Macaroni & Cottage Cheese Casserole

             

Macroni and Cottage Cheese Casserole is one of the easiest and yummiest Italian dish you wil ever have.. Layers of cottage cheese, marinara sauce and macroni makes it very enticing and drool worthy.. I have always made mac and cheese, slow cooker macroni and my mom's instant no bake macroni with veggies and cheese (this being one of the favourites in my home, recipes of which i would be sharing shortly in future), I was skeptikal if this version of macroni would be attested by my family or not, but as i loved cottage cheese, macroni and also the cheese, all three equally, I had to try this out atleast for my sake.. And im glad I did.. This MCCC didnt let me down.. In one bite, I could feel the firmness of macroni, the softness of cottage cheese and juicy marinara sauce imparting flavors to the dish overall, this has become a hit with my family..

Ingredients:

200gms cottage cheese sliced thin

1 cup macroni boiled in salted water

2-3 cubes cheese

For marinara sauce:

2tbsp olive oil

6-7 tomatoes blanched and peeled

1 onion chopped

1/2 capsicum chopped

3-4 cloves garlic chopped

Salt

1tbsp ketchup

2tsp red chilli powder / chilli flakes

1tsp mixed herbs

Method: Heat olive oil in a pan.. Add onion and garlic and saute till translucent.. Add in capsicum and saute for another minute.. Meanwhile puree the tomatoes coarsely.. Add this to the pan along with all the spices.. Cook on low flame for about 5-7 minutes till you achieve a thick consistency of the sauce.. Remove from flame and keep aside.. Now take a baking dish and spread some marinara sauce at the bottom.. Spread a layer of cottage cheese.. Top it with marinara sauce.. Arrange a layer of macroni and again cover with marinara sauce... Add another layer of cottage cheese and spread the leftover marinara sauce.. Grate cheese on top and bake in preheated oven at 180c for around 20-25mins till cheese melts and starts browning.. Serve hot..

 After this add a layer of macroni and the sauce again.. Forgot to click a picture of the same.. Would upload it next time.. 

Vegetable Tempura

                

Tempura is a Japanese dish , in which vegetables are coated in batter and deep fried till golden in color.. Basically tempura is nothing but Japanese Style Pakodas.. The first time I had these Japanese tempuras was in one of the restaurants "Mekong" which serves pan-asian delicacies.. We ordered these tempuras for starters which were served with a Japanese dip known by the same name ie Tempura Sauce .. There were other dips too along with the main one placed on our table, which complimented the tempuras really well.. These tempuras were light, airy, fluffy and crisp at the same time.. These can be made with any vegetable available to you..

                The main component of this dish is the batter that is made.. It is a light and airy batter made of flour and ice cold soda water.. The use of soda water is very important in making of the batter.. It makes the tempuras  fluffy and light... And the cold temperature of batter is essential for making tempuras crisp and prevent the batter  from absorbing too much oil.. Make the batter right at the time of frying tempuras and not before.. And most important is to not overmix the batter.. After adding the soda water to the flour, just mix lightly with the help of a fork.. A little lump here and there is absolutely fine.. If you overmix the batter, the tempuras would turn out dense and heavy, and that is not what we want..

                Here I have used the vegetables that i had handy.. You can use any vegetable you like such as mushroom, zucchini, eggplant, broccoli etc etc.. I loved all the vegetables except for cauliflower.. They became soggy after sometime, while all other vegetable tempuras were crisp even after half an hour of frying.. Might be coz cauliflower had retained water in them.. So make sure you drain the water out of the vegetables really well after blanching, so that they dont turn soggy fast..  To serve with these tempuras i made a dip of soya, ginger and dash of balsamic vinegar.. It paired really well the tempuras..

Ingredients:

1 carrot

8-10 french beans trimmed

1 potato

1 capsicum

4-5 florets cauliflower

For the batter:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup rice flour

2 cups ice cold soda water

Salt

Black Pepper

For the soya ginger dip:

1/2 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp grated ginger

1/4 tsp sesame oil

2tbsp soya sauce

1tbsp balsamic vinegar

Method: Mix all ingredients of Soya Ginger Dip and keep aside for around 20mins for the flavors to blend.. Cut carrot, potato, capsicum in long thin strips and blanch all the vegetables (except capsicum) in boiling water for 5mins.. You can par boil the potato strips.. Drain the vegetables and keep aside.. Mix all the ingredients of batter.. Coat the vegetables in batter and deep fry in hot oil till light golden in color..Do not fry for long.. Make sure you fry 4-5 tempuras at a time and not more.. Because the ice cold batter will get the temperature of oil down.. And hotter the oil, the tempuras will be less oily.. The vegetables are already blanched, so only the batter needs to be cooked from outside in hot oil and not the insides of tempura.. So you will not want to fry for long.. Remove on absorbent paper and serve with soya ginger dip..

Note : Make sure you use ice cold soda water.. I even kept my veggies in fridge for sometime after blanching, as i had some time in hand for frying.. 

Mix all ingredients of dip and keep aside

Cut the vegetables in strips and blanch them

Mix all ingredients of batter and deep fry the vegetables