Easiest Pasta Of All Time.

You guys. I posted a pasta recipe waayyyy back and I have been experimenting a lot with other recipes a lot lately. The recipe I will show you today is basically the easiest recipe I have ever devised. The pasta turns out creamy, tomatoey and delicious to say the very least, so yeah, I'm going to stop yapping, so, you can go ahead and read up the recipe.

Ingredients: 

1.100 grams (uncooked measure) of cooked pasta;

2. 1/2 cup of tomato puree;

3. 1/4 cup oat or regular milk;

4. 1/4 cup water;

5. 1 teaspoon oregano;

6. 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes (optional);

7. Salt to taste;

8. 2 cloves of garlic.

Procedure:

1. Roast garlic in pan until fragrant;

2. Add in tomato puree, water, oregano, chilli flakes and salt;

3. Let cook on medium high heat for five minutes or until the mixture is halved;

4. Turn the heat to medium low;

5. Add in milk and let cook for three minutes;

6. Add in pasta and let cook for five minutes;

7. Optional is adding in roasted bread crumbs for crunch.

I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I enjoyed creating it. Until next time!

Vegan Milks: Almond, Rice, Oat.

Veganism is a lifestyle many are adopting nowadays and it is catching on everywhere, even, here in India. I have a few friends who have named veganism their primary lifestyle about a couple of months and probably, their main problem with their lifestyle is the lack of availability of non-dairy milks except for soy-milk. If you haven't tasted soy-milk, you wouldn't know that it tastes absolutely disgusting, so, here I have three delicious non-dairy milks for my vegan and lactose-intolerant friends.

1. Almond Milk: 

Recipe:

1. 1 cup almonds;

2. 4 cup water+ extra to soak. 

Procedure:

1. Soak almonds overnight;

2. Blend almonds and 4 cups of water in a blender, till frothy and creamy;

3. Store in airtight container for 3-4 days.

2. Rice Milk:

Recipe:

1. 1 cup cooked white rice;

2, 2 cups water.

Procedure:

1. Blend rice with water in a blender until creamy;

2. Store in airtight container for 2-4 days.

3. Oat milk:

Recipe:

1. 1 cup oats;

2. 2 cups water.

Procedure:

1. Blend oats and water together in a blender until creamy;

2. Store in airtight container for 2-4 days.

I hope you give these delicious vegan milks a try and enjoy them too! until next time!

Student Series: 3 School Breakfast Ideas!

Hey guys! I know it's been a while since I've posted and I apologize for the very long over haul but I had my reasons. I can't really mention what but I promise you'll get to know of it soon, so, stay tuned!

This weeks blog is going to focus on school breakfast ideas. A while ago (long while) I shared two school lunch ideas and I promised a school series and here I am!
Breakfast before school for me was a very alien idea. I am one of those people who doesn't immediately get hungry in the morning, therefore, I skipped breakfast (I couldn't even look at food in the morning) and massacred everyone in school by being hungry and mad for no reason. As time passed, I realized that all of these unpleasant interactions were caused by an empty stomach and that resulted in me forcing myself to eat breakfast in the morning, usually, cereal and milk. Gradually, the idea of early breakfast did not disgust me and I started to enjoy eating while catching up on the latest music videos. This, however, was the silence before a storm. I am a person who gets bored easily and you can imagine me getting bored of the plain old cereal.
The thing you must know about me, is that, I can't be bothered with cooking or prepping in the morning. Partially because I'm a night person and partially because when was at school, I had to wake up at 6:00 A.M. and that wasn't ideal for me to be energetic or fun.
So, I started prepping my breakfast the night before, but don't worry! These recipes still take ten minutes and are absolutely delicious.
Here are my three favourites:

1. Pre-Packaged Smoothie.

Now, the thing about smoothies that makes them adore worthy is their versatile nature. You can add in whatever you like and leave whatever you don't.

The idea of pre-packaged smoothie is simple. You just add in your favourite fruit(s), greens, and frozen yogurt cubes* in a resealable bag, pop it in the freezer the night before and just roll out of bed, throw in the contents of the bag in a blender with half-cup of liquid and boom! no more Monday morning blues.

