I have been cooking a lot of pastas these days. We love pasta, but the main purpose behind this is, I am hell bent on learning to make good pasta dishes. These dishes get ready in a very short time, so they are perfect for weekday nights when I return home tired with little patience to cook anything elaborate. A funky weather is adding to all my laziness. I somehow loaded up my pantry with different pastas, sauces, olives etc, which I need to finish. So all these are adding to the increased pasta/pizza nights :).
Initially when I started cooking pastas, it would always turn out to be an Indian version of pasta. I would have either fried garlic or onion till they turned brownish and it would give a very different taste to these dishes. Then I started following more closely and after many trials, I can say, I am somewhere close to the dishes available here in Italian restaurants. I hope one day will come when I can get the exact taste that is available in restaurants, fingers crossed :).
On one such trial and error days, I made this dish. It was inspired by one recipe – ‘spaghetti lasagna’, that I had found in a book called “Casseroles – simple recipes for hearty meals”. I twisted it completely to suit the materials I had in hand. It came out superb (otherwise I would not have posted it here). We simply loved it. So I am writing it down here before I completely forget it.
Ingredients: 1/4 th pack angel hair pasta (1/4 lb) 1/2 tbl spn butter 1/2 tbl spn extra virgin olive oil 1/2 tea spn finely chopped garlic 1/2 cup marinara sauce 4 oz cream cheese (I used fat free cream cheese) 1 and 1/2 cup vegetables – Onion, capsicum, zucchini, olives, capers 1/4th cup Parmesan cheese 1/2 tea spn pepper(approx) Salt
Method: Bring water to boil with salt. Pour the angel hair pasta. Cook till the pasta is almost done. Heat olive oil and butter in a pan. Add garlic, onion and cook for a min. Add capsicum, zucchini and stir. Let it fry for 2-3 mins. When they are half cooked, add marinara sauce, olives, capers, salt, pepper, mix well and take out from heat. In a separate bowl, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Coat a casserole dish (I used a bread loaf pan) with baking spray. Spread half of the marinara sauce mixture in the dish.
Spread half of the cream cheese on top.
Spread half of the pasta on top.
Repeat remaining marinara sauce – cheese – pasta layers. Spread Parmesan cheese on top.
Bake in a preheated oven for about 30mins at 375F.
Serve hot.
Serves : 3 Preparation time : 45mins
This is the 500th post on this blog. So thanks to all my readers who have given their immense support to me for last 2+ years.
I always wanted to do something about bringing my aayi(mom)’s culinary skills to people, since I knew every person who tasted her food had praised her. Her pickles were not only popular at my home but also my relative’s relative’s relatives knew about them. We thought of creating a website but that looked like lot of work at a time. When I got married, my husband suggested to create a blog and created ‘Aayi’s Recipes’ for me. Thats how it all started about 2.5 years ago. To begin with, I never thought this blog would be anywhere close to what it is now.
I started posting regularly after we moved to USA. The reason for the regularity could be attributed to the fact that, I was missing my aayi’s cooking a lot and wanted to keep track of the recipes so that I could go back to them whenever I wanted. Like a reference. Slowly but steadily people started to visit this blog, and I took more and more keen interest in it.
Over the last one year I received huge number of emails from readers who benefited from this site in many ways. I also started getting success stories of people who never cooked before and had tried recipes on this blog. It is an amazing feeling that this work has brought happiness and fond memories of their favorite food to those who live away from their home, from all over the world.
How to efficiently browse Aayi’s Recipes?
Let me explain each and every feature of this blog. Please read on.
Search – There is a search on the top which allows you to search for a particular recipe. So when you want something like ‘ moong ‘, enter it in the box and hit ‘Enter’. Select the one that you need. I am writing this specifically, because I have seen some readers almost ‘never’ use search. They ask me for a recipe which they could have got to, in seconds. If you try using search first, you might get to your favorite recipe much faster.
On the top navigation bar –
About – On this page you can find answers to questions like – Why did I start this blog? Which is my home town? What do I do for a living?and more such.
Cooking tips – These are some tips I have learned from my aayi, Varada and also collected from different sources. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comment section of that post and I will try to reply.
ArtCampus – This is a place where I have posted some art work from of my hobbies like painting, knitting and crocheting, drawing etc
Contact – If you want to contact us, please use this page.
Kid’s lunchbox – These are collection of recipes from different blogs/sites which can help moms in creating great lunch boxes. If you find any interesting lunch box ideas, please leave the link on this page. If you have any ideas of your own, please leave them too. It will be helpful to others.
From other blogs – These are few recipes that I tried from other blogs and I loved them. I don’t make separate posts about them on AR, as I feel if it is required, I can directly go to original and try them. These are only a few of the lot I tried. I try my best to keep this page updated. There are many more which I need to add here. I wish to do it more regularly hereafter.
Glossary of ingredients used in my recipes is built right in to the posts, with links that take you to a glossary page with picture of the ingredient with description.
I have tried to create an extensive user friendly glossary. The main intention of this glossary is to make everyone understand an ingredient easily. It will have a picture of the item along with it’s name in different languages. This is an in-built glossary, that means, wherever an ingredient appears in the post, it will have a link to the term. For example, urad dal, avrekalu etc, just click on the link to read about the ingredient. You need not go searching for it.
This feature requires a lot of time and it’s laborious so I am working on it whenever I get some free time.
Recipe Index – I have created the categories depending on the type of dish. I think that is the easiest way to search because it is more convenient. I see that people don’t use this feature a lot. Please use it, it makes searching for recipes (names you don’t know) much easier.
On the right side bar –
Revisited recipes – These are the recipes that I had posted long ago. As and when I get time, I rewrite these posts and update pictures. This is done mainly because when I started blogging, I didn’t know how to write a post. Primarily, I change the pictures, correct mistakes if any etc.
Latest posts – These show the latest 10 posts on this blog. Click on any to go to particular post.
Request –
– I can hardly speak 4-5 languages. So when I am writing the glossary, I can write the translation mostly in these (or few of these) languages. Please send me the translation in your language, if it’s not listed, so that I can make it more useful for everybody.
Thanks for reading…
Again, I thank each and every one of you.
THANK YOU !!!
