Italian food for an Indian apetite

Most of the time I am at a loss while looking up a recipe on internet or cookbook. Either you don’t get the key ingredient at the stores or you don’t eat  them!

The other day I had invited a friend over for lunch and wanted to treat her with Spaghetti Bolognaise. The idea was to make it the way they made it at Fire & Ice, Kolkata, I could get it 70% close.

I always thought the red color in the sauce came in from tomato. Trust me the carrot brings in a new flavor and of course color.

Ingredients

1 packet of Spaghetti

3 medium sized carrots grated

200 gram ground Chicken

2 medium tomato made into a paste

2 medium sized onion grated

1 small celery stick grated

2 tsp black pepper

100 ml chicken broth

Cooking Oil ( Olive oil preferred) 2 tabsp

Cooking butter 20 gms

50 gms cheese grated *

1 tbsp Whipped cream  *

Red wine ( Optional)

Salt to taste.

Cooking

Heat cooking oil & butter in a wide based pan with a glass lid. Add the onion, tomato paste and sauté for a minute, add in the grated carrot and celery. Thoroughly mix and cover it with the lid and put it on slow heat. Carrot is tough to soften hence have patience, you can come back every 3 minutes and check. On slow heat it will take 10 to 15 minutes to soften and turn into a pulp.

In a large vessel heat salt water and place the spaghetti sticks. The sticks will slowly soften at the bottom and fit into the vessel. Boil for 10 minutes ( or as per instruction on the pack), once soft, drain and set aside. You can also spray some oil on the spaghetti so that they dont stick. 

Once the carrots are pulpy, add the ground chicken (make sure you have drained out the last drop of water from the chicken.) Mix thoroughly and cook it on high heat for 10 minutes with constant stirring. Add in the chicken stock, black pepper, and cheese and wine mix well in slow heat for 5 minutes and add salt to taste.

Mix in the boiled spaghetti into the sauce, serve hot.

Note: *

Cheese: The ones available in the stores are either Britannia Cheese Singles, or Amul Cheese or Mozzarella cheese. I refer Happy Cow cubes.

Whipped cream from Amul or any locally available ones packed as perishables, Nilgiris sells good whipped cream.