Tiranga/Tricolour Pasta-Unity in Diversity

Unity in Diversity

India is the largest country in the world where one can see people belonging to different religion, caste and creed, speaking numerous languages, with a vast array of food habits and diverse culture live together and proudly proclaim themselves as Indians. Each aspect of our lives reflects the expression 'Unity in Diversity' because with all our differences we still stand united.  

This year as India gears up to celebrate its 67th Independence Day, which falls on the 15th of August, I am reminded of the good old school days when Independence Day was a day to reach school on time to be present for the flag hoisting ceremony and participate in the march past, which traditionally is followed by patriotic songs. The beautiful lines of a Bengali song 'Dhono Dhanne Pushpe Bhora' where the lines 'Aamar ei deshe tei jonmo, jeno ei deshetei mori' means that 'I wish that I die in this land where I was born', still echoes in my mind over and over again.
 

As students we would sing our beautiful National Anthem 'Jana Gana Mana' and were taught to give it utmost respect. When it is sung and played in television or radio, it was put very simply by one of our teacher to either stand up in attention while it is playing or just turn off the source (TV or radio) if we were too lazy to stand up and respect it in reverence.

As an adult, I see many of us Indians disrespect our National Anthem. People usually are so casual when it is sung or played. I often see people just sitting, smiling or talking without realising that the minimum requirement of each citizen of this wonderful country is to respect our National Flag and the National Anthem. 

 

Another thing which annoys me is when people ridicule our country. We need to understand that we are not living in a perfect country and no other country is as perfect as we might think them to be. There are issues like poverty, crime and corruption that needs to be dealt with on a consistent basis. I personally believe that if one cannot say good things about their country and have some responsibility towards it sustenance and reformation then they should also not have the right to ridicule or condemn.

These matters might look very trivial but they shape our collective outlook towards our country. We need to individually dig deep inside ourselves and see what we can contribute towards our country. It does not matter if those things are as small as throwing garbage in the bin and not on the streets or as big as having the responsibility to lead the nation in various spectrums of representation or administration. Each and every thought, action and words makes a characteristic difference.

Coming to today's post, I have tried to incorporate three different sauces which represent the colours of our flag and make one dish out of it. A reflection of 'Unity in Diversity'!

Ingredients : For 2-3 servings. I used a 3 1/2" round cookie cutter to set the layers

• 1 cup Pasta- I used Fusilli

Orange layer

• 1/3 piece of a medium sized Red Bell Pepper
• 1 medium sized Tomato
• 1 clove of garlic, chopped
• a tbsp of chopped onion
• 1 tsp Parmesan Cheese
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp of Tomato ketchup
• Olive Oil to saute

 White layer 

• 1/2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup warm milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tsp Parmesan cheese(Alternately use regular processed cheese)

Green layer

• 1/4 cup spinach leaves
• 2-3 sprigs Parsley leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tbsp chopped onions
• salt to taste
• 1 tsp Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil to saute

 

Procedure :

 

Orange (Roasted Bell pepper)sauce

Apply little oil and roast the red bell pepper and tomato on Gas flame till the skin is slightly charred. Alternatively you may even roast them in the oven.

Let it cool slightly and scrape off the skin. 

Grind the roasted red bell pepper and tomato to a fine paste.

Take oil in a pan and saute garlic and onion till onions turn translucent. 

Add the ground red bell pepper and tomato paste.

Cook for a minute and add salt &pepper to taste. 

Mix in tomato ketchup.

Add parmesan cheese and mix well. 

Remove from heat and keep aside.

White (Cheesy)sauce

Take butter in a pan and as it melts add flour. 

Saute the flour a little and add warm milk. Stir well to avoid lump formation.

Season with salt and pepper.

Add cheese and stir. As the sauce thickens, remove from heat and keep aside.

Green (Spinach)sauce

Blanch spinach leaves in boiling water for a minute. Remove from heat and transfer to bowl of cold water to maintain the colour. Grind with parsley leaves to a paste to make a puree.

Take oil in a pan and saute garlic and onion till onions turn pink. 

Add spinach-parsley puree and cook for a minute.

Season with salt and pepper.

Add cheese and stir. 

Remove from heat and keep aside.

