Pasta With Meat Sauce

Some weeknights when I drag myself home, I am hungry enough to eat the first person in sight, but my fridge is empty, and only my pantry is stocked. If my little one and I discuss the options for dinner, it always ends up in pasta. Pasta is wholesome (mix regular white and whole wheat pasta and it's no worse than rotis or rice!!)and can be made and ate with minimum fuss. No grinding, no coconut, no rolling of rotis, no seasoning..A one pot dish.

Normally the sauce is made before hand and ready in the freezer or fridge on the weekend itself. Or I start with a jar of the simplest pasta sauce and customize it. It all depends on how much time there is before dinner. If I have 20 minutes, and pasta sauce ready, that's all it takes to prepare the entire dish. Making a good sauce is not difficult at all but needs a half hour (at least) or more(up to 1 2/2 hrs)which you may not have all the time.


A note on ready made pasta sauce:If you are buying pasta sauce, look for the one with the least amount of sodium (10% or less),and least amount of ingredients on the label. The lower the ingredients, the purer is the product. Go for one which says natural or organic and has no meat, no mushrooms, and no cream in it..all those add hardly any flavor and adds tonnes of calories. Try Trader Joe's Organic Marinara Pasta Sauce or Roasted Garlic Sauce which is the closest to home-made and has no aftertaste of preservatives.

Growing up, pasta was Bambino's macaroni and mom made tomato sauce. Then I saw the whole world of pasta shapes and names and recipes here and calling all of them macaroni seemed silly. It's like thinking all Indians look alike. Now the elbow macaroni is reserved for Mac N Cheese. I used to just buy by the shapes as the names eluded me..(just the faces stayed after the introduction)..but now over time, I got to know a couple of the common pastas..(some of them are our constant companions ):))Penne, Bowtie, Fusilli, Cavatappi, Rigatoni...and they are mostly welcome in my house any day.
Any shape which has ridges in it would work well with this chunky sauce.


For those who want to make the Meat Sauce from scratch:Serves 4
Olive oil -2 or 3 tbsp
Onion- 1 medium sized one
Garlic-3 cloves
Carrot -1
Celery stalk- 2
Red/Yellow/Orange peppers-1
Lean minced Beef or veal-1/2 lb (1/4 Kg)
Ripe Red Tomatoes-4 medium ones or 1 lb (1/2 kg)
Salt - 3/4 tsp or to taste
Milk- 1/2 cup
Dried Parsley-1/4 tsp
Dried Thyme- 1/4 tsp (optional)
Fresh parsley- 1 handful
Black Pepper-1/4 tsp


For Pasta:
Pasta-1 lb
Salt-1 tbsp
Olive oil- 1 or 2 tbsp
Fresh Parsley-one handful
Parmesan Cheese- grated 1/4 cup

Preparation:
1. Chop the vegetables into small even sized dices. Wash the meat and let it drain. Chop the garlic or mince it. Chop the parsley finely after washing. Chop the tomatoes and puree them. If you have the time, cook them in boiling water for 5 minutes and when cool, remove the skin before pureeing. Else use 2 tbsp tomato paste and 1 can (16 ounce)of the whole or crushed tomatoes.

2. Heat the oil in a large deep heavy pot or nonstick deep pan. Saute the onions, celery, carrot, and garlic over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the meat and cook over moderately high heat, stirring and breaking up lumps, until no longer pink, about 6 minutes.

3. Stir in tomato paste, milk, 1 cup water and spices/herbs and gently simmer, covered, until sauce is thickened, 1/2 hr to an hour.(Keep checking to see if the sauce has thickened too much or not. Add water or meat broth if it sticks too much.) The sauce is ready when you see flecks of oil rising to the top of the sauce. Add salt, fresh parsley and pepper and remove from heat.

Sauce may be made 2 days ahead and cooled, uncovered, before chilling, covered. Frozen, it keeps for 1 month.

