Pasta tossed with Roasted Vegetables

As far as this dish is concerned - what you see is what you get. I don't even think you need a recipe for this one - its that simple! As I have mentioned many times before, I love oven roasted vegetables.....and of course I simply adore pasta. So, putting them together was the easiest thing to do.
I used broccoli, babycorn, cherry tomatoes, onions and bell peppers. Feel free to substitute with any other combination that you would prefer, including zucchini, yellow or red peppers and courgettes. Toss the chopped vegetables (1 " pieces) in a tablespoon of oil mixed with dried herbs and salt and roast in a pre heated oven for about 15-20 minutes. The vegetables will still be crunchy but have a nice sweet flavour from the roasting.

Once the vegetables have been roasted, heat up olive oil in a pan, saute some garlic and then toss some cooked pasta (already cooked, drained and tossed with a tsp of oil) and vegetables together in the pan for a few minutes. Since I already add herbs while roasting vegetables, I just mixed in some paprika powder and basil leaves additionally. A generous sprinkling of grated parmesan and you have a delicious, light meal ready!

Mushroom, Red Pepper and Broccoli Roasted Salad

Summer makes me crave for foods which are light on the stomach - thin soups, cold pasta tossed with herbs, gourd vegetables, rasam and rice with bhindi sabzi (okra stir fry), koshambir (tempered salads with grated veggies), watermelon juice, buttermilk by the gallon, papaya and musk melon cubes, cold aamras (mango pulp) with chapatis....

.....AND raw mango - to me raw mangoes are inextricably linked with summer. Must be something to do with growing up in a "colony" in Mumbai which had about 5 mango trees -with atleast three of them bearing fruit every summer. So a gang of girls and boys would spend every afternoon of our summer holidays plucking fruit with the help of a contraption of long bamboo sticks tied together with rope, a knife tied to the end and a bag hanging under it. Then we would have a "kairi party" - salt, red chilli powder and a dash of lime juice (all stealthily taken from someone's kitchen) would be sprinkled over the cut pieces of mango and devoured. One particular summer when I was about 13 or 14, I ate so much raw mango that I had a severe stomach upset and was almost dehydrated! That spelled the end of mangoes that year for me....

So, tell me what are your favourite foods to eat during the summer - now and in your childhood?

The recipe I am going to post is not one I had during the summers of my childhood - I didn't even taste broccoli and mushrooms till much later. But it has become a favourite of mine - vegetables roasted in a little bit of oil and flavoured with herbs, spices and vinegar or lime juice. Infinite variations are possible and each one tastes a little bit different from the others - let your imagination flow!

I am sending this to Easycrafts Fun 'n' Sun event being hosted all this month at Simple Indian Food.

Mushroom, Pepper and Broccoli Roasted Salad

Ingredients:

Button mushrooms - 8-10 washed and cut lengthwise
Broccoli - 1 cup florets
Red Pepper - 1 (can be yellow, red or green) deseeded and cut into 1 " squares
Tomatoes - pulp removed and cut into 1 " squares OR cherry tomatoes halved
Spring onions - white part sliced OR Onions - separated into layers and cut into squares
Garlic cloves - 2-3 crushed

Olive oil - 1 1/2 tbsp
salt to taste
Freshly crushed pepper - 1 tsp
Mixed dried herbs - 1 tbsp
Freshly chopped mint or coriander leaves - 1/4 cup
Lime juice - 2 tbsp
Red wine vinegar - 1 tbsp

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Take a roasting pan or a shallow oven proof dish and mix all the chopped vegetables.
2. Drizzle 1 tbsp olive oil over the vegetables, season with salt, pepper and the dried herbs
3. Roast the vegetables for 8 to 10 minutes and then check whether it is a little tender but still a bit crunchy. If it needs a little more roasting, drizzle the half tablespoon of olive oil and roaste for 4-5 minutes more.
4. Remove from oven and drizzle the remaining olive oil if not already used on top of the vegetables and transfer to a serving dish.
5. Mix the lemon juice, vinegar, chopped coriander or mint and toss the salad briefly. Cool and serve.

