Pasta with Asparagus, Mascarpone cheese & Walnuts

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 2/ Day 2
Theme: Favorite Celebrity Chef Recipes
Dish: Giada's Pasta with Asparagus & Mascarpone cheese
My Celebrity chef of choice for Day 2 of BM# 33 is Giada De Laurentils. She is an Italian chef and is a regular on Food Network. Her Italian recipes look doable and easy to make with every-day available ingredients.
I learnt a lot of Italian recipes watching Giada's shows. One of the fancy ingredient I started to buy after watching her is Mascarpone cheese. She uses it in both sweet & savory preparations like cheesecakes, pastas etc. I buy a tub on mascarpone cheese when on sale and use it in various dishes.

Today's dish is Giada's Farfalle with Asparagus & Mascarpone. I was making this for my sister who doesn't eat mushrooms, so I used peppers instead. Also I jazzed up the recipe with sauteed onion and garlic for added flavor. Addition of walnuts was the highlight for this recipe and I really enjoyed the crunch. Final dish was colorful, creamy and filling.

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CheeseCake Frozen Yogurt

For the last day of the marathon under the "Calcium Rich dishes" theme I made this decadent cheese cake flavored frozen yogurt. Yogurt and milk are great sources of Calcium. 

Here's the Calcium content of the ingredients used: Greek Yogurt (1 cup - 25% DV), 2% Milk (1 cup - 297mg), Mascarpone cheese (1 oz. - 3% DV).

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Jazzed up Vanilla Cupcakes made from Cake Mix

After making a breakfast & an entree from ready to cook stuff, I decided to make a dessert using the same. I was debating between making an Indian dessert of Western cake. Since I had to make something for the kids for a party last weekend, I decided to make these vanilla cupcakes from store bought cake mix; this way I had a dish for the marathon and kids had something that they like.

It has been years since I bought store bought cake mix. After making the cakes at home from scratch, it somehow does not feel right buying store bought mix. I know they are very convenient, but all the additives in the mix, makes me not want to buy any.

Well for this challenge, I made an exception and since I was running out of time and options to make something for the kids, I decided to buy a cake mix anyway. I used only half the box since the full box (18.5oz) makes 24 cupcakes and I only wanted to make a dozen. I weighed the mix and halved it by weight.

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Tiramisu Cake

Here's Wishing everyone a Very Happy Christmas.

Hope everyone had a fun holiday with lots of good food and got to spend time with family and friends. Talking about good food, I made this delicious Tiramisu cake from scratch for my cousin who happens to love Tiramisu. For a change I wanted to use a cake as the base instead of lady fingers. I made a vanilla yellow cake from the recipe here and used half of it to make a 8" round cake. I split the cake in half and layered it with mascarpone filling and chilled it until ready to serve.

 

You can use store bought yellow cake mix instead of making your own. Just follow the package instructions to make the cake. Make a note that this recipe uses only half the cake mix, so adapt the recipe accordingly.

 

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Paneer & Green Pepper in Creamy Sauce

When I was making this dish, I had a creamy restaurant style curry in my mind. As it turns out I didn’t have cream in the fridge, but I used the next best thing I had, mascarpone cheese. It made the dish creamy, light, mildly sweet and delicious.

Ingredients:
Paneer – ½ cup, cubed
Green peppers – 2 medium, chopped
Carrot – 1 medium, chopped
Red onion – 1 medium, chopped
Tomato puree – 1/3 cup
Kasoori Methi – 2 tsp
Ginger+Garlic paste – ½ tsp
Milk – ½ cup
Mascarpone cheese – 2tbsp
Garam masala – ½ tsp
Red chili powder – 1 tsp
Salt – to taste

Method:

• Heat 1tbsp oil in a pan, add onions and sauté till golden brown.
  
• Add g+g paste and cook for another minute. Next add the veggies, cover and cook till completely cooked.
  
• Add tomato puree, kasoori methi, red chili powder, garam masala & salt. Simmer for 3-5 minutes.
  
• Next add milk while stirring continuously (otherwise milk might curdle) along with paneer & mascarpone cheese. Simmer for another 2 minutes.

Garnish with chopped coriander and serve with roti or fried rice.

This is my entry to JFI: Paneer being hosted by Trupti @ The Spice who loved me. JFI is the brainchild of Indira @ Mahanandi.

Creamy Tomato Sauce for Pasta

I love creamy tomato sauces/ gravies, be it in Indian gravy curries or Italian pasta sauces. Just the thought of how thick, luscious and yummy these gravies could be, will make me extremely hungry and smack my lips. Well to add to my hunger I remembered my husband telling about the thick tomato soup he had for lunch the other day.

I couldn’t think of anything else but the basket of ripe tomatoes I had on the counter until I got home. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it thick and luscious like I was imagining, then I saw the tub of mascarpone cheese in the fridge and the little bulb went on (no actually I remember watching Giada adding it to a lot of her dishes). After half an hour I was devouring the perfect creamy sauce with ravioli and it was just as I dreamed.

I used three types of tomatoes in the sauce to get the consistency I was looking for. Canned chopped tomatoes can be used instead of fresh ones.

Ingredients:

Ripe tomatoes – 2 large , chopped
Tomato paste – 2 tsp
Tomato puree – ¼ cup
Onion – 1 small, finely chopped
Garlic – 2 cloves, minced
Red pepper flakes – 1tsp
Vegetable bouillon cube – 1
Milk – ¼ cup
Mascarpone cheese – 3 tbsp
Parmesan cheese – 2 tbsp
Sugar – 1 tsp
Salt & Pepper – to taste

Method:

• Heat 2tsp olive oil in a large pot on medium-low flame, add garlic and red chili flakes; sauté for 1 minute till garlic is golden and fragrant (be careful not to burn garlic).
• Add onions and sauté till translucent, about 5 minutes.
  
• Add all the tomatoes, fresh, paste and all, and bouillon cube; cover and cook till tomatoes turn mushy, about 7-8 minutes.
• Now add milk and simmer for 2 minutes.
• Finally add mascarpone cheese, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Simmer for another minute. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes, enjoy on your favorite pasta.

We had ours with spinach ravioli and it was awesome.