My Favourite Recipe For A Smooth Smoothie:

1. 1/2 non-dairy/ dairy milk;

2. 1/4 cup washed and shredded spinach;

3. 1 large mango; cubed;

4. 1 cup pineapple;

5. 2 large yogurt cubes.

Procedure:

1. Put everything in a resealable bag, except for the milk and freeze overnight;

2. Add liquid to blender with contents of the bag and blend.

*frozen yogurt cubes: Just scoop some yogurt into ice cube trays and freeze overnight.

2. Energy Bites:

These are absolute life-savers, trust me. Imagine waking up on a Monday, skipping breakfast, slumping your way to school and remembering you have Economics as your first class. Well, that was the situation for me. 

These energy bites are what helped me through every Monday morning Economics class and actually made me pay attention in my classes rather than counting the minutes to lunch break.

Recipe:

1. 10 pitted dates ( I use Barni dates);

2. 1/2 cup oats;

3. 3 tbsps cocoa/cacao powder;

4. 2-4 teaspoons water.

Procedure:

1. Put all the ingredients, except for water, in a blender and blend;

2. If the mixture is dry and doesn't come together add in 1 teaspoon of water at a time, until it is roll-able consistency;

3. Roll it between your palms to form bite-size balls.

3. Crudites;

You cannot get simpler than crudites. Crudites are French appetizers involving sliced raw veggies with a dip. 

You can just chop up some of your favourite raw veggies and serve it with hummus or my delicious yogurt dip.

Veggies I used: Carrot, French beans, Cucumber, Red Bell Pepper and Celery. You can cut the vegetables and make the dip the night before and store them in different air-tight containers. Now, all you have to do is put it all together in the morning in just a few minutes.

Recipe (Yogurt Dip):

1. 1/4 cup of yogurt;

2. 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder;

3. Salt to taste.

And those are all three breakfast ideas. I hope you'll give these a try and enjoy them just as much as I did back in high school.

Until next time!

Student Series: Lunch Ideas For School!

When I was younger, much younger (not two years ago), my mom used to pack me lunch everyday and you might think I'm good at cooking but my mother's cooking is divine. Whenever I opened my lunch box, the food would disappear in seconds flat; this was when I was in tenth grade and we had school from 8:35 A.M to 2:40 P.M. My mum packed me really good food everyday but her food mostly consisted of chapattis and a spiced up vegetable, I appreciated all of my mother's hard work because this food was not only tasty but also filling. Then came 11th grade, this was when our workload lightened up in the form of fewer subjects, our school decided to leave us at 12:45 P.M instead of the regular 2:40 P.M. routine. I then realized that mom's lunch just wasn't appropriate. We have lunch break at 11:00 A.M. and at around 1:30 P.M.(it takes us about an hour to reach home.) our faces had to be thrust-ed with more food (act like you don't eat after school). For the sake of my stomach I asked my mom to resign from the school-lunch maker post. For a few days I attended school without proper lunch (I still do), I hogged on my friend's lunch (sorry, Shatakshi) and ate from the canteen, which isn't the best thing to do, I went online and searched for food options I could prepare easily and were, in comparison, better than cafeteria food, I found several videos but the ingredients mentioned aren't exactly available in India easily or in a cheap manner. I searched again and this time with "India" typed with my search. The results I got, 'Pizza Paratha' NoThankYouVeryMuch. So, I brainstormed and brought out two lunch ideas for school, these food items aren't hard to prepare neither do they require 1/2 of your pocket money, here we go:

 Recipe 1: Corn Salad.

This recipe is a really simple one, it's easy to make and good to go.

Ingredients:

1. Corn kernels (Frozen or Fresh);

2. 1 tomato; finely chopped;

3. Juice of 1 lemon;

4. Few leaves of coriander (chopped);

5. Salt to taste.

Procedure:

1. Boil the corn kernels till they attain a golden colour;

2. Mix the corn in with other ingredient.

Vola!

Oh, and for the side, I just packed some boiled pasta with a bit of salt. (I like it okay. Don't judge.)

Recipe 2: Corn Pizza.

You might want to make this a night before.

