Cooking With Passion

Well, being a passionate cook and baker (& a big foodie) myself I thought I should include a small corner where I could share my recipes as well as those of some interesting cooks who've always inspired me. Among these great cooks the first name that comes to my mind is that of Jamie Oliver. I've followed some of his recipes and what actually attracted me towards him was his way of making the task of cooking sound so easy and simple. Each of his recipe is full of simplicity but equally mouth-watering and lip-smacking. His shows like The Naked Chef and Oliver's Twist have been really popular and it was through these very shows that he caught my eye. Hope you'll enjoy some of his simple yet delicious recipes !!

baked pasta with tomatoes and mozzarella (pasta al forno con pomodori e mozzarella)

ingredients

• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• extra virgin olive oil
• 1 white onion, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• 1 or 2 dried red chillies, crumbled
• 1.5kg ripe tomatoes or 3 x 400g tins of good-quality plum tomatoes
• a large handful of fresh basil leaves
• optional: 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 400g dried orecchiette (a type of pasta whose shape resembles a small ear)
• 4 big handfuls of freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• 3 x 150g balls of mozzarella

• Preheat your oven to 200ºC/400ºF/gas 6 and put a large pot of salted water on to boil.
• To an appropriately sized pan add a couple of lugs of good extra virgin olive oil, your onion, garlic and chilli and slowly fry for about 10 minutes on a medium to low heat until softened but without any colour.
• If using fresh tomatoes then blanch them and chop them roughly
• Add your fresh or tinned tomatoes to the onion and garlic, with a small glass of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes.
• Now put them through a food processor or liquidizer to make a loose sauce. Tear your basil leaves into the sauce and correct the seasoning with salt, pepper and a little swig of red wine vinegar.
  
• When the liquidized sauce tastes perfect, bring the water back to the boil.
• Add the orecchiette to the water and cook according to the packet instructions, then drain and toss with half of the tomato sauce and a handful of Parmesan.
• Get yourself an appropriately sized baking tray, pan or earthenware dish and rub it with a little olive oil.
• Layer a little pasta in the tray, followed by some tomato sauce, a handful of grated Parmesan and 1 sliced-up mozzarella ball, then repeat these layers until you’ve used all the ingredients, ending with a good layer of cheese on top.
• Pop it into the preheated oven for 15 minutes or until golden, crisp and bubbling.

apple sponge pudding

dessert recipe | serves 4-6

ingredients

• 6 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 100g sugar
• 2 tbsp water
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 60g self-raising flour
• ½ tsp mixed spice

• Preheat oven to 180C/gas 4 and grease a 1.5-litre baking dish
• Place the apples in a pan with 50g of the sugar and the water.
• Cover and cook, stirring now and then, for 8 minutes until the apple breaks down. Spoon into your dish, leaving excess liquid in the pan.
• Beat the eggs with the remaining 50g sugar until fluffy. Stir in the vanilla extract.
• Sift in the flour and spice and fold in.
• Pour the batter over the apple and bake for 30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean from the sponge.
• Dust with icing sugar and serve hot with ice cream or custard.

The Intro..

My mind is often occupied by this question 'where is life taking me?’ I look around for an answer but I'm sadly left without any response from anywhere. Sometimes I'm left perplexed and wonder if I will ever be able to quench my thirst for a reply. But I'm too obstinate to give up that easily. I'll keep waiting for my life to answer. Well apart from this I'm a simple girl holding a multi-faceted personality (which often leaves me confused as well!!)

With my passing age my thought process has really mystified. At one time I used to be a dreamer. The dreams turned into desire and desires into want and want into an obsession. I built a make-belief world around myself presuming that life had only goodies stored in its lap for me; I just had to have the panache of finding it. But my marathon often ended in failure. I lost my self confidence, believing in my worthlessness. The aura around me charged with pessimism slowly engulfed me in its darkness. But I had to figure out to somehow stop this slow demise of myself. Then someone told me if you wish to make God laugh, tell Him your future plans. I could never understand the deep philosophical meaning of the simple sentence. But now I seem to have grasped a bit of it. Today, what little I have learnt is to accept what I have and the way I live it, for it's the way I have chosen to. The perfect God made none of His creations perfect. To err is natural and to accept is human. Life might not answer all our queries and doubts, but it shows us the path in its own way, if only we care to understand. So moving on with this belief I'm still trying to solve the many hidden puzzles of life. A friend once said the more experiences u try the more exciting life can be. So here I welcome with my open arms everything that life has to offer........