4. Making sauce from bottled pasta sauce: Heat 1 tbsp olive oil, add 2 cloves garlic and when it sizzles, add the meat and let it cook for about 6-7 minutes. Keep stirring to distribute the heat and when it starts looking brown, it is cooked. Optionally, add 1 cup chopped carrots and red/yellow peppers. Add the whole bottle of pasta sauce, 1 cup milk (or 1/2 cup half and half) and let it simmer for as much time as you have..15 minutes to 1 hr. The milk cuts the acidity of the ready made pasta sauce and makes it creamier. If you are using low fat milk, you will need more to get the same effect. 2-3 tbsp of grated Parmesan cheese can be added to the sauce for flavor at the end.

5. Making Pasta: Bring a big pot half full of water to a boil. Add salt and pasta. Cook for 8-11 minutes(or according to the package directions) till the pasta is tender but still firm to the bite. Drain the pasta. Toss the pasta with the oil to avoid it from getting too sticky. Some people like the sauce soaked into the pasta and some like it separate. So as per taste, either add it to the meat sauce just before serving or add it to the pot/pan and let it simmer on low heat for about 5-10 minutes. Serve hot, garnished with fresh finely chopped parsley and grated Parmesan cheese.

Related links:
Kalyn's Yummy Garden Tomato Sauce
Nabeela's Penne Strascicate
Another Favorite: Nabeela's Bell Pepper Pasta.. It uses roasted peppers pureed into a sauce and its an excellent way to get veggies in at the same time.

Summer Express Cooking Event

Good food takes time to cook.I cannot dispute that but conversely, less time should not mean bad food, should it? If we have the time and inclination to spent an hour or more laboring over the stove, with or without help, I am all for it and I even do indulge in it on the weekends. But for every meal to have taken that long,(which can very well happen given our penchant and joy for cooking), is not possible.

I really appreciate my mom and her generation who wake up at 6am and have an elaborate breakfast ready, along with most of the lunch and a part of the dinner planned out before the rest of the household is even awake! On weekends, she would get everything done and even be ready to step out shopping too by 10 am!! So while I appreciate anybody who can do that (share your secrets, please!!), I prefer to sleep in on the weekends and laze it out.



So this event is all about good food and speed. Maybe contradictory but doesn't have to be. This is an exercise for me too as I have never timed my own cooking and have just played it by the ear(or taste in this case).

Well, since I have a handful of takers willing to make an express meal, lets make an event out of it. I am not big on events as I am a sporadic blogger and very easily miss deadlines in the midst of the week. This being my first chance at hosting as well organising, bear with me if there are glitches..Please do participate and make it a success..

So What Is the Event About?
A meal to be made in anywhere from 10-30 minutes, start to finish (clean up time not included :)). You can use semi- homemade products, such as ready made rotis and tortillas, frozen veggies, or precooked chicken or left over rice.(No, you can use frozen pizza as a meal or order take out chinese.) A part if the meal can be premade if you link back to the recipe for that too.
It can be from any cuisine, eastern or western and can have any level of spice and can be any type of cooking...grilled, baked, fried or steamed. It should be a balanced meal,having a bit of the different food groups:
vegetables/fruits ,grains or carbs, and animal or vegetable protein. You should have one main entry with a photo and post it on your blog. Additional tips and meal ideas would be welcome(a three line description would be enough) as part of your post.

To participate in this event:
1. Email me at malluspice@gmail.com your entry with your name, your blog name, blog url, and your permalink by or before the announced deadline.

2. In your post, please include a link back to the event post to complete the circle.

3. Even if you do not have a blog, I am sure most of you are not short on ideas, so you can email me with a small photo and written recipe directly and they will be posted here.

4. The deadline for the entries is August 10 2007.

The Round Up:
The round-up will be posted on the weekend following the deadline.

Update 7/25/07:
As i am getting more and more queries, the idea itself is getting crystallised in my mind. Most of us know lentils(dals) are easy to cook with prior soaking as is dosa/idli/appam etc easy to make with prior soaking and grinding, so even though those entries are welcome, lets try to go beyond that and make it more challenging.
Lets try for both kind of entries: those which fall into the planning category... so u can give suggestions on how to plan ahead... and those which truly are made without too much planning, for the best thought of plans often fall apart. I am sure all you talented chefs/cooks out there have a lot of ideas, so get going.

