Potato Pasta basket

Last week I tried a whole lot of new recipe.

Its totally a different one... I experimented a little and combined 2 recipes into one.
Some times you have to do experiment with food and others with your new innovations (like what I m doing with my Hubby)

First recipe : baked-macaroni-and-cheese-cupcakes
Second Recipe : Eggs in basket
(To check the both the recipes, click here : First and Second )

When I saw the recipes in Food network show, I liked both. Wanted to something different like these recipes. Did bit research to make it as vegan recipe and after some time, decided to combine both in to one. Since both had meat and eggs in it.

Ok let me tell you what I did in my “ Potato Pasta Basket “.

From the second recipe I took only the potato part. Grated some potato squeezed out all the waters from it. And made the basket in Muffin tray and baked it first.
And then instead of Eggs, I put boiled pasta, cheese, spinach and cherry tomatoes inside my baked potato.
Baked again as Gaida did in her first recipe.

End result, tadaaan …. Lovely colorful cheesy crispy potato basket with pasta with veggies in it.

Try this out and pls do write your comments to me !!!

Milagu Vadai

Sounds so crunchy and Yummy, no ?

I made this yummy, crunchy, peppery, bitterly tasted Milagu Vadai / Peppercorn fritters yesterday.

I had been busy for the past few days. I Wanted to add some colors to my home and was doing some handcrafts at home with paints, papers and tissues. To know what I did, please check here
Since I completed some of my tasks, I wanted a break. And moreover the weather was absolutely perfect. Day before yesterday, it was raining the whole night and the next day, it was neither sunny nor chilly. It was warm and more crisp. Full cloudy and the wind was blowing nicely. Who doesn't like this kind of weather... (Sorry, for the ones who is in India, specially Chennai)

I wanted to enjoy this with a nice snack. As usual I started hunting for the recipes. I found this recipe in my favorite website : chefinyou 

Already I had my soaked Dal for making Idly batter. I don't want to miss the weather and this instant crush towards the vadai. So without a second thought I started doing it. It really turned out well. When I tasted my first vadai (before my hubby) I felt a tinge of bitter taste in it, after that only I realised, along with the urad dal I added one tsp of Fenugreek seeds for my idlies.

Still the Milagu vadai was good to eat. We both had it and enjoyed the nice weather.

My Experiment with Pizza

Two months earlier I wanted to do my own Pizza from the scratch. One fine day I did Pizza and found my base was not cooked properly. After a week I tried and the result was same. I was little upset and wanted to give up the pizza making.

My hubby always encourages me, asked me to give one more try. So I started doing all research on the dough making process. Result of my research was yeast reproduction. Yeast is a vital ingredient in baking breads and Pizzas. The articles I read were all insisting on one point - activating the dry yeast. Once again I tried and took more care while doing the yeast activation part. Maintained the lukewarm temperature and added little sugar. This time it was very good as like we buy it from outside.

I have made Pizza's around 5 - 6 times since my first attempt and now i am very comfortable with the dough making process.  My latest Pizza was a Spinach pizza that I made for a food mela that we conduct last week. More on the food mela here.

Did you all know? Yeast is a living fungi.

It is responsible for leavening the dough and imparting a delicious yeast fermentation flavor to the product.

Man used yeast before he knew how to write. Hieroglyphics suggest that the ancient Egyptian civilizations were using living yeast and the process of fermentation to cause their bread to rise over 5,000 years ago.

Invention of the Microscope, identified Yeast is an living micro organism which is responsible for fermentation. Commercial baker's yeast are produced in 20th century only.

There are many types of yeast used in baker's yeast, Nutritional yeast, Brewer's yeast etc.

Baker’s yeast is one of the type which we all familiar with.
Baker’s yeast is produced from the genus and species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Saccharomyces, refers to “saccharo” meaning sugar and “myces” meaning fungus.
The species name, cerevisiae, is derived from the name Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.

Yeast cell is approximately equal in size to a human red blood cell and is spherical to ellipsoidal in shape.
Since it is very small in size, 1 gram of baker's yeast contains 30 billion yeasts cells.

Yeast reproduction is called as 'budding', during which a new bud grows from side of the old or existing cell wall. This bud breaks away from the mother cell to form a separate cell. This process will take place up to 12-15 times.

During Commercial production, yeast is grown in controlled condition with help of sugar medium. In this conditions yeasts cell reproduces every two to three hours.

To know how yeast are produced pls click here http://www.dakotayeast.com/yeast_functions.html