Italian Musicman Rice

Its been a while since I wrote anything here eh?
Tonight however, I could not resist!!
I have invented a new recipe and well, my mom and dad loved it...but you can't always count on folks for a realistic review (Actually my dad you can...but that's a different story :)...but I thought that maybe you could try it yourself and tell me what you think as well)

I choose to call the thing Italian Musicman Rice (Keeping the brand name alive everywhere, I am:)
Heh.

Well here's how it came about (A bit of history and the reason why this dish was invented.)
Like many of you out there, I didn't like a thing made at dinner tonight...and I thought I'd go to bed with just a bit of water and some biscuits. Well that was at 10pm :) and it's about 12:30 right now and I'm still up and just like any other growing boy I got hungry. It is most often at such hungry moments that inspiration chooses to strike me and tonight it did :)

I brought myself to the fridge and saw my options. There was some rice, some boiled potatoes and a mashed potato spicy mix (Made to be put inside parathas or sandwiches).
I knew that these were to be my chief ingredients. I had just bought myself a jar of Italian herbs and spices (Always great to have in the kitchen). (Mix of oregano, basil, sage, rosemary, thyme and marjolaine...simply brilliant stuff. Twas a Forelli bottle that I picked up from the local dollar store as they are called for just 99rs. Fab stuff indeed.)
But as always, I digress. The food. Ah...well...here's what I did.

I took me a saucepan (Handed to me by a perplexed mom to be precise) and put some olive oil in it (Always good to use olive oil. you can't make Italian stuff without olive oil...I mean come on...you've gotta think of them 'talians. They'd be offended if we used groundnut or some other such oil).
Right then. Olive oil...let it heat...put in some garlic and chilli paste and let it just heat up a bit.
Then add the mashed potatos (Which basically had a bit of salt, more of the garlic and chilly paste and some coriander in it to begin with) and let em cook a bit.
Now add the spices (Italian herbs) generously and mix em well.
Take a couple of cheese slices and put em in. Mix em till they melt.
Put a bit of butter for fun :)
Add some chopped green olives (Fab taste at the end. Gives the tang you need with the rice and chillis)
And mix this thing well.
Now the finale,
Add the rice (Steamed rice obviously. For god's sake don't put uncooked rice...you'll get some crazy thing and mail me and curse me. So yes. Steamed rice)

And mix it all. Let it heat up just a wee bit (Basically because, most of the stuff came out straight out of the fridge :)
Right...serve on a plate and voila!!
Italian Musicman Rice is ready!!! :)


Mmmmmmmm just back from eating this.
So...what do you think? Lemme know!

Pasta Musicman

Here's a simple thing to cook.

Stuff you'll need:
Olive Oil
Chopped garlic and chilli paste
Finely chopped onions (about 6 medium sizes onions)
Mushrooms cut in half and nicely washed (You can either precook them in a cooker or cook em in the pan like I'm going to) (get about two boxes of button mushrooms)
Tomatoes chopped really small (not pureed...chopped is better) (About one kg of tomatos ...thats about 12 tomatoes depending on the size)
Olives sliced thin. (as many as you want)
Spices : Oregano, Pizza Masala(you get these nifty bottled spices which have a whole bunch of spices like rosemary, thyme, basil etc in it), Black pepper
Salt
Cooked pasta (Spaghetti, Fusilli, Penne, Tagliatelle, Fettucini etc. Personally I think Penne or Fettucini or Spaghetti would be good for this sauce). Cooking a pasta is simple. Just take a tall utensil, boil some water in it, put a bit of salt in it...and put your pasta in the boiling water.
It takes about 10-12 minutes to properly cook.
The way to know that its cooked properly (and not too less or too much) is to periodically take out a strand after a while and checking it out. If you bite it and the inner part is still raw...it ain't cooked. Let it cook a bit more. The moment you find that its cooked turn off the heat and strain it with a big strainer so that the water goes out and you've got cooked pasta in a bowl.
(I generally add some oregano in the water too, gives the pasta a nice flavour)


Take some olive oil (or any other oil but I've seen that olive oil gives great flavour) and put it in a pan.
Fry the garlic and chillis in this, and then add the onions. Fry em till they're almost transparent.
Then add the washed mushrooms. Add a whole lotta pepper (as much as you like) and salt and a lot of your spices on the mushroom. You really want the mushroom to take in the flavours.
Cover the pan once you've shaken the mushrooms properly so that all the spices are on them.
It takes the mushrooms about 15 minutes to cook properly. What I mean is they should be easy to poke with a fork once they are cooked. They release a lot of the water that they're washed in and the cook in that...so just let em be for a while. Keep checking every now and then though.
Then add the chopped tomatos. Now the idea of using chopped tomatos and not pureed is simple. The chopped pieces really absorb the spices brilliantly and they taste incredible with the pasta.
Put some more spices on the tomatos. The spices like I've mentioned about are taste spices...and they don't really make your food hot (I mean spicy hot)...they just give a brilliant flavour.
Anyway...let the sauce cook for a bit now.
You can use a Pav-Bhaji masher and mash the tomatos in a bit. Make em softer and more gravy like.
Add the green olives now...and let em mix in with the gravy.
Add some water and let the whole thing cook till its a nice thick gravy.
But not too thick mind you. You want it to be able to nicely flow on your pasta.

Take the cooked pasta, place it on a plate...make a small hole in the middle and pour the sauce in it. I like pasta this way...rather than mixing it with the sauce. It looks awesome. I think I have a picture of it somewhere. Lemme see if I can put it in.
Okay I think its in. I was having mountain dew with my pasta. I have no idea why its looking orange in that pic...but it goes great with pasta.

Right then! Its done!
Excellent pasta done...Musicman style! :)

Try it out and tell me what you think.
Thats all guys...till I think of something next!

Cooking!

I love to cook!
Hot damn! I love to cook! :)
Isn't there just something perfectly awesome about cooking a meal? I love cooking pastas and new stuff. My own inventions.
I can cook a complete Indian meal too by the way. Roti, sabji, dal and rice. I can also make really good dosas. (Sometimes with my own innovations. Pasta sauce dosa, oregano dosa, paprika and chaat masala dosa etc)
But what I love to cook most is pastas.

For all the guys reading this, if you're thinking that cooking is such a wussy/womanly thing, you are so wrong. Trust me, the woman in your life will love a good meal made by you more than anything else you could do.
So yeah...whether you're a guy or a girl...good cooking is always fun. And like I said, I love cooking.
What I'm going to do here is, I'm going to share some of my innovations and ideas with you.
If you try em out...do let me know how you found em!

Oh yeah, also wanted to say that if you've got any interesting vegetarian recipes you want me to try out, email them to me at musicmanmihir@gmail.com and if I like it I'll put it up here as well!