Mixing it with yogurt is perfect for summer, when you don’t feel like eating anything heavy. This pasta with yogurt will be a great alternative to other pasta dishes on hot days. A bowl of pasta with yogurt and a bowl of fresh salad make a fantastic lunch or dinner. Try it!

Pour water in a pot and boil. Throw homemade pasta into it when it boils.

Boil pasta until tender about 10-15 minutes.

Drain pasta. Wash it with some cold water to remove its heat and drain.

Transfer pasta into a large pot. Add salt and yogurt and mix them. Wait in refrigerator for some minutes.

Serve it in small bowls and sprinkle a pinch of mint and chili pepper on each.

To make it healthier, I used tagliatella girata with bran in this recipe. You can replace it with your favorite pasta. I didn’t add salt to the sauce as our sun-dried tomatoes are salty enough.

Soak sun-dried tomatoes in hot water and wait about 10 minutes and drain and chop.

Boil pasta with salt and olive oil following the instructions on the package. Drain well and let it cold.

To prepare the sauce, heat olive oil and add spices at this step so that olive oil gets their aroma. Add sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, stir. After 5 minutes, toss in pasta and combine them well. Cook for a few minutes and take

it from fire. Add half of fresh mint at this step so that its fragrance can pass on pasta when it’s still hot.

Serve with more fresh mint on pasta. You can pair it with fresh salad and yogurt.

Do you remember the boiled borek I wrote about some time ago? This pasta was made with the dough left from that borek. It was of course mom’s suggestion to make this pasta. I don’t know what I would do with that dough. In this way I learnt two recipes at the same time with the same dough. I rolled it out and cut it into stripes. I sprinkled some flour on the stripes so that they wouldn’t stick back and let them dry. After some hours, I made a pasta with walnuts, cheese and fresh basil for dinner.

As this pasta contains milk, eggs and flour in its dough, it is highly nutritive. Butter, cheese, walnut and fresh basil not only increase its nutrition value but they also make it more delicious.
I learnt that making pasta is not as hard as most people think. Besides, knowing that you create something from scratch makes it more valuable. Homemade foods are always more healthy and more yummy. I wish I could grow my own vegetable and fruits.

Ev Makarnası
Ingredients
For dough:
-    6 cups flour
-    1 ½ cup milk
-    3 eggs
-    1 tsp salt

You get a big dough with these measurements and it may be too much for you. As it’s traditional here to make pasta as a preparation for Winter, we generally use big measurements, make it once before Winter and it’s like a life saver in Winter days when you have little time after work. So you can reduce these measurements if you are not planning to keep it for Winter.

Mix all the ingredients here and make a not very soft dough. Divide it into balls. Roll them out and cut them into long stripes. Put these stripes one on the top of other. And cut them in short stripes. Them put them in an oven tray and dry them in oven at 180C for about 15 minutes. Then you can keep them in glass jars or cloth bags and use how much you want when necessary.

Peynirli Cevizli Fesleğenli Makarna
Ingredients for pasta with cheese walnut and fresh basil
-    2 cups homemade pasta
-    water
-    1 tbsp butter
-    ½ tsp salt
-    1tsp olive oil
-    50g cheese of your choice (I used Turkish white cheese)
-    50g walnut
-    Fresh basil

Heat the water in a pot and when it boils add homemade pasta, salt and olive oil. When pasta is cooked after about 8 minutes, drain the extra water.
Melt butter in a pot, add the boiled pasta and stir. Serve it with walnut, cheese and basil leaves. I put them on the top, but you can mix all these in the pot and then serve.

As we are in Winter break here, I don’t need to go to school everyday.  I didn’t want to wake up early yesterday morning, in fact I didn’t want to get out of the bed eventhough I woke up. It was great to know that it was Monday but there was no work.  After lingering over breakfast, I decided to do some house chores and to change the planning of some rooms. I feel refreshed whenever I make some “restoration” inside the house by changing the places of the coach, armchairs, bookcases (we have 6 big bookcases), and the other portable things in the house. It’s like moving to a new house, so whenever I get bored, I do it at least once a year as I do love renewals. Of course I wasn’t alone while doing these, I could have never managed all these without the help of my hubby.

