Mac and Cheese

This was the first time I made homemade mac and cheese. It's definitely not a diet recipe, and it was really good. I started with this recipe as a base, and made it first for a family party and then made it again with just cheese as the topping the second time around. It was better with just extra shredded cheese as the topping. Broil it for a second after baking if you need it to be crisper. The original recipe calls for regular bread crumbs sauteed in butter, but I used panko breadcrumbs, which are a little crunchier. The topping was good, but I wouldn't always want it on top of my mac and cheese, and the extra butter that it is sauteed in at that point just seems gluttonous (although maybe no more so than extra cheese).


The nice thing about this recipe is that it easily doubles, and any extra cheese sauce can be kept in the fridge for up to a week. I would imagine this cheese sauce could lend itself as a base for other dishes, or it might be nice served over a chicken breast or over some broccoli. You can also make the mac and cheese and then freeze portions in smaller containers. A quick lunch for later with no imitation food ingredients!

Guest Blogger: Golabki (stuffed cabbage)

Post 2 of 2 of the Polish special from guest blogger Judy. This is my mom's version of my grandma's golabki. The creamy tomato sauce is delicious. Might I suggest chopping up some garbanzo beans to use in place of meat in this dish to make it lighter. Read the recipe for golabki or read the first installment of this series, beet soup.

How not to make broccoli cheese soup

If I tried this again, maybe I would make a quick roux out of flour and butter, then add milk, then melt shredded cheddar in it, then puree some steamed broccoli and add that in there. Maybe that would work. I tried making a quick one by putting some raw broccoli in the food processor, sauteing it in some butter, adding milk and cheese and thickening it with some instant mashed potatoes. (Hangs head in shame). Then I tried to get it to come together with the immersion blender. And it looks okay in the picture, but looks can be deceiving. I thought the taste was actually pretty good, but the consistency was awful and Tom hated it. Which seems impossible, because he loves broccoli and he loves cheese.

Maybe next time, but I think I've lost my taste for this for a while.

The best veggie dip

I was not authorized by my mom to post this recipe, so I may be letting the dill weed out of the bag, but I made her famous veggie dip for the first time today, so I thought I'd post it. Everyone loves it. My friend Andrea's fiance even told my mom that he would marry her because of the veggie dip alone, if he wasn't already marrying Andrea. That was weird, but I guess it goes to show what this dip does to people.

She doesn't measure it when she makes it, and I didn't today either, but I am approximating it here. You can adjust to taste.

1 cup real mayo
1 cup real sour cream
1 tbsp dill weed
1 tbsp old bay seasoning
1 tsp garlic salt

Enjoy!

Guest Blogger: Polish Beet Soup

Let the polka begin!  Guest post 1 of 2 for a special Polish feature. Here's the recipe for my Grandma's beet soup, as recreated by my mom.

Zesty Pizza Sauce

I had some tomatoes to use up and pizza sounded good, so I improvised a quick pizza sauce. Worth making again.

I didn't make the dough yesterday as planned, so today I picked up some premade dough from Trader Joe's, which was okay.

Here's the recipe for the sauce.

New camera! Pesto photo shoot

Made pesto tonight - won't bore you with the recipe that I made up that was just okay - but here are some lovely pictures, courtesy of my new camera.

Chicken Pot Pie

Making a pie crust is easy in concept, but hard to execute. You're working with very limited ingredients (flour, water, salt and shortening - maybe sometimes butter or sugar, depending on what you're doing), but those few ingredients are very demanding.

I had a taste for chicken pot pie this afternoon, and I felt like working in the kitchen after being behind a computer all day. A perfect storm. Read the rest.

Delicious lamb chop marinade

The barometer of good food for me lately is: Would I serve this to Anthony Bourdain?

I make so many frou frou cakes and baked nonsense, that oftentimes the answer is no.

But tonight, the answer is yes.

I have always had a soft spot for lamb chops; and indeed, they led to my downfall as a vegetarian. A bite of lamb broke my nearly two year fast from meat, and I haven't really looked back since.

Tom and I bought some chops at Whole Foods last night, and today he found a great marinade recipe. In a nutshell: 1/4 cup white vinegar, 2 tbsp olive oil, a healthy amount of smashed and chopped up garlic, 2 tsp of sea salt, 1/2 tsp of pepper, and some thinly sliced onion.

It seemed like it would be too much salt, and too much pepper. But it was delicious.

It took two passes on the grill to get it from raw to nicely pink.  It was perfect.  I will make this for you when you come to dinner, Anthony Bourdain.

Strawberry Dutch Pancake

I had never made one of these before, and I saw a recipe in the free press that I only loosely followed. I think their oven temps were way off - it said to start at 450 for fifteen minutes and then drop the temperature to 350, but my oven holds the heat like crazy. I would have been better off just cooking it at 350.

They had you make the batter, put 2 tbsp of butter in a pie pan to melt in the oven, swirl the butter around and then pour the batter in.

It rose gloriously in the oven during the first fifteen minutes, and I watched with anticipation. I dropped the temp and kept watching. After ten minutes, the edges were about to burn, so I took it out. Then fell like a brick.

