Fish with Sweet Corn Sabayon and Vegetable Stuffed Mini Pasta Shells

             Whenever I eat Italian ravioli (or Russian pelmeni, or Chinese sui mai) my husband makes fun of me because I have a habit of leaving “the edges” on the plate: using a sharp knife, I meticulously cut them off before putting the actual filling with a small piece of dough into my mouth. Even if it comes to homemade ravioli which I make with the thinnest and narrowest edges one can imagine, I still leave them on the bottom of my plate!

            No surprise, when I recently saw a picture of stuffed pasta shells (conchiglioni) in one cooking magazine, I realized that it’s just the perfect alternative of normal ravioli for me: only a thin layer of dough that encloses the stuffing – and no edges whatsoever! The problem is, you can’t get this type of Italian pasta in Kolkata (at least, I’ve never seen it here). The only thing I found in my kitchen cupboard was a pack of mini pasta shells (they are, probably, seven times as little as conchiglioni). Let’s face it: they are not meant for being stuffed! But I can be really stubborn when it comes to bringing my crazy cooking ideas into life. So, having prepared the finest brunoise of my vegetables, I managed to put half a teaspoon of the stuffing into each tiny shell. Yes, it took me quite a while to prepare a few portions (I invited our friends to estimate the results of my cooking experiment) – but it was worth the efforts! I served the shells with fish and sweet corn sabayon (the sauce that I wanted to try to make for a long time) and the whole dish was given the thumbs up!

Corn and Ricotta Cakes

        I love those mornings when you don’t have to wake up early (well, who doesn’t like them?). If it’s a weekend morning, I really don’t mind getting into the kitchen and cooking something special. But if it’s one of the weekdays (yes, I’m lucky enough to have an opportunity to sleep late in the middle of the week) I feel somehow lazy to prepare a complicated breakfast – and usually I don’t have to, since I cook something in the evening so that that the following day my husband (who still has to face a necessity of being waken up by an alarm clock) can just pop a plate into a microwave oven before he heads to work. Of course, I normally make two place of something nice – the second one being meant for me, so in the morning I can bother only with making a cup of coffee. One of my favourite options of such premade breakfasts is corn and ricotta fritters. As I’m making them a day before, I’m salivating. I look forward to the next morning when after a few rounds of suria namaskar and a refreshing shower afterwards I award myself with this treat. What a great start of a day!

Brazilian Chicken Pie

       

        

        There was this episode in TopChef that threw the contestants into an elimination challenge where they had to cater for a diplomatic event. Each of the chefs had to represent a traditional cuisine of a certain country (which was determined by the draw) and one of the participants got confused when he had got Brazil. At that point I questioned myself what do I know about Brazilian cuisine? Frankly speaking, absolutely nothing. During my not so long-term culinary journey I came across only one recipe of a dish that claimed to be Brazilian. Although, I somehow doubt it that it’s a truly authentic dish often cooked in the houses somewhere in Rio de Janeiro or San Paolo, nothing to say of the rural areas of the country. I guess when I eventually meet someone from Brazil, my first question will be about this pie (ok, it will be the second question, right after the one about the national obsession with several-hundred-episode TV series). 

Beetroot Soup with Coconut Milk

         

     

         Last year after vocation spent in Moscow I eventually brought my blender here, to India. Immediately I developed a mania to blend all possible and impossible things and, as you may guess, creamed soups were often on a menu in our house. It was then that I remembered about a beetroot soup I’d once tried to make a year before during the Lent (I got the recipe from a website featuring vegan food). I was impressed by the flavors and an interesting, really unusual combination of beets and coconut milk but chunky vegetables in the stew made it more like “I’ll probably (rather than certainly) make it again” type of a dish. But since I had eventually got that necessary piece of equipment in my Kolkata kitchen, I decided to give the soup another try and to blend it! And oh….that was a vivid (bright-pinkish) example of how a texture can change the whole dish!

So, go ahead – indulge! Even if the whole place will look like a Barbie house (with funny pink slashes on the tables/stove/sink/wall) you won’t regret it – the soup is really worth it!