When I was having a cup of Turkish coffee to take a rest, I realized that the dinner time was coming. And guess what? I remembered that we had invited two friends for dinner. “What are we going to cook?” was the question I repeated a hundred times. And hubby offered his practical proposal: Pasta in Oven. Yep! It was a great idea because it was easy and scrumptious. I have never met anybody refusing pasta no matter how it is cooked. However, when cooked in oven, pasta becomes more special with its irresistible look. It looks like a kind of borek, doesn’t it?

Our friends were happy to see the new planning in our house and feel the wonderful smell of  pasta coming from the kitchen. It was ready when they came, but we needed some fresh salad to serve. We always love to work with our guests in the kitchen, so I didn’t refuse their proposal for help and  put the necessary ingredients for a salad on the counter. Hubby served us red wine as he knew how to motivate us to work. After a very short time, our dinner was ready with a great trio: Pasta in oven, green salad and red wine.

Fırında Makarna
Ingredients:
-    ½  package of pasta (I used bucatini, thick spaghetti)
-    1 cup feta cheese
-    3 eggs
-    2 ½ cup milk
-    3 tbsp olive oil
-    3 tbsp flour
-    1 cup chopped parsley
-    1 cup grated kasar cheese (yellow cheese), for its top
-    Salt
-    Black pepper

Heat water in a large pot. When it boils, put the pasta in the pot, add a few drops olive oil, this will prevent the  bucatini sticks(?) from sticking to each other. And boil it for 10 minutes. Takeit from fire, put it under cold water and drain. Put it in an oven tray, add crumbled feta cheese with parsley and mix them.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Mix milk, flour, egg, olive oil, salt and black pepper together until smooth. Seperate a little of this mixture aside and pour the rest on pasta and mix. Spread the seperated milk mixture on its top. Cook it in oven for about 30 minutes. Then take it out and put the grated  kasar cheese evenly on the pasta. Put it back into the oven and cook it until the cheese melts (about 5-7 min). Serve it cutting in squares.

]]> http://www.giverecipe.com/pasta-in-oven.html/feed 18 http://www.giverecipe.com/pasta-with-red-hood.html http://www.giverecipe.com/pasta-with-red-hood.html#comments Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:56:06 +0000 Zerrin http://www.giverecipe.com/?p=355

I came home late from work today, I was so hungry, so I had a look at my recipe notebook to find a simple but delicious dish. After passing a lot of pages, eventually it was in front of me. Last month I took this recipe from Semra, my close friend. She cooked it for us and I loved it. Without wasting any time, I wrote this easy recipe. Generally I cook pasta with just tomato paste or cheese or yogurt, but this one is the most tasty one for me. I don’t know if Italians make it in this way.

And I give it this name beacuse when I look at its photo, just the association of Red Riding Hood came to my mind.

Kirmizi Baslikli Makarna

Ingredients
•    2 cups pasta
•    3 tomatoes, grated
•    2 green peppers, diced
•    1 red bell pepper, diced
•    2 cloves garlic, sliced
•    1 onion, diced
•    1 tsp thyme
•    1 tsp black pepper
•    2 tsp salt
•    3 tbsp olive oil
•    Tomato paste

Put some water in a pot and bring it to boil. Then add two cups of pasta in the pot. Put a few drops of olive oil to prevent the pieces of pasta from sticking to each other and add salt. Boil it until tender ( about 7 or 8 minutes). Then drain it.

While it’s boiling, you can prepare the sauce in another pot. Put olive ol in it and saute onion, then peppers and finally add grated tomato in the pot. Stir for a while and add tomato paste and garlic. If you think, it doesn’t have enough liquid, you can add a demitasse of water. Season it with salt, black pepper and thyme. When all vegetables combine well, and when you feel that appetizing smell, it’s cooked.

Take some pasta on a service plate and put the sauce on it. You’ll see that in a very short time, you can prepare a filling and tasty dish, so being tired doesn’t matter. I want to thank to Semra for this recipe.