Stuffed Tomatoes

Recently I was making minestrone soup based on a Rachael Ray recipe. Can I say I adore Rachael Ray? True, I probably might not like all her recipes and will surely will never be able to make a meal in 30 minutes unless u count omlettes! But I just love her zest for cooking and lively presentation.. and yes her retro kitchen takes the cake! After making the soup, I ended up with huge chunks of cheese and a large quantity of basil. I rarely make Italian food, so I wanted to use them up before i forgot all about them and then saw them after a couple of weeks when the only thing I can do with them is put them into garbage.
I was still pondering this (I was in Costco) when I saw a box of cocktail tomatoes. They were the perfect size to be stuffed, large enough to take a decent amount of stuffing and small enough to be eaten whole! Since I am addicted to Food TV and coould vaguely remember a recipe for cheese stuffed tomatoes.. thats what I ended up making with the leftover cheese and basil. A pesto turkey lunch sandwich at the Moonshine Grill and Patio served as inspiration to make some pesto for the cheese stuffing.

Ingredients:
20-25 cocktail tomatoes
a cupful of basil leaves
a handful of walnuts
5-6 cloves of walnut
a cupful of Parmigiano Reggiano
a cupful of Pecorino Romano
some olive oil
black pepper
salt

So basically went about the process of stuffing the tomatoes by first chopping of the stem end of the tomatoes and then removing the pulp inside. I rubbed the tomatoes with some salt and pepper and placed them upside down on a sieve to drain. Like a good Indian girl I collected the pulp and the drained juices for use on some later day :-). Then proceeded to make pesto by grinding a cup of basil, 5-6 cloves of garlic, salt and some olive oil after adding the walnuts to the mixture midway.
Mixed the pesto with the grated Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano, some grated black pepper.
Rubbed the outer skins of the tomatoes with some olive oil and then filled each tomato a little over the brim. Preheated the oven to 400'f and when the oven was ready baked the tomatoes for 18 minutes, till the cheese melted and browned slightly.

Its Diwali!!

Diwali, this year, came upon me before I knew it.. so had no time to meditate on what I would like to make. I did feel like making some Faral (Maharashtrian sweetmeats) , but after looking up some recipes and noting that all involved copious amounts of frying..which usually gives me an enormous headache, I gave up on that notion. But there were two Diwali potlucks over the weekend and I did not want to show up empty handed:-). So decided to make quick and easy stuffed chilies. Bought two pounds of jalapeno peppers from the local grocery, the Mexican blend of shredded cheese and I was all set to go.
Since I always keep a large bag of frozen corn in the freezer (being a huge corn freak !) and always have some garam masala at hand, the rest was simple and straightforward.
Cut the stem end of the chilies and slit them vertically I proceeded to deseed them, (note to self in the future: wearing gloves while doing this is a really good idea to avoid the burning sensation that deseeding chilies can leave).I rubbed the chilies with some olive oil very lightly. I microwaved a bowl of corn for 2 minutes and then mixed it with the shredded cheese, some garam masala, salt , turmeric for some color and some dhana-jeera powder. I set the oven to preheat to 400'F and stuffed the chilies while it got to that temperature.
Once the chilies were stuffed and the oven was preheated, I put the chilies in for 12 minutes. Let them sit in the oven for 2-3 minutes after the first 12 minutes were over and I had turned off the oven.
The smell of the melting cheese was a good indicator that the chilies were done. The chilies looked a little wilted and I could see they had been cooked well.

