Light Tuna Casserole

I've never had Tuna Casserole before.  Growing up we ate mostly Indian food.  I've seen lots of recipe floating around for Tuna Casserole and for many it was a staple growing up.  I came across this light version on Martha Stewart.  It seemed simple to put together but lacking in the flavour department.  So I added some La Bomba sauce and dried dill.  I found La Bomba in Wal-Mart in the Italian section.  It's like an Italian achaar!  After my changes it was a definite winner for us.

Barley Risotto with Peas and Asparagus

We all loved the Spring Green Risotto I had made awhile ago.  What I didn't like was that there was not a lot of fibre in the dish.  I had read about making risotto using barley.  It sounded interesting and I always have barley around for making Haleem.  So I gave it a try and it turned out great!  I changed the method for this using a bouillon cube instead of stock.  I found this method at Aurora Importing.  Also, I didn't have all the ingredients so made some substitutions.  Either way it will turn out well.

Spring Green Risotto

I have eaten Risotto twice.  Once it was so delicious.  The other time it was extremely bland.  I have always been daunted with the idea of making Risotto.  I've  heard it is very time consuming.  Lately I've been looking at a few Risotto recipes and decided I would like to give it a try.  After reading a few recipes I realized compared to Indian cooking it really wasn't that time consuming.  The other thing I discovered was dry white wine is always added to Risotto.  So if you ever eat Risotto outside check if there is any alcohol in it.  Instead of wine I just used water.  I settled on this Risotto recipe because I had some asparagus in the fridge and needed to cook it before it went bad.  My changes to this recipe was mainly to reduce the fat but replacing the butter with olive oil.  I also used light cream cheese instead of mascarpone and significantly reduced the Parmesan cheese.  Even before adding all the cheese this was very tasty.  I also added garlic.  I don't think I cook anything without garlic.  I also used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.  I reduced the lemon zest and lemon juice as well.

Baked Samosas

I love samosas..who doesn't?  But I hate the idea of heating up a ton of oil and standing there deep frying them.  It's so time consuming.  So I was so excited when I saw a recipe for Baked Samosas on Aarti Paarti.  It looked so simply and so fast to make.  I had never heard of ajwain seeds.  My mom had some so I took some for her to try it out.  It gave the samosas such a wonderful aroma.  I didn't make the mango chicken chipotle filling Aarti did because it seemed like too much work, my husband doesn't like chipotle and I was scared of what those flavors combined would taste like.  So I just did a potato and pea filling.  You could put any filling you want inside.  For the dough I didn't have a couple of the ingredients...cake flour and buttermilk.  For the cake flour I used all-purpose but just used less.  For the buttermilk I substituted yogurt.  I've also made these using plain old 2% milk and they turned out good.  The filling posted below is for double the dough recipe.

Note: My cumin-coriander powder is 1 part cumin to 1.5 part coriander.