Asian salad with grilled cottage cheese

This is another party pleaser salad that can be converted to a grilled chicken salad anytime based on the people it is serving! Marinade for the cottage cheese and chicken remains the same.

Ingredients:
Salad
1 head of Romaine lettuce(or salad leaves of your choice)
Fat bunch of cilantro - used as a major salad leaf for flavour
Couple of Radishes - sliced
Couple of Cucumbers - diced
Some spring onions - sliced
One carrot - cut into julians
One red bell pepper - cut into julians
Handful of mint - cut into julians
Quarter red cabbage - thinly sliced

Dressing
Some toasted sesame oil
Some peanut oil(or vegetable oil of your choice)
1-2 lime juices(this is the main ingredient of the dressing)
Some dark soya sauce
Some smooth peanut butter
Some Chinese hot sauce(optional)
Grated ginger
Salt
Black pepper
Little honey for balance

Marinade
Some grated ginger
Generous dollop of honey(for caramelization)
Some peanut oil
Some soya sauce
Salt
Black pepper
Some red chilly powder
Generous amount of lime juice

Method:
1. First thing is to get all the marinade ingredients in a zip lock bag and soak cottage cheese or chicken pieces in it. Leave it aside for at least 30 minutes(up to overnight).
2. After 30 minutes, grill the cottage cheese for a couple of minutes on each side on a hot griddle(or cook the chicken until done).
Note: If you are using the cottage cheese - I'd recommend putting the cheese back in the marinade so it can keep absorbing the marinade and stay moist till you use it.
3. In a bowl whisk together the ingredients for dressing. Mix with the vegetables and salad leaves in it.
4. Cut the grilled cheese or chicken diagonally and garnish the salad.

Serving suggestion - right before serving add some lime on top of the salad to enhance the flavour.

Fiddlehead fern and beans salad with cherries

Enjoy this refreshing and novel salad on a nice summer day!

Ingredients:

Fiddlehead fern

Crisp beans

Handful of Spinach

Some micro greens of your choice

Sweet cherries

Olive oil

Lemon juice

Salt

Pepper

Some sugar(optional)

Parmesan cheese

Method:

1. In a pan, roast fiddlehead ferns and beans with some oil until they are a bit tender and browned from outside.

2. To make the dressing, whisk olive oil, lemon juice, salt, sugar and pepper.

4. Coat the salad leaves and roasted veggies with the dressing and serve with cherries.

5. Add some grated Parmesan for extra flavour.

Barley and Feta salad

This is a crowd pleaser - specially when the party involves people who want to eat healthy yet pretty looking food!! :)
It's very easy, low prep. It can be made one day ahead and assembled right before you eat.

             This is a salad interpretation from a friend of mine - you can jazz up 

the salad by adding beans, peas, peppers,

 corns and any other vegetables of your choice.

Ingredients:
1 cup pearl barley
Chopped cucumber
Chopped tomatoes
Chopped spring onions
Chopped cilantro(big bunch)
Chopped mint
Chopped almonds
Small chopped green chilly(optional)
Handful of small black currents
Pomegranate seeds
Crumbled Feta cheese

Olive oil
Lime juice
Salt
Pepper
Sumac(optional)
Pomegranate juice/water(optional)

Method:
1. Soak the barley in water for 15-20 minutes. Put the water boil on side.
Tip: You can cook the barley one day ahead and store in the fridge. You can use the cooked barley for the entire week's lunch as well!

2. After 20 minutes, put the soaked barley in boiling water and cook for 20-30 minutes(until done). Note: Do not add salt or oil as I have heard it makes the grains tough.

3. To make the dressing, whisk olive oil, salt, pepper, lime juice, sumac and pomegranate water/juice.
Note: I used the water that was collected after thawing the frozen pomegranate seeds. If you are using fresh ones, you may use the juice as well.

4. In a salad bowl, mix chopped onions, tomatoes, cilantro, mint, almonds, chilly, feta cheese, black currents and cooked barley. Add the dressing and mix again.

5. To serve, garnish with pomegranate seeds.

Enjoy!

Spinach and radicchio salad with ginger dressing

This is a light and refreshing salad that goes well with any meat.

Ingredients:
Handfull of chopped spinach leaves
Handfull of chopped radicchio(or any other chicory leaves of your choice)
Some cilantro(not a garnish, but as salad leaves)
Olive oil
Finely chopped red chillies
Some grated ginger
Salt
Pinch of sugar - this balances the spicy and sour flavour of the dressing
Lime juice
Radishes - thinly sliced
Green beans - diagonally sliced
Spring onions - diagonally sliced

Method:
1. For the dressing - mix lime juice, olive oil, salt, sugar, grated ginger(along with its juices) and red chillies.

2. Reserve quarter of the dressing to coat the radish, beans and onions. Add the remaining dressing to the salad leaves and mix well.

