Pasta

Who doesn't like Italian food, even though its a little cheesy? Surprisingly, some of the Italian dishes are easy to cook. My first experiment with Italian cuisine was Pasta. Wanted to make it in an authentic way. I got the enthu on a Friday evening, and forced my poor husband to take me to the grocery store, after a tiring day at work. Got Penne pasta, shredded Parmesan cheese and Prego tomato-basil sauce. It was my first visit to the Pasta aisle at the grocery store, and my! I was amazed at the countless varieties of pasta sauce.

Here's the recipe, and this is how it looked in my kitchen!

Variations:

1. Added onions and broccoli to eggplant

2. Substituted tomato paste and fresh basil with store-bought Prego sauce

3. Added garlic powder

It hardly took me 15 minutes for pasta to be served on my plate. At restaurant speed huh. :)

Now a days, I stopped purchasing the pasta sauce. Buying plain tomato sauce (is usually kept in the same aisle as other pasta ingredients) instead. Below is another pasta recipe that I invented.

1. Slice an onion into inch long pieces and fry in olive oil
   
2. Chop spinach and fresh basil and add them to the fried onions. A little salt is added
   
3. Dust some dried garlic powder and any dry herbs you like. I use Oregano, Basil, and some Italian seasoning
4. Empty the tomato sauce can into the pan. Add some water so as to thin the sauce and let it cook on low flame for 5min
5. Add cheese and the boiled and drained pasta to the sauce
   
6. Done!
   

When I first made pasta, I boiled the entire contents of the packet as I'm always a bad judge of quantity. The left over pasta was refrigerated in a ziploc bag. I didn't really want to make the same recipe again. Then, came the day, when I wanted to eat Palak paneer. Have you seen its click? As usual, there was some left over PP too, and a new idea in my mind. How about having palak pasta? That's PP again :) Next day's lunch was cooked at rocket speed. 3-2-1, and its ready!

1. fry onions,
2. add prego sauce, palak paneer, salt and cheese.
3. microwave the left over pasta and add it to the sauce mixture.

Five minutes of preparation time, and it was the most delicious pasta I ever had.

Your turn to drool over it now...