Ingredients:

1. 1 cup of boiled corn;

2. 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour;

3. Smoked chicken (optional);

4. 1 tomato finely chopped;

5. 1 and a 1/2 tablespoons Tomato ketchup;

6.1 tablespoon chili powder.

7. 1/4 cup of boiled corn.

Base:

1. Preheat an oven at 180 degrees Fahrenheit for twenty minutes;

2. Blend corn in a blender;

3. Add in the whole wheat powder, making it attain a dough like form;

4. Roll our the dough in a circle with a rolling pin (Chill, it doesn't have to be a circle);

5. Pop it in the oven for ten minutes or until perfectly done;

Sauce:

Okay, my go to sauce is just a mixture of Ketchup and chili powder. It's really good alright.

Procedure:

1. when the base is cooked, load it with the sauce and add the ingredients listed above or you know, improvise!

2. Pop it in the oven for about five minutes!

For the side, I chose two cut-up baby bananas.

Done and Done!

Also, also, also, This is the first installment of many blog posts yet to come dedicated to students, The Student Series!

I hope you guys like and enjoy all of them!

Until next time!

PIZZA!

Okay, let me just step right in, pizza is my favourite food ever, it is delicious. I didn’t like pizza as much when I was really young *le goes to the past and slaps young Shireen.* Ninety percent of people in this world love pizza, LOVE it. It’s saucy, full of freshness, cheesy and it just sits in your mouth and consumes your senses, you shut your eyes and you see heaven in that bite of a divine food, you just feel it being right for you, it overwhelms your senses but that’s alright, you love it, it rides down your throat and reaches your stomach and makes your stomach happ...... Wait! What? No!

The only downside to pizza is that it isn’t something that makes your stomach feel happy, one eats it on Sunday so as to compensate on it being unhealthy but if you’re anything like me, you probably crave pizza every other day and it is just so hard to suppress! Those pizzeria pizzas aren’t something that can be consumed on a daily basis (unless you’re PMSing, everything is alright then), so I have come up with a recipe that I thought you guys would cherish. This one’s called healthy and yummy pizza.

INGREDIENTS:

Base:

1. 1/2 cup cauliflower;

2.1/2 cup whole wheat.

3.1/2 cup water

Sauce:

1. 2/4 cup tomato ketchup;

2. 1 teaspoon chilli flakes

Topping:

Any veggie you like! I used:

1. 1 tomato

2. Half an onion

3. Basil leaves

4. 1 tablespoon cheese.

PROCEDURE:

1. Preheat an oven to 180 degree Fahrenheit.

2. Blend the cauliflower in a blender; when blended, mix it together with the wheat and water and kneed till the dough comes out in a ball.

3. Make the sauce by simply mixing the tomato ketchup and the chilli flakes.

4. Flatten out the dough using a rolling pin.

5. Once the dough is flattened out, top it with sauce and the toppings and the cheese.

6. Put it in the oven and cook till the cheese is melted and the dough is cooked.

7. Top it with dried herbs.

Serve hot!

REMINISCENT.

So, today is the first day I review a food product, soo yyyaayy! The food product I’m going to review today is more like a drink product; I’m going to review three flavours of the paperboat drink franchise! The three flavours up for reviewing today are: Aamras, Jaljeera and Jamun kaala-khaata. These are the only three flavours I could get my hands on to, paperboat has a variety of drinks AND even ice teas, I will try to find some.

Let’s start with review, shall we?

1.    Aamras: Aamras had a really thick and velvety texture which makes your throat joyful, the smell reminded me of the sweet mangoes of summer but the taste disappointed, it tasted like every other mango drink in India.

Retails for: Rs. 20

Content: 200ml

1.       Jaljeera: I have mentioned this before but I’ll mention it again, I grew up smack in the middle of a metropolitan but, and here is the big but, my roots do not belong here, every once in a while, during summer vacations, we visited my grandparents’ town, me and my cousins played around in the heat and quenched our thirst to the jaljeera wala’s jaljeera, the taste still rides on my tongue, paperboat’s jaljeera drink will not disappoint you, trust me, it will remind you of childhood and the beautiful moments it contained.

Retails for: Rs. 20

Content: 200ml

1.       Jamun kala khatta: No words for this flavour, this flavour will remind you of the kala-khatta baraf ka gola from childhood, again, leaving you in nostalgia, this flavour is my personal favourite, and I recommend it!