Pasta

Take a deep vessel and boil water. 

Add salt and a tsp of olive oil and put the pasta in it. 

Check the pasta for doneness by pinching between your fingers. Take care not to overcook the pasta. This can take anywhere between 5-10 mins depending on the type of pasta you choose.

Drain the water and keep the pasta aside to cool.

Divide the pasta in three batches and add to the prepared sauces. Mix properly so that it gets incorporated well. 

Take a round cookie cutter and spread the green layer of pasta using the back of a spoon. Similarly spread the white and then the orange layer.

Carefully remove the cookie cutter and garnish with Red, yellow and green bell pepper juliennes.

 

 

Happy Independence Day
Amrita

The Ocean Platter for 100th post

As children we always loved to paint and let loose the imagination of our own colourful world. As we grow, often life’s experiences turn those vibrant colours into the various shades of grey. Things were no different when we were children than what they are now. The only difference is the conditioning mindset that has evolved over time to develop a certain perspective or attitude that has made us the way we are today. The good news is that God has given us the ability and power to choose how colourful and vibrant we would want our life to be or become.

Marking the 100^th post of Sweet’n’Savoury’s food blogging journey we let our imagination loose to create, like a painting on canvas, a vibrant and colourful Savoury dish ‘The Ocean Platter’.

Amrita and I had conceptualized this food painting idea many days ago and were working out each element one by one. The dish had to be a colourful savoury with everything on the platter to be natural and edible.  The enormous task in our hand was creating the blue ocean without using any food colour and one that had to be savoury in nature. For many days we just could not think of anything in this world that would give us a blue extract. No food, vegetable or fruits we could think of could come even close. Moreover, the blue colour in the culinary world is considered to be an appetite depressant. This blue didn’t just have to be vibrant to represent the ocean but it had to be savoury enough to give an appetizing outlook to it.

After much brainstorming my Dessert-Queen, Amrita, found out an ingenious way to create the blue savoury sea. Contrary to our assumption, creating the blue ocean was one of the simplest elements in the Ocean Platter.

The Ocean Platter surely does require more refinement and we are hoping to enhance and inculcate more flavours and techniques into it. We hope that our innovation inspire more food enthusiast in the culinary world to experiment an out of the box thinking food grammar and push the food imagination envelope even further.  

For Amrita and me, it has been an incredible food journey on Sweet’n’Savoury where our lives has been so much enriched by the experience, friendship and passion shared by fellow bloggers.   

 

Procedure:
The Ocean Platter can be as versatile as possible as the accompliments can be served outside the presentation.

Try not to disintegrate or de-shell the sea food as the rich red colour that comes from it is absolutely important for presentation. However it is very important to try to slit the shell at the back of the prawns to devein it. You may also just cut off the head of the prawn but leave the overall body and shell intact.

Likewise, you can have the crab cleaned the usual way except for leaving the whole body intact rather than breaking it up. Ensure to reserve the hood of the crab just for presentation.

You may include an assortment of as many sea fishes as you like. Since this was just an experiment I decided to try only three.

You may cook the sea food the way you want. Throwing it in seasoned boiling water is a great way to cook them through and through specially when their entire body in intact. You may season the water with strong spices such as bay leaf, black peppercorns, garlic, etc and herbs such as parsley and chopped onion with salt. Alternately you can also marinate the sea food and pan fry it. 

The sea bed and the sands are crushed bread toast. Using real bread crumbs is more advisable as you can inculcate all types of flavours. 

The tree is the side crust of a regular sliced bread and its branches is the parsley herb. 

The sun ofcourse is the yolk of an egg. 
The green weeds are combo of any salad leaves. I used one called water Ipomia. 

Now for the blue colour- Amrita found an amazing blog by Jojo at http://eyecandy.nanakaze.net where they shared how to extract the savoury blue. It comes from boiling the purple cabbage. and adding baking soda, The amazing thing was the purple cabbage that we boiled directly gave us the blue extract. I did season it with salt but on a test batch I tried to mix in the cornflower to increase the consistency of it. However the brilliant blue became pale blue. On the platter I have reduced the liquid but it still remains a bit running. We shall be working on it to get the right consistency.

Happy Relishing and Seafooding
Vishal & Amrita