The middle looked like it could have cooked longer.

Still, it tasted ok.  I topped it with diced strawberries, powdered sugar and a drizzle of agave syrup.

Here is the batter recipe.

1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Stuffed tomato and tapas memories

I've been following the South Beach Diet, Phase 1 this week, so my posts may take a turn for the non-baked goods. (Unless I bake something for someone - you never know.).

This tomato is stuffed with tuna salad and was supposed to be a delicious throwback to The Joy of Cooking - it seemed very 50s America to make.

It looks adorable, but it was a pain to eat and not that good. I don't think I can handle that much tomato. I had even taken the tomato and tuna salad seperately to work, so as to not allow the tomato to become mealy in the fridge, even bringing a paring knife to carve it here. Oh well. The paring knife stayed in my desk drawer to complement the sea salt grinder I keep here. A kitchen away from home!

I did get my ceviche when we were in Florida last week, and it was delicious. In fact, the entire brunch we had on our anniversary was delicious. I had found this tapas place on the internet and it was amazing. I would go back if I'm ever in St. Petersburg again. We had ceviche, fresh bread, a white bean-chorizo-tomato sauce dish (to die for), fried potatoes with a garlic aioli mayonaise, bruchetta. Maybe something else. I also had a champagne sangria - fabulous.

Ceviche craving - and nothing to show

I've been bit by the travel bug bad and am trying to plan a trip to Peru, hopefully in the fall. I've also been catching up on old Anthony Bourdain episodes lately, including Peru and Equador. He's been eating so much ceviche, and I want some!

Tom and I are going to Florida this weekend - if I can't get some there, I am making some asap. Maybe not the best time to order sea food from the gulf. We'll see.

Blast from the past

This isn't even close to cooking from scratch - this is über processed, in the worst way. Box cake, frosting out of a can with a tip on it. No cleanup whatsoever. So modern and convenient and wasteful.

But it sounded so tasty - I haven't had a cupcake in an ice cream cone in a good twenty years - and I haven't cooked anything in a while because of my work schedule, and I had told a colleague I owed him some cupcakes for his birthday (Happy birthday, Alan!), and I wanted to also cut the grass tonight. So I took a short cut :-/

Asparagus-Broccoli Casserole

I had a bunch of vegetables to use - asparagus and broccoli - and will be out of town this week for work. I didn't feel like just steaming them and eating them, but I thought they would taste good in a cheesy rice dish.

Read the rest.

City Chicken

I haven't cooked anything yet this week - don't always have the energy after work. But I thought I'd post a recipe that I made a few months ago and really liked - City Chicken! It came from the Free Press and unfortunately they took the regular link down - I'm afraid that means my links to the French Bread and Margarita Cake might not work eventually.

In any case, here's a shorter, archived version of the recipe for City Chicken. I hadn't had it in ages and my father in law kept talking about it, so I made it for them one weekend a while back. It turned out great and just like I remember it tasting from my grandma.

I was surprised by how many people don't know what City Chicken is - not chicken at all, but a mixture of pork and veal, served elegantly on a wooden stick. I thought it was specifically a Polish thing, but I think it's actually more of a working class/immigrant town thing. It's not native to Detroit.

I've read before that chicken used to be the "special occasion" meat - which strikes me as odd, since it's so common now, thanks to factory farming. I wish things were how they used to be.

I was apprehensive about the meat being tough so I marinated it first overnight in buttermilk. Turned out great, and the only flack I got was from my mom, who said I didn't use the "right" kind of skewers. Little did she know... mine were also made out of bamboo. So definitely not traditional City Chicken skewers. This isn't depression-era Pittsburgh!

White cake, chocolate frosting, hint of almond

It kills me that boxed cake mixes are so easy. How does it come out so fluffy and moist and delicious, every time, without any effort? You don't even have to separate the eggs!

Why does something I slaved over, sifting flour three times, beating egg whites separately and folding them gently in, using real ingredients... turn out so... blah?  I don't want to prefer the corporate food-like products... but they make it so EASY.  Read the rest.

Rajmah

This was made from a spice blend - Tom said it didn't count as cooking from scratch, but I still think it does because it was literally just a mix of spices that I could have put together myself if I actually had them, not anywhere close to the McCormick MSG packets.

Read the rest.

French Baguette

This was a great way to use my Kitchen Aid mixer to make something other than cake or frosting. I love this first picture - you mix warm water and yeast and sugar, let it sit in the bowl for five minutes, and the yeast activates and eats the sugar or something, then you're good to get started.

Read the rest.

Margarita Chiffon Cake

This cake called for a lot of booze and was a big hit - it tasted exactly what you think a margarita cake would taste like. Was somewhat labor intensive, but definitely worth making. Here is the recipe.

I would not suggest serving the strawberries (also booze infused) on top of the cake - made it too soggy. I went back for several servings sans strawberries.

Oh yes, those little green specs are lime zest, and they are awesome. They were mixed into the glaze and also in the cake. The glaze hardened into goodness. Definitely worth making!