Best Macaroni and Cheese

I know, the best mac and cheese is the one you grew up on.  I pretty much love all mac and cheese.... I'll eat the blue box stuff with plenty of black pepper on it, and the really soft stuff they make in the south has its place.... BUT this is the macaroni and cheese recipe I'd choose every time (and I do!).

It's pretty much the one I grew up eating that was in one of those church cookbooks around the house, but I've made it my own over the years.

Tomato Macaroni and Cheese
Start by cooking a box of elbow macaroni to al dente in really really salty water.  Remember that the noodles will be cooking in the oven too.... unless you like the mushy noodles thing.

Preheat the oven to 375.  Butter a casserole dish, and set aside.

3 Tbsp. butter
3 Tbsp. flour
1/4 tsp salt
fresh cracked black pepper to taste
1 tsp. dry mustard
dash cayenne pepper
1 can diced tomatoes
2 cups grated extra sharp cheddar cheese
2 tsp worcestershire sauce
3 or 4 cups cooked noodles
crumbled Ritz crackers

While the pasta cooks, grate the cheese, mix the seasonings together, and open the tomatoes.

As soon as you drain the pasta, put the butter in the pan over medium heat to melt it.  Once it's melted whisk in the flour, salt, pepper, mustard, and cayenne.  Gradually add the tomatoes and break them up in the roux.  Turn the heat to medium low, then gradually add the cheese until it's all melted.  Turn off the heat and add the worcestershire sauce and noodles.  I add noodles until they're all coated, but certainly not dry.  Top with the crackers and put it in the oven until hot and bubbly, about 30 to 35 minutes.  If you can bring yourself to wait, it'll set up a little after about 10 minutes.

I can never wait that long!

New Feature

I just added a search feature for this blog.  I was thinking about a recipe I might add later, and couldn't remember what I'd posted last year around this time.  So, if you want to make something with chicken.... now you can search chicken and see just the recipes that have chicken as an ingredient.  How about that?

Long overdue recipe (Chicken Soup)

I took a break from most of the cooking around our house for much of the summer.  My husband was home from work (he's a teacher), and being pregnant has left me with much less energy.  Since he went back to work, I've been back in the kitchen more.  We'll see how creative I get while I'm cooking and still pregnant!

We've been cleaning out the freezer, fridge, and pantry recently.  Who doesn't need to do that?!  We almost always cook whole chickens since they're so much less expensive than chicken breasts, and we love the dark meat too.  Over the summer, we don't want the oven on long enough to roast a whole bird, so we often cut out the backbone, pound it down and that way it can grill or cook on the stovetop in a much shorter time.

All of those backbones (and sometimes wing tips) were waiting in our freezer to become stock.  So, as the weather starts to cool off a little, soups start to come back into the picture.

Chicken Stock 

All the frozen chicken parts
A couple of carrots, peeled
A couple of ribs of celery
An onion, quartered
A few bay leaves
As much water as will fit in your pot without boiling over

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a bare simmer and leave it alone for 3 or 4 hours.  Let it cool for a while before handling it.  Strain out all the solids and discard them.  You also may get a layer or fat on top when it cools, which once refrigerated it really easy to skim off.  Stock can be refrigerated or frozen.  We like to freeze it in a variety of sizes (from ice cubes up to a quart or so) to be used in different recipes without having to thaw more than you need.

Chicken Soup

1 onion, diced
1 or 2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 rib celery, chopped
A couple garlic cloves, minced
As much leftover chicken as you can pick off the bone from a previous roasting OR a small package of chicken, chopped really small
Thyme
Salt
Pepper
Noodles (I like egg noodles)

1.   In the pot where you'll cook the soup....if you're starting with cooked chicken, I like to saute up the onion, carrot, and celery in a touch of olive oil, then add the garlic, the chicken.
If you're starting with raw chicken, season it with salt and pepper, start it in the pan first, then add the veggies.  

2.  Simply pour over some stock, bring to a boil, add a sprig of fresh thyme and cook until the veggies are softened to your liking.

3.  Add the noodles and cook according to the package.  Noodles can easily become very soggy.  If you're making a huge batch of soup, you may want to pull out what will be leftovers and cook the noodles in them when you're ready to eat that portion of soup.

Best Cookies!

My husband loves almond macaroons, not coconut. He would likely choose them over almost any other. I found out several years ago that they are remarkably easy to make if you do a couple of things. Those things are: use parchment paper, have a food processor, and buy blanched slivered almonds, can effectively separate eggs. Blanching whole almonds isn't difficult, but when you peel them, be mindful that you may end up shooting them across the kitchen. Yes, it really is that easy!