Note: You can use almost any other vegetable in this salad - carrots, babycorn, peas and french beans go well - but root vegetables like sweet potatoes and potatoes will take longer to cook.

I am sending this luscious salad to the monthly event - No Croutons Required - hosted alternatively by Lisa and Holler. This month's edition is being hosted by Lisa and the theme is a salad or soup centred around mushrooms.

For a fresh salad without roasting vegetables, try this Babycorn, Cherry tomatoes and Sprouts Salad with Feta Cheese

Broccoli Soup

The weather just isn't letting up here and we have been having unseasonally cold weather. "Its February!", I want to scream,"Time to put back the sweaters and move around with a light stole, and oh yes! no socks on my feet the WHOLE time!!".

Instead we are stuck with single digit minimum temperatures and its slated to get worse! My daughter, down with a bad cold, was struggling to breathe through her blocked nose....mealtimes quickly turned into a nightmare.

So, what do I do? Plan a week full of soups, runny khichdis and lentil stews.

One of the soups I made was a broccoli soup with potatoes and carrots in it to give it a bit of body and more flavour. I usually add spinach to this soup which makes it a darker green, but didn't have any on hand.
Having been in hot and humid Chennai for such a long time, my soups tend to be as light as possible and so I don't really add cheese - but colder temperatures may warrant some calories, so go ahead if you feel like.

Broccoli is a vegetable related to the cauliflower (it looks like a green version of cauliflower anyway) and a member of the cabbage family. But what I found out was that the stem of the broccoli is much more fibrous than cauliflower, and remains crunchy when cooked.

In Italian , it is known as "Broccollo" which means "Cabbage sprout" and shares the sulphur smell of cabbage and cauliflower, which is released if overcooked.
So, to prevent nutrition loss as well as the smell, it is always better to steam this vegetable for salads and stir fries, so that it is just tender and not mushy.

It is packed with vitamins like A,K,C and riboflavins as well as fiber, calcium and potassium. Besides a huge list of health benefits which include protection against cancer and cardiac disease, it also has anti oxidant properties which help the skin.

While researching foods that would help my digestive system's limited capacity, I also found out that this vegetable supports stomach health by eliminating bacteria responsible for gastritis and ulcers.

Broccoli is no longer as difficult to get in India nor as expensive, and it is a good idea to make it part of your diet, even if just once a month.

This soup is going to "No Croutons Required" which has just been started by Lisa of Lisa's Kitchen and Holler of Tinned Tomatoes. The event is a new monthly soup and salad challenge and this month's theme is Vegetarian Soups and is being hosted by Lisa.

Broccoli Soup

Ingredients:

Broccoli - 7-8 florets
Carrot - 4 tbsp grated
Potato - 1 small grated
Onions - 1 chopped
Garlic - 2 cloves chopped
Bay leaf - 1
Butter or vegetable oil - 1/2 tbsp
Vegetable stock - 350 - 400 ml
salt to taste
freshly crushed black pepper
Cream - 1 tbsp per portion (optional)

Method:

1. Heat the butter or oil in a heavy pan and drop in the bay leaf. Add the onions and saute till translucent, put in the chopped garlic cloves and fry one minute.
2. Add the grated carrot and potato and fry for 2 minutes. Put in the broccoli pieces, saute one minute, then the salt and the stock. Bring to boil and then cover and simmer for about 20- 30 minutes till the vegetables are cooked and soft. Alternatively, you can pressure cook the vegetables at this stage.
3. Strain the water and let cool. Remove the bay leaf, blend the vegetables to a smooth paste and add as much of the strained soup liquid as needed to give it a thick creamy consistency.
5. Pour it back into the pan, adjust the salt and heat through. A dash of cream and a sprinkle of freshly crushed black pepper and it's ready!