Retails for: Rs. 20

Content: 200ml

Well, that’s it for today; I’ll see you guys next week!

ADIEU!

GRILL IT!

Okay, first of all, I'm extremely sorry for not updating my blog last week, I was in a bit of a soup but it's okay now. Today's post isn't a recipe though, it is my very first restaurant review! the restaurant in question is Barbeque Nation, Kolkata. So here goes!

Preference : Okay, so this part of the review is bad, we were seated by 12:03, since Barbeque Nation is known for Korean grilling basis, what they do is that they place a small grill right at center of your table and bring in semi-cooked skewers and you get the privilege to skewer it yourself, we did not get our grill until around 12:23, while the table across already had skewers on theirs, which was kind of annoying.

Rate for preference: 2.5/5

Ambiance: The ambiance is a natural restaurant ambiance, nothing special and nothing too deranged, so, it was okay.
Rate for ambiance: 3.5/5
Food: Okay the main part, FOOD, the food was breath-taking, it was delicious. If you visit now, I insist you try the paan-kulfi for it was magnificent, it tasted exactly like paan.
Rate for food: 4.5/5

Service: Although, the preference part was annoying, the service was surprisingly good, the waiters were friendly and co-operative, there was a part where a waiter came up to us and asked how we liked the food, my father responded saying that the food was exceptional but the lamb wasn't up to the mark, the waiter brought in the chef and chef inquired about the lamb, my father responded saying that according to himself, lamb should be dry instead being in gravy, the chef took it on a serious note and insisted on making him a plate dry lamb, and so he did and that lamb tasted good, the co-operation and the service motive was a plus point.
Rate for service: 4.8/5.
Important suggestions to future diners:
1. I strongly recommend getting a reservation before hand and that too, 2-3 days before the actual dining plan. 
Address: K1, RDB Boulevard, Block EP and GP, Sector 5, Salt Lake, Kolkata.
Phone number: 033 60600000,
Cuisines: North Indian, Mediterranean.
Timings: 12 noon-2:45 P.M, 6:30 P.M-10:30 P.M.( Monday-Sunday)
Cost for two(excluding alcohol): Rs. 1600.

ENJOY!

Drum rolls, please!

Hey people! How's it been? So, a few days ago, I was craving a certain rice-pasta sizzler from one of my favourite places but like stated before, I have my exams going on so, I cannot go, *silent sobs* buuuttttt that doesnt really mean that I couldn't recreate it, I do not have a sizzler dish, so I made, *drumrolls* schezwan  rice-pasta, here goes:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup pasta;

1 cup any choice of rice ( I used brown basmati);

1/4 cup tomato sauce;

3 red chillies;

1/2 tablespoon non-fruit vinegar;

2 pods of garlic;

1/2 tablespoon pepper;

1 tablespoon vegitable oil.

Procedure:

1. Heat up the oil and add in the garlic, roast till aromatic, put the pasta to boil.

2. In a food processor, add the chillies, tomato sauce, pepper, vinegar, salt and process till smooth.

3. In a pan, add some oil and add in the processed sauce, pasta and rice and cook on a low flame.

4. when cooked, serve on barbequed cabbage leaves. Vola!

Bon Appatite!

 

You give me the crepes.

Heyyyy my beloved human beings, how have you all been? good, I hope, as for my part, I'm dying here, you see my final exams are approaching, so people, I'm Shireen, I used to have an account here (iblogfoodok) but I seem to have lost access for some reason, so, new account alert! Okay, enough chit-chat, let's get down to the real stuff, FOOD, I'll teach you all my favourite crepe recipe. You ready? Let go.

Ingredients:

2 egg whites

1 cup oats (use the food processor to make a powder out of it!)

1 and a 1/2 tablespoons of powdered sugar

1/4 cup of chocolate powder

1 tablespoon peanut butter 

Process:

1) Mix in the dry ingredients,

2) Add in the egg whites,

3) Add water and make the consistency equivalent to that of pancake mix,

4) Cook it like a ritualistic crepe.

Top it off with peanut butter and/or anything you like. I won't judge :)

Bon appatite y'all!