3. Serve the salad leaves as base and top it with the coated radishes. Enjoy!

Herbed Chicken with spinach-micro celery salad

This is a very light and healthy dish that pairs nicely with red wine and beautiful sunset. You can bake or grill the chicken in home or do it my way - BBQ the marinated chicken while enjoying a quite evening in the spa ;)

Ingredients:
Chicken breast
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic clove
Some rosemary
Some thyme
Some marjoram
Some Lemon juice

Chopped spinach
Micro celery
Diagonally sliced beans
Diagonally sliced spring onion
Capers
Some finely chopped red chillies


Method:
1. Marinate the chicken breast with olive oil, minced garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice and chopped fresh herbs(rosemary, thyme and marjoram) and set aside for 30 minutes.

2. Then cook the chicken on low heat in a pan or BBQ grill. Alternately you can cook chicken in oven at 370F for 40 minutes/until done.

2. To make the dressing - mix olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, red chillies and drained capers.

3. In a bowl, add spinach, micro celery, diagonally chopped beans and spring onions and lightly coat with the dressing.

Squeeze some lemon juice on chicken and serve hot with the salad!

Homemade pasta with lemon-coriander sauce(dhaba style)

Indiaized pasta version for all the spice seekers... This pasta dish seems like it came it came straight out of a Indo-italian 'dhaba'(Indian version of a diner) - but no, it's a concoction out of my kitchen :)

Ingredients:
Homemade pasta - see the video below on how to shape it OR just regular pasta would work too!
Generous bunch of fresh Coriander
One dried red chilly
One clove of garlic
Juice of half a lemon or one lime
Salt
Pepper
Some Olive oil

Shaping the pasta

For homemade egg less pasta recipe click here.

Method:
1. Prepare the pasta sauce by mixing coriander, chilly, garlic, salt, pepper,lemon juice and very little water in a blender.
Note: At this point you can start cooking your pasta in boiling water is if it's store bought.

2. Start warming olive oil in a pan.

3. Once the oil is warm, put the sauce in and heat it for a minute.
Note: At this point you can start cooking your pasta in boiling water is if it's homemade(since it hardly takes a minute to cook it). Over boiling fresh pasta will make it chewy.

4. At this time add your cooked pasta to the sauce.

5. Serve the hot pasta with some more lemon juice and garnish with fresh coriander.

Enjoy dhaba style pasta with some chilled beer! :)

Spinach-ricotta Ravioli with Brown butter sauce

On a weekend when the day is too hot to step out and I want to do something to get me out of that lazy mood on to my feet, I can't think of anything else but to cook something that I have never ventured before.

And today was the day of this super easy pasta recipe. The base of my pasta is egg less(because guess what, I was out of eggs and I was too lazy to go out to get it! :) ). The pasta recipe is derivation of a Marathi staple food called 'varan mutkule' - that is flour dumplings boiled with lentils - which my father loves to cook.

This dish serves two people easily and half the dough that remains can be used to make fresh pasta later. Store in the fridge and bring to room temperature before using again.

Here is the recipe that took me 1hr 10min on clock to make from scratch.

Ingredients:
Pasta:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup semolina flour
1/4 cup lukewarm water
Some salt
Some olive oil

Filling:
100 gm Ricotta cheese
1 tsp cornstarch
1/4 cup chopped spinach(boiled/thawed and squeezed)
Some salt
Some Pepper powder
Some nutmeg powder

Sauce and garnish:
3 tsp butter
Some olive oil
Some lemon juice
Grated Parmesan cheese
Chopped parsley

Method:
1. Start mixing the pasta ingredients in a bowl together. Once a dough like lump is formed, transfer it on the kneading surface and knead the dough for 10 minutes.
Note:You can add a splash of water while kneading if the dough becomes dry, but keep the dough tight.

2. Cover the dough and let it rest for 20 minutes.
Note: You can let it rest longer. This is just the minimum amount of time I think is good for rolling it out as thin as possible.

3. While the dough is resting, boil and chop the fresh spinach or thaw the frozen spinach from the freezer. Now squeeze out all the water from the spinach.

4. Add the ravioli, cornstarch, salt, pepper and nutmeg to the spinach and set aside.
Note: Make sure that you squeeze the spinach nicely, the filling shouldn't be runny.

5. After 20 minutes, cut a small portion of the dough(about 1/5th of it) and start rolling it as thinly as possible.
Note: At this point you can start boiling the pasta water with some salt and oil in it.

6. Cut the rolled sheet in two halves.

7. Put filling in the middle and fold the edges on top of each other.

8. Seal the dough around the filling and cut using a knife or cutter wheel.

9. Add these raviolis to boiling water. On another burner, start heating butter and olive oil.
Note: You can add some herbs like oregano, sage, rosemary or thyme. You can also add some marinara sauce to top the raviolis with.

10. Once the raviolis float on top of water, remove them and put in the brown butter sauce.

11. Turn off the heat. To serve squeeze some lemon juice on top along with some grated Parmesan cheese and parsley.

Enjoy fresh homemade, egg less Spinach-ricotta ravioli!! :)