That was it.. I was happy to have prepared a spicy, cheesy appetizer in a short time, with no frying involved!

the almost there vegeterian

'almost there' vegeterian..... person who eats non vegeterian food in the absence of good vegeterian choices.
its funny cause when i was in India, I used to love, love non vegeterian food... in my case this means chicken , lamb and fish, did not have pork till i came to the US and beef is out of the question due to deep rooted religious reasons.
its kinda hypocrtical to eat chicken, lamb and fish and then frown on eating beef, but that never really came into question in India where the only beef i have ever seen was at Muslim weddings and those were rare occassions.But still my mind just hits a blank wall when it comes to eating beef.... i can see my ancestors frowning with displeasure every time i even contemplate the possibility.
with meat being eaten mightbe once in two months, i can say i was ' an almost vegeterian' quite safely!!
however after coming to the US, all this changed.R is an avid non vegeterian who can easily live with two meat meals a day... uh oh, i tried it and rapidly lost weight to regain it all within no time as soon as my body realised what was happening. so back to carb rich and bountiful vegeterian diet. these days i try and look for the spiciest veggie option on the menu. Naturally have to be creative and inventive while planning meals without meat for R. Thankfully R is a total maharashtrian varan bhat batata bhaji boy at heart. which is good for me in a way, but i get bored and listless eating same chapati, bhaji, amti bhat every day. dont get me wrong, i love the maharastrian food, but like it even more if i dont have to cook it every single day myself!
so scour the internet for recipes , pester my mom to send me recipes of half forgotten childhood treats and try and convert R to being an "almost there vegeterian".

the why???

I recently discovered the world of blogs, while searching for a recipe to make banana walnut cake.... people who know me for a considerable while might be a little taken aback... banana walnut cake is not what they would envision me doing with some spare time.... read yes, go for a long walk, watch a movie, go shopping,,,, perhaps even paint... but cooking is not an activity i used to indulge in unless absolutely forced.
But after coming to the US and being forced to live without Mummy's food and the nearest udipi and irani restaurant, made me resort to surviving on my non existent cooking skills. R still remembers occassions when he came home for lunch to a teary eyed me with burnt cabbage bhaji and rice.
thank heavens those days are over, well almost!!!

anyway this blog is a way for me to keep in touch with my old friends and family, people who I used to meet and chat with regularly , but now am seperated by atleast a few hundred kilometers.
Email and regular phone calls cannot compensate for the age-old institution of 'manapasun gappa' ( long conversations , for lack of better translation skills).
So heres to my family and PP in London, JB in Ithaca, AS in Pune, AK in Mumbai, VS in Florida, RK in Pune, MD in Mumbai , RB in Singapore / Pune, DL in Mumbai, AS in Dallas and JG in Austin.

Those cups of coffee and uttapams at Vaishali, the long walks on the tekdi - gazing at the pollution tinged horizons, short walks over Law College grounds, sharing the batata wada sambhar at the IMDR canteen behing Fergusson, the absolutely oil soaked but delicious bread pattice in the college canteen, window shopping on Main Street... all my favorite activities i can no longer indulge in.
Even with a longggg trip to India, however long, all of us are scattered too far and wide to ever relive those days again.

So hopefully this blog serves as a virtual gappa session and u guys hopefully respond to my updates!!! :-)

eating in Peru

just back from an awesome trip in Peru, " Land of the Incas" according to Discovery channel . The food was completely different from what I had ever had... Indian, Mexican, Thai, American.... this is avocado stuffed with chicken in green sauce. The chicken was lightly steamed and tossed with salt and pepper and the green sauce tasted like it was made of coriander and spinach.
We ( me and hubby R) also had a really great dish called Papa Relleno which is potato stuffed with meat. The boiled potato was cut in half, stuffed with a boiled egg, some dates and raisins, and the minced meat. It was then breaded and deep fried , and served with a really hot, kicking chilli hot salsa verde!!! sorry no pictures, but it all looked so good i did not want to cut it open.

This is roasted Andean corn served with little bits of cheese, made in Peru. The corn was realllly yummy and was tossed with salt and cayenne pepper, the cheese complimented it with its milder and mellower flavor.










Dinner at " Ami Manera" a restaurant in Cuzco... chicken with mole sauce , rice served with spinach and the same local cheese mentioned before and chicken stew served with yucca.... so delicious.