Culinary Chemistry

I met Sytle when I was working in Los Alamos, New Mexico. She had come for a couple of day’s experiment time there and right from the beginning we hit off very well. We spent a very nice afternoon wandering in the Los Alamos downtown (which is actually only two streets!) and then I cooked her a south Indian dinner. So the conversation drifted to international cuisine and that is when she gave me this fantastic recipe for marinara sauce. Till then I had regarded ‘Marinara’ as an exotic store bought sauce,but with her recipe I realized that it was unbelievably easy to make!!!. Even now three years later, I still make this sauce whenever I have ripe tomatoes in my fridge and marvel at its tasty simplicity.

Anyway, the other day after making the sauce, I found some spahgetti and soya-chunks.in my pantry, so voila I made of the vegetarian version of sphagetti and meat balls !!

cook the Sphagetti as per the package directions in salted water. Drain when it is al dente and run it under cold water.

Here goes the recipe:

Sytle’s Marinara sauce:

Serves four

Ingredients

5-6 roughly chopped tomatoes

One big onion

5-7 garlic cloves

1 bunch of basil- roughly chopped

A few chopped parsley leaves

1-2 tsp red pepper flakes

1-2 maggi veggi cubes

10-15 soya chunks

Olive oil

salt and pepper

Method

Soak the Soya chunks in hot water.Fry the onion and garlic in olive oil until transparent and add the roughly chopped tomatoes and half of the chopped basil. Cool and blend the mixture into a coarse paste. Simmer this paste in a wok for about half an hour. Add the maggi cubes for more flavor. Season with salt,pepper and red pepper flakes.Turn off the stove once the consistency of the sauce becomes thick. Add the soya chunks and garnish with chopped basil and parsley.

Stir in the sphagetti and mix with the sauce. I like it saucy and so I used less sphagetti but you can add more.

Tips:

Some goat cheese can be added to the sphagetti mixture and melted on the stove or in the oven