Update 8/7/07: The deadline is extended to August 20th as I want more of you to think and come up with instant dishes.:)

Summer Express Cooking

The title of this quirky article caught my eye and in the absence of a real post on food, this made for some interesting reading...express cooking ideas.

Imagine if all our bloggers made a list of recipes they can make in 10 minutes (that may be an exaggeration.. I take the whole day sometimes pondering what to cook) or even under 20 minutes.

I don't know if there are enough takers for this to become an event so I am not introducing it as such. But it would be fun to see what a 10 minute meal means from house to house.

Some of the ideas are really acquired tastes, such as ..."Make six-minute eggs: simmer gently, run under cold water until cool, then peel. Serve over steamed asparagus" as is ..."Brown bratwursts with cut-up apples. Serve with coleslaw".

Here is the link:101 Simple Meals Ready Have a chuckle at the myriad options!

Kanmani Music Video

Most of us have our head in the clouds and ideals and aspirations of greatness when we leave college. Visions of major achievements fill our initial job hunt and initial choice of cities and places to live in and work in. Most of us (including your truly) get caught up in the daily grind of a job, commute, family, home,etc...and inertia sets in. While in school, inertia was just a physics concept to explain why our upper body jolts forward when the car brakes, while the legs stay where they are. Now I think we have inertia in everything.. inertia of changing jobs, changing houses, moving to a new place, taking exams.....I keep filing away a bunch of ideas that I want to implement when I have the luxury to, but time slowly slips away.

So when I come across friends and family who are following through their dreams slowly and systematically, it is a pleasure! This video is the first cinematography work my old college friend Sudesh did after getting out of Cinema Production School, last month. (Currently he is in Hollywood and we are looking forward to better and better shots from him.) Its a new album named "Kanmani" and has a string of new Malayalam easy listening songs.(Dare I say Pop songs?)released in Kerala this week. Can you guess where it was shot? For clips of more of the songs, go to the album website..Album Kanmani.

AFAM-Watermelon

AFAM is A Fruit A Month blog event started by Maheshwari of Beyond the Usual..as the name suggests, its about blogging about a particular fruit selected by the host for the month. This month's event is hosted by the inimitable couple at Jugalbandi who of course had to select something special..and ended up with....watermelon.
My local grocery had watermelons on sale and I ended up carrying a whooping whole melon (10 Pound) across the store, belatedly thinking what on earth am I going to do with it. Usually a big chunk of it gets skinned and cubed into a big bowl, covered with plastic wrap for snacking. A bit of the rest get chopped up minutely and with added sugar(if not sweet enough), made into a spoon able drink ,while some of it is left intact to be cut into wedges for my little one to snack on.
But this time, I had seen a watermelon juice at Trial and Error and that kept popping in my head. It turned out to be a winner with this amazing thirst quenching quality and a tangy taste similar to punch. Thanks Nabeela.:)
The only change I did was to make a sugar syrup ahead of time and flavoured it with Cardamom. To make the sugar syrup, boil equal quantity of sugar and water for 5-10 minutes and add cardamom if you like. This can stay in the fridge for 3-4 days and is great to make lemonades and juices instantly.
The recipe is simple..
1/2 seedless watermelon,skinned and cut into cubes
Juice from 1 limes or less if you like less tart
1/2 cup sugar syrup
A handful of fresh mint leaves
1 cup cold water
1 lime, sliced

Puree the watermelon with the lime juice and sugar syrup. Taste and adjust as required. Add the crushed mint leaves and let it sit in the refrigerator for some time. Strain (thick drink is also nice) and serve with fresh lime and ice. Do try it, it beats soda or bottled juices any day!



There was still a lot of the melon left, so I scrounged the net and made watermelon salsa, which I promptly threw in the sink..blah! What were they thinking! The watermelon did not hold its own amongst the scallions, peppers and tasted funny. Salsas are best with strong flavored fruits such as peaches and mangoes, me thinks.

