Pasta - Creamy, spicy and of course cheesy.. At Home!

Here is a simple, quick and easy method to do some amazing and authentic pasta at home.

I use :

- Delmonte penne pasta
- Pasta sauce
- Veggies
- Cream and Cheese
- Olive oil and Chilli flakes (optional)

Simply boil the pasta with some salt and oil, so they do not stick to each other.
When 'al-dente' i.e. almost done - strain and run under cold water. You do not want the pasta to keep cooking in the residual heat. I add some whole spinach leaves in the boiling water too. Hey, I want my greens! You can skip it totally.

In a pan, heat some oil(olive oil preferred) and add some crushed garlic, chilli flakes and 2-3 table spoons of the pasta sauce. Add finely chopped veggies (onion, broccolli/cauliflower, olives(black/green) and bell pepper (red/yellow,green)) and saute till the oil leaves the mixture. Add the pasta/spinach and mix salt as per taste. Add some fresh cream to make it creamier and moist.

I usually grate some mozarella cheese on the pasta and put it in the oven for a few minutes for the cheese to just melt a bit.

Garlic bread goes great with pasta, so you could just fix some to go with it.
Take a pan, heat it, add butter, a few flakes of crushed garlic and just sponge in two slices of bread and let it rest till it gets brown.

There you have it .. Pasta and garlic bread ..
Makes a quick and interesting dinner ..

Lazy weekend breakfast? Head to Ants Cafe..

There a few popular breakfast places in Bangalore and I plan to tick all of them in my list someday and I started off with the one nearest to my place - Ants cafe.

Was meeting a friend who was visiting India after completing her MS and this was a great place to have some great breakfast and some catching up on whats been happening in the past year and a half.

Seating is upstairs and there are some tables on the balcony with plenty of sunshine around, so it wakes you up.

They have some breakfast platters and I ordered the Ham basket, while my friend ordered a masala omelet. We also ordered a chicken wings too.

The Ham basket is essentially mushroom and onions sauteed and poured into a small basket made by Ham strips. An egg is dropped into this basket and the whole thing once baked for a couple of mins, sets the egg and binds the whole thing together. It was a nice sight and tasted amazing too. You also get toast, jam,butter and some basked beans. Juice/tea/coffee to wash it down..

The omelet was big, fluffy and stuffed with goodies. Came with toast too.

The chicken wings - they were to lovely.
Juicy with a crisp outer covering and tossed in some beautiful hot and sour sauce, served with a little salad.

This was too much food for the two of us. But we managed to get through most of it over an hour.

They have an interesting menu and can be tried for any other meal of the day.

The meal cost us ~800/-

Head there for a breakfast and forget lunch for the day. :-)

Chianti - Gourmet Italian food, anyone?

Chianti is the name of the wine valley in Italy and this is also the name of the new restaurant that we visited one chilly evening in December.

We visited the one in Koramangala. It has a nice cosy setting with lot of woodwork - warm and inviting.

For starters we ordered a creamy mushroom soup and a very interesting starter!














They very fine eggplant rolls stuffed with goat cheese, sundried tomatoes and sage leaves. Beautiful creamy stuffing rolled in finely cut slices of eggplant and baked. With a lettuce salad on the side.

 Here's a close-up of the goat cheese stuffing :-)










They were heavenly and the soup was very comforting. They also serve some freshly baked warm bread with a herb butter to go along.















For the mains we ordered a wood fired pizza with roasted chicken, onion and mushroom. This was very good too - thin base, fresh toppings and just the right amount of cheese. Enjoyed having it.




There was a decent choice of wines too but we did not try them that day.

They also have a large selection of pastas, risottos and pizzas, so a visit could be both pleasant and fulfilling.


The meal cost us ~1200/- which was slightly on the expensive side. They have valet parking too in case you are having trouble finding a parking spot on the busy 5th Main road of Koramangala.