Recipe - Soupy Pasta (for Healthy and Tasty Recipe Contest)

Ingredients:

·         Spaghetti  (use wheat or semolina pasta) – 100 gms

·         Onion – 1 medium size – finely chopped

·         Corn Kernels – 1 cup

·         Peas – 1 cup

·         Tomato Puree – 1 cup or 1 medium tomato finely chopped

·         Mushrooms – 3 medium sized, thinly sliced

·         Oil – 5 table spoons (I used Fortune Rice Bran health oil)

·         Garlic – 1 teaspoon paste or three cloves finely chopped

·         Red Chilli Flakes – 1 table spoon

·         Hing (Asafoetida) – 1 teas spoon

·         Red Chilli sauce – 2 table spoon

·         Salt – to taste

·         Water

Recipe:

Section 1 – Pasta:

Take 1 litre of water in a wide bottomed or deep vessel.

Add 1 table spoon of salt. Bring the water to boil.

 Once the water is boiling add the pasta in it. (Tip: Do not add oil to the water or the vessel. It will prevent the spices and sauces from sticking to the pasta and will reduce taste.)

Let the pasta boil for 10 minutes, stirring every three minutes.

Strain the pasta in a strainer. You can choose to drain away this starchy water or save it to be used as stock in other recipes.

Now transfer the pasta in a bowl. Fill it with cold water, and drain the pasta in a strainer. Repeat till pasta is cold. This way the pasta will not stick together.

Now transfer pasta in an empty bowl. The pasta should not be more than half the bowl’s volume.

We will use this empty space later.

Section 2 – The vegetables and spices:

Heat 3 table spoons of Fortune Rice Bran oil in a pan.

 Add the finely chopped onion and garlic. Sauté till onion turns golden brown.

Add the thinly sliced mushrooms. Add 2 table spoons of oil. Sauté till mushrooms change turn slightly brown.

Add the tomato puree, and stir.

 Add Chilli sauce, chilli flakes, hing and salt. Continue to stir.

Add the Corn kernels and peas.

Stir for 1 minute.

Section 3 – The Soup:

Add 600 ml of water.

Stir well and bring to boil.

This will form the soup. Let it boil for 5 minutes by when the corn and peas should soften.

Pour this soup on the pasta we had kept aside in the bowl. Voila, you’re doneJ. You can choose to garnish with sprigs of basil or coriander. But I like to have it as it is.

Now some of you may wonder that this looks like soupy noodles. Yes it looks like soupy noodles because I chose to use Wheat Spaghetti instead of noodles which are made from Maida (or refined white flour.) You can replace the spaghetti with penne, fusilli or any other pasta as well. You’re also using Fortune Rice Bran oil, so that adds to the healthy quotient as well.

Please do tell me how it turned out for you.

This post is a part of Healthy & Tasty Recipe Contest with Fortune Rice Bran Health Oil & BlogAdda.com

Review: The Krishna Key

‘The Krishna Key’ is the third book written by Ashwin Sanghi, after having written The Rozabal Line and Chanakya’s Chant. Without giving out any detailed spoilers, I will give you a gist of the story as part of the review.

The driving character of the books is Ravi Saini. He is a mythology & history teacher who is on the run to clear his name in the murder of his childhood friend Anil Varshney. Before his death, Varshney found an object that with his theory can change how we know history. However before he can do much about he murdered by a man who calls himself Taarak Vakil, whose name when you play with spells out ‘Kalki Avatar’. However he is not the bad guy like You-Know-Who but a man who believes himself to be tenth avatar of Vishnu (Kalki Avatar) and must vanquish the wrong and bring forth the light.  Now Saini must prove himself innocent while not getting in the hands of Taarak who is trying to kill him as well and save himself from the cunning and competent inspector in charge of hunting him.

The book is in three layers. Layer one is the main story of Saini and Vakil and how their individual quests progress and sometimes merge like the branches of a river. Layer two is the back stories/ flashbacks of the characters which serve to add flavour and show their individual motivation. Layer three is Krishna telling his own story to the reader. Of the three layers I personally liked the second layer the most as it provides the background of the canvas against which the main story is being drawn on while Krishna’s words serve as the frame for the painting.

The book has been told by some be India’s answer to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Now I don’t know how to react to this statement, but yes the book is indeed of the same genre. A mixing of the past and the present, murder and mystery, facts and wishful thinking and some conspiracy theories. The plot has its fair share of surprises and predictable moments. I believe each reader will react differently to the book depending on the number of plot twists they are able to predict or be fascinated by.

I have not read his first book, but have read Chanakya’s Chant with much delight multiple times. Chanakya’s Chant also had two layers, one of the fictional retelling of Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya’s lives and the second of the lives Chandini and Gangasagar in the present. The two layers were in perfect balance with one leading into the other stream lessly. Just like a well made lasagna or Danish pastry. The Krishna Key however lacks such finesse and at times the plot seems to be pushed ahead instead of progressing. I once wondered that this book had been written before and Chanakya’s Chant after assuming that as the author matured his way of balancing the layers did as well. It seems however Sanghi is a victim of the success of his previous work that I and others have compared this book to those before.

The book is however still a good read and I must appreciate the amount of effort and time put in by the author in the research required to write such a book.

This review is part of the Book Review Program by BlogAdda. Wherein members of the program can receive free books as long as they commit to post a review of it. Due to my own lack of energy owing to some projects I hadn’t blogged for quite some time. I knew that a review would be required when I got in to the program and my lack of energy is no excuse for the review to come so late that BlogAdda had to follow up on me. My sincerest apologies for that.