But I did try a granita with it and there is a bowl of it next to me right now, as a mid day snack. A spot of weeding outside in the July sun and I was spent! The NorthEast is hot when it decides to be! The watermelon granita tasted great as it is, with the crushed watermelong flavored ice slowly melting with each mouthful, cooling and refreshing at the same time, but it tasted better with a dollop of sweetened sour cream on it!
A Granita is an ice dessert somewhere in between a slushy and a sorbet (sorbets are creamier closer in consistency to ice cream) Granitas have a grainier texture (from the ice shavings) and is typically eaten as a refreshing and light dessert. They can also be used in the same way as one would a sorbet, between meal courses to "cleanse the palate".
It reminded me of the Ice Ka Gola from my childhood where different intense flavors are poured over shaved ice and you keep sipping on the ice till the flavor is dried out.


You will need:
2 cups peeled and seeded watermelon chunks
1/4 cup sugar syrup or 2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Puree all the ingredients together.
Transfer the mixing bowl to the freezer and freeze for 30 minutes.
Remove the bowl from the freezer and use a fork to scrape any ice crystals from the sides of the bowl. Stir to break up the crystals. Return to the freezer.
Repeat this scraping procedure every 30 minutes, or until the consistency is “snowy” when scraped with a fork or spoon, at least 4 hours. Then scoop into bowls or dessert glasses and serve.

Kaya- Payar Mezhukkuparatti/ Plantain w/ Long Beans

I am still on my veggie kick so here is another easy to make vegetable which is a lighter form of the traditional mezhukkuparatti or stirfry. I guess it would take a whole sadya(a Kerala veg meal) to satisfy me now, but with my mom on the other side of the country,(on vacation there now) have to settle for a single dish.
Mezhukkuparatti literally means coated with oil, wheras thoran is any vegetable cooked with crushed coconut in it. We used to call all our dry vegetable side dishes as upperi, but in other parts of Kerala it is distinguished as mezhukkuparatti and thoran based on the type of preparation. And they define upperi as chips. Upperi is prepared from various things like raw bananas (kaaya), yam (chena), jack fruit (chakka), bitter gourd (pavayka) and egg plant fruit (vazhuthanga). Slices of the ingredient are fried in coconut oil to a crisp condition. Yum!Yum!

So anyway, my intention was not to sidetrack and cause tidal waves of salivation. This recipe is the way some vegetables are made at my house. Not stirfried, and not with crushed coconut. The vegetables are steamed/boiled with a little water and tossed with a seasoned oil, which acts as a dressing. Its quite similar to the tossed green salads, at some restaurants, seasoned with a hot spicy oil poured over greens to wilt it. Probably this was done to retain most of the nutrients of the vegetables and to balance the rich preparations of the meat dishes. Though made as a side dish with rice, I end up eating it in lieu of salad or a mid day snack.

You will need:
Raw Green Plantains – 1
Yard Long Beans-1/2 bunch
Whole red chilies-2
Turmeric powder- 1/4 tsp
Red chili powder- 1/4 tsp
Curry leaves- One sprig
Salt – to taste
Oil(preferable coconut oil) -1 tbsp

Preparation:
Peel the green plantains with a peeler, removing only one layer. Cut into 4 chunk pieces and then further cut each piece into 8-10 thin long segments. Soak the pieces in a bowl of water with a pinch of turmeric for about 5 minutes and then rinse it well and drain.

Cut the yard long beans (payar) into similar size long pieces. Cook the plantains and the beans in 1/4 cup water with the rest of the turmeric, red chili powder and salt. This should be done covered on low heat for the first 5 minutes and then another 5-7 minutes open. When the plantains are cooked, turn off the flame and check for salt and spice.

Meanwhile, heat the coconut oil and add the red chilies torn into pieces and curry leaves. Pour this oil over the cooked vegetables and toss to combine. Serve with rice.

No frying, no further sauting.. vegetables the Malabar way.