Add 1 tsp of Olive Oil to the boiled pasta and closed the lid over the pasta.

·  This normally makes the pasta shapes resist without sticking with each other.

Cooking the Sauce:

·   Take another pan and add ½ tbsp of Olive Oil, make sure that olive oil shouldn’t be too hot at any given point of time.

·  Add Onions and sauté them till the time onions colour turns to slight pink colour and becomes transparent.

·  Now add carrots and tofu, olives and sauté them in the middle till they are cooked.

·  Once cooked now add pasta sauce and stir it well to combine with the cooked vegetables.

·  Simmer the heat and cover it with a lid and let it boil for 3 min.

·  Turn off the heat and add the crushed black pepper.

Serving the Pasta:

·  Take a bowl /Plate add the cooked pasta and on to the top of it add this hot pasta sauce and serve hot.

Whole Wheat Pizza

It was almost all a week, that I have been thinking of preparing pizza at home but in a different manner so every time I m just preparing the dough with all purpose flour so this time why not ii try with a whole wheat flour, the thought in my mind immediately came into existence and I replaced the all purpose flour with whole wheat flour and tried it worked out but the dough didn’t raise well like the original one, some how taste came well and we ate it. But, still the recipe is still not up to my satisfaction level. So started again level 2 experiments with 1 cup whole wheat flour and 1 cup   all- purpose flour and tried out. Unexpectedly it turned out very well in all aspects and finally tasted very well than I expected and hubby is also is very happy to eat as it turned out perfectly. So here goes the recipe:

Pizza Dough:

• All purpose Flour /Maida – 1 cup
• Whole Wheat Flour /Atta – 1 cup
• Active Dry Yeast /Rapid Rise Yeast - ½ tsp
• Luke Warm Water – 1 cup
• Sugar – 1tsp
• Olive Oil – 3 tbsp
• Salt – 1tsp

Method:            

• Take a big bowl and mix 1 cup of all purpose flour /Maida and 1 cup of whole wheat flour   along with yeast, sugar, salt and warm water and mix the dough to form a smooth ball without any lumps in it.
• Stir in additional flour until the dough begins to form a ball and becomes easy to handle.
• Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Knead it at least for   5- 8 minutes.
• Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover it with a lid and let it rise in a warm spot. I kept in an oven without turning it on until dough doubles its size (approximately for 1 hour).
• Punch down dough and knead it again. Allow it to rise for 30 min.
• Roll the dough into a circle, forming a ¼ inch rim around the edges and little bit of olive oil onto it and bake it for 5 min at 450 degrees.
• Turn off the oven and remove the base and now add the tomato sauce and what all toppings you would like to add to it( I used onions , bell peppers, olives , tomatoes and finally cheese). Don’t add the cheese right now just before turning off the complete oven and when everything is done. You add the cheese as it melts very easily.
• Bake all the toppings on a preheated pizza stone that has been sprinkled with corn meal at 450 degrees Far Hein Heat for 25 min. Just check in the middle for the golden brown crust.
• Add the cheese on the top of it   and let it melt for 2 min and take out the pizza let it cool for 3 min. 
• Cut the pizza by using the pizza cutter and Serve hot with a Tomato Sauce. 

Pizza

Pizza - the fast food that has today become one of the most popular snacks of almost all ages! You will find pizza parlours’ or ‘pizzerias’ in almost each and every market, including the local ones. I’m sure even you like to eat pizza, if not on a daily, then on an occasional basis. Have you wondered how the pizza came into being i.e. what is the history and origin of the delicious snack? Pizza has a very colourful and interesting history attached to it and with the information given below, you can find all about its background. It is believed by almost every person in the world that pizza was invented by the Italians, making it an Italian recipe. However, one can trace the origin of the snack back to the ancient times. As per the earlier records, Babylonians, Israelites, Egyptians and other ancient Middle Eastern people used to eat a flat, un-leaven bread, which was cooked in mud ovens and had an appearance somewhat similar to the pizzas we eat today. There are also evidences to suggest that the ancient Mediterranean people, like Greeks, Romans and Egyptians, used to eat their flat bread, after topping it with seasonings like olive oil and native spices. Pizza is believed to have pervaded the lower class of the Naples (Italy) in a similar fashion. There is also a story, dating back to around late 19^th century, about an Italian baker called Raffaele Esposito, who created a new dish for the visiting royalty. With time, small cafes, serving Italian pizzas, started opening up in American cities. Even the American soldiers, who participated in World War II, were exposed to the tasty dish and contributed to its popularity in their homeland. Today, pizza has become almost synonymous with fast foods, across the globe. Right from kids and college-goers to professionals and oldies, everyone loves to have a bite of a pizza generously topped with mozzarella cheese. To get the best out of the pizza, I recommend using a Pizza Stone, oven peel, pizza rack, pizza cutter and server. Now- a – days we are getting this complete set within a reasonable budget of $10- $20. I got it from the Macys Store. Try this recipe as I tried many a times and finally writing this method. Instead Of buying a pizza base from outside we can get it done the same easily at home with less than 5 min of time. So let us first see how to prepare the dough: 

Pizza Dough:

• All purpose Flour /Maida – 2 -3 cups
• Active Dry Yeast /Rapid Rise Yeast - ½ tsp
• Luke Warm Water – 1 cup
• Sugar – 1tsp
• Olive Oil – 3 tbsp
• Salt – 1tsp
 

Method:

• Take a big bowl and mix 2 cups of all purpose flour /Maida along with yeast, sugar, salt and warm water and mix the dough to form a smooth ball without any lumps in it.
• Stir in additional flour until the dough begins to form a ball and becomes easy to handle.
• Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Knead it at least for   5- 8 minutes.
• Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover it with a lid and let it rise in a warm spot. I kept in an oven without turning it on until dough doubles its size (approximately for 1 hour).
• Punch down dough and knead it again. Allow it to rise for 30 min.
• Roll the dough into a circle, forming a ¼ inch rim around the edges and little bit of olive oil onto it and bake it for 5 min at 450 degrees. 
• Turn off the oven and remove the base and now add the tomato sauce and what all toppings you would like to add to it( I used onions , bell peppers, olives , tomatoes and finally cheese). Don’t add the cheese right now just before turning off the complete oven and when everything is done. You add the cheese as it melts very easily.