Homemade corn, paneer and two cheese lasagna

 INGREDIENTS

For the sauce:

8 - 10 large tomatoes - diced
8 - 10 garlic cloves
1 large onion - diced
Salt to taste
8 - 10 Green olives (optional)
Pepper as per taste (can add green chillies also)
Butter - 3 tbsp

To make sauce:

Add the butter to a pan. When the butter melts, add the diced onion and crushed garlic. Fry until brown. Add chopped tomatoes, and salt. Add pepper and green chillies too. Cook until tomatoes are well cooked. Add the olives and switch off the stove. No need to cook the olives too much if you are adding them. After this mixture has cooled down, grind into a fine paste - you can coarse grind it if you like to feel the texture on the veggies added.

For the lasagna:

Pasta sauce (recipe above)
Sweet corn - 3 cups
Paneer - 3 cups
Cheddar cheese - 200 gm (can add more if needed) - grated
Mozarella cheese - 200 gm (can add more if needed) - grated
Oven Ready Lasagna strips (can use the normal strips also, just cook them prior to making the lasagna as per instructions on the box) - 8 - 10 strips (bigger dishes might need more strips)

Take a large baking dish. Apply some butter to the bottom and sides - to avoid the lasagna from sticking and also helps the lower layers to cook well.

Pre-heat the oven to the lowest setting - mine is 200°C. Since all the ingredients are cooked, there is no need to cook much on high heat.

Pour a thin layer of sauce. Place 2 lasagna strips next to each other. My dish holds 2 strips - you can place more if your dish is bigger.
Make layers of the given ingredients as below:
- Spread corn and paneer
- Pour and spread sauce
- Spread some cheese
- Place lasagna strips on top
Repear this until the dish is 3/4 covered.

On the topmost layer, after placing the lasagna strips, spread the rest of the corn, paneer and sauce until empty. Spread the rest of the cheese generously. This forms a cheesy layer on top when baked.

Place the dish in the oven. PLEASE USE OVEN MITTS for safety. Oven will be super hot even at the lowest setting. Bake for 15 mins or until the cheese on top melts and forms a yummylicious looking layer as in pic.

Switch off the oven and leave the dish in there for another 2 - 3 mins for the layer to set. DO NOT remove immediately after switching off, because if the cheese is bubbling, it might spring out on your hands and burn you.

Tukdi (Shankarpule - Namakpare) from leftover maida dough

Ever had tukdi or namakpare... awesome melt-in-the-mouth experience !! I love this snack and I buy and eat it every time I go to Mangalore. BTW, ever had some leftover maida dough when you finished making obbattu / holige / puran polis ? Wondering whats the link... There is but only one connection :) I just prepared some tukdi from the leftover poli maida dough and they turned out amazing !! I just loved them and the kids just couldn't have enough.

Palak Paneer

A simple, but beautiful dish in terms of flavor. Quite rich in taste and creamy in texture... almost melts in your mouth :)


Wonderful side dish to have with either rotis or chapatis... goes well with rice too :)


Enough with the riddled sentences ?? Yes, the dish is palak paneer, made with pureed cooked spinach and cubed indian cottage cheese.

Jeera-Pepper Tambuli (jeer-meerya tambuli)

Keep cool in this hot weather with this amazing dish.

I am suffering from cold and cough lately and the cold is the kind that you get from excessively hot and humid weather. Also, I was alone this weekend and in need of some serious pampering - so I thought I will cook myself some good food and get rid of my cold :P

The best internal cooling for the body is either by a glass of buttermilk or this "sorta" cold soup. Its a famous Konkani dish. Its eaten raw (uncooked) and the ingredients are mostly healthy spices which help to keep your body cool and also aid in digestion. So theres your two reasons to try this dish out :)

Beans Upkari

Beans Upkari is a very simple dish, which gets ready in like 15 mins or so and is a very delicious dish (for people who love beans that is). It is prepared by tempering the green beans and cooking them just tender enough to leave them crunchy and then topping them off with grated coconut.

We konkani people are always accused of using a lot of coconut, but what can we do... our tongues have gotten used to that flavor and we just cannot get enff of it :) We LOVE coconut !! and use it in almost every dish that we make, either grind it for the masala gravy or top it off like garnish !! Beans upkari is my sister's favorite dish and she likes it with potatoes added.