Almond Macaroons

Makes 2 dozen two inch cookies

3 cups (12 oz) blanched slivered almonds

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

egg whites from 3 large eggs (if you're measuring: 1/3 cup plus one tablespoon)

1 teaspoon almond extract

1. With racks in the upper-middle and lower-middle levels of the oven, preheat to 325. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment.

2. Put almonds in food processor, turn it on for about a minute. Add sugar, let it go for another 15 seconds. Finally, add the egg whites and extract. You may need to scrape down the sides. Let it process until it forms a wad around the blade. It will make a paste that is stiff but malleable. If it's dry, add drops of water through the feed tube while it's running. It won't take much.

3. Roll scant 2 tablespoon scoops of the paste per cookie into a ball. They will spread, so leave about 1 1/2 inches between them. Your hands will get sticky, so when you can't handle it anymore, rinse them with water and begin rolling again.

4. Bake, swapping baking sheet positions halfway, for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. Let them cool on the parchment. They'll keep about 4 days.

To make extraordinary cookies even better:

Once the cookies are cool, melt dark chocolate in a double boiler. I dip the cookies in so that the chocolate is only on half of the cookie and just on the top. It doesn't take much to round out the flavors.

Pizza from Scratch

Friday night at our house is usually pizza night. We don't order carry out, delivery or pop in a frozen pizza... We make it from scratch. We have go-to favorites, but we're finding new ways to use up leftovers and enjoy great pizza combinations.

Dough Recipe

I start this right after lunch to give the dough time to rise.

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon yeast

2 teaspoons salt

1 scant cup water

2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine the flours, salt and yeast in the bowl of a food processor or work bowl of a stand mixer. Add the water and oil until it becomes a dough ball and allow the machine to knead it for you for a little while. If it's really sticky add a little flour, or if it doesn't come together into a dough ball add a little more water.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface to form a ball. Grease a bowl with olive oil, place dough ball inside, cover with a damp towel and allow it to rise in a warm place until about an hour before you're ready to eat.

Divide the dough into 3, roll into balls and let rest for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to at least 500 degrees with a pizza stone on the lowest rack(my oven is old and unpredictable over 500, but heat your oven to as hot as it will go).

One at a time pull each of the dough balls into a circle, taking care not to tear a hole in it. If you have a pizza peel, dust it with course corn meal, then put down the pizza crust. Top with your favorites. You can use traditional Sauce, pepperoni, mozzarella, parmesan cheese. We love pesto, avocado, fresh tomato with mozzarella and parmesan. I often make a "mexican pizza" with leftover refried beans, cheddar cheese, and tomato, if I have some. Recently, I made a pizza with indian flavors using an eggplant relish as the sauce with leftover chicken, and the traditional mozzarella and parmesan. Each pizza bakes for 6ish minutes until the cheese melts and starts to brown and the dough cooks through.

You can also cook the pizzas on the grill. To make sure you don't burn the crust before you melt the cheese, make sure your cheese is room temperature when you're putting the toppings on, and leave the lid closed on the grill to create an oven-like environment for the heat to get to the cheese.

Hope pizza night becomes a regular on your menu too!

Yummus

I grew up eating homemade hummus, and learned to make my own version somewhere along the way. There are some really great store-bought versions available now, but once you compare the cost of making your own, you'll never buy it again. All you need is a food processor to make this simple dish.

Hummus

All these amounts are my best guesses...

1-2 garlic cloves

1 can chick peas, drained with liquid reserved

1-2 Tablespoons tahini (sesame paste)

Juice from 1/2 lemon

1 teaspoon soy sauce (tamari is best)

1 teaspoon olive oil

Toss garlic cloves into food processor and let it mince them for you. Add the chickpeas, tahini, soy sauce, some lemon juice and process until smooth. Scrape down the sides as necessary. I add about a teaspoon of the bean liquid and a drizzle of olive oil to aid in the blending process. The most important step is tasting the hummus. It may need more soy sauce (the salty flavor), or more lemon juice (acidity and freshness), more tahini (nutty), or olive oil (viscosity). I blend it for a really long time until it's very smooth and almost fluffy.

Refried Beans

Our family loves mexican food. We have great memories of our mom (who doesn't speak any Spanish, and is by no means Mexican) making this recipe of refried beans when we were kids. Beans are the perfect way to stretch that pound of ground beef you turned into taco meat. My kids will eat these for lunch and dinner several days in a row (I haven't ever offered them for breakfast).

This is another all day meal that costs pennies to make. Most of the time required very little attention, so you can still get your laundry