Beans SagLe

SagLe in konkani means "whole" as in we add larger pieces of veggies to this dish than we do in other dishes. I guess we are supposed to add the veggies as a whole, but I guess over time it has evolved into using larger pieces - keeping in mind the amount of time it would actually take to cook the whole veggies.

Whenever I make this dish, my friends in the US relish it a lot. This dish can be prepared with a variety of vegetables: eggplant, beans, okra are some of the commonly used ones. This dish has a strong coconutty flavor, but it is not that of raw coconuts and is also masked a bit by the spices used in the dish. So, if you are the kind who does not like coconut-based dishes, you should still try it once.. you might just end up liking it.

Badnekayi Palya

Just love this karnataka style dish, for its simplicity and mouth-watering flavors. I hate capsicum (green peppers) in almost everything else, except for this dish. I just love the twist it gives to this dish and how it enhances the flavors.

Whenever I prepare this dish, I feel like eating Akki rotti along with it - the kind they make by pre-cooking the rice flour and rolling it out into chapathis. I absolutely love the combination - you should try it sometime :D

Simple DaaLithoy (Konkani style daal)

I am absolutely positive that most of the Konkani people know how to prepare this. But I just wanted to put up the recipe for non-konkani people just to say its the simplest kind of daal ever. You dont have to cut onions or tomatoes or even garlic and it still tastes yummy (not to generalize but well, atleast all konkani people are in love with it).

This daal can be made into either thick consistency or thin consistency and I used to love the thicker version of it and my sister used to love the thinner version of it. As usual, like I have mentioned so many times, me and my sister are like this (X): total opposites !! Anyways, we still used to enjoy the dish so much and even now I eat it like plain lentil soup. Just cannot get enough of it - EVER !!

Medu Vada

Medu Vada, meaning soft vadas, are a very famous snack / breakfast item in South India. They are generally served as a side item with Idlis / Dosas with either chutney or sambar. Generally people eat a single medu vada with a heavy breakfast and still crave for more :)

Medu vadas are soft inside and crispy on the outside when they are hot. They are super yummy and you cannot just have one :) Here is my recipe for medu vadas. I used to hate idlis back in India. So if we went to a hotel for breakfast, everyone used to order idlis with one vada each and I would get 2 vadas and skip the idlis altogether :P I just love medu vadas.

Bellam Gaarelu !!

Heres for all of you a popular Deepavali dish from South India, mainly from Andhra Pradesh state. Its called Bellam Gaarelu - literally meaning jaggery vadas. They are made by soaking and grinding urdh daal, making vadas from them and soaking them in jaggery syrup to get mouth-watering bellam gaarelu.

The recipe is from a close friend of mine who hails from Andhra Pradesh, and traditionally for Deepavali, his mom makes these mouth-watering gaarelu every year.

Making Ghee

Most people I know today do not know how ghee is made from butter. It is a very simple process where large amounts of butter is heated continuously until a clear liquid is obtained and the solids separate out from it.

The process of making ghee takes me back to my childhood days when the aroma of fresh ghee used to fill the house every Friday morning. My mom used to make fresh ghee for the diyas (oil lamps) on Fridays. She used to light ghee lamps on every Friday. She never used the old batch of ghee because it was already used by us for cooking / eating.

Andhra Cauliflower Pickle

I am sure most of you foodies out there know that Andhra Pradesh is famous for its vast variety of pickles, both the ones that can be stored for years and the ones that can be eaten instantly. This recipe for cauliflower pickle is the sort which can be eaten instantly and cannot be stored for long periods of time. One of my close friends loves this pickle and I always make it especially for her. It only requires like 30 mins of your time, including cutting the cauliflower :) Its quick and quite yummy, but also very spicy. So do try it at home, if it appeals to your taste buds :)

Panpolo / Neer Dosa

Panpolo or Neer dosa is a very common breakfast dosa in a konkaNi household. Neer - meaning water in kannada - is a main constituent of this dosa along with soaked rice. The consistency of this dosa is also watery, which is why the name probably. In konkaNi, I think it associates with Paani (water) polo (dosa). However, this is just a guess :) There are several versions of this dosa, with coconut, cucumber, magge (mangalore cucumber / melon), water melon peel etc., I love all these versions, but they all have distinct flavors and I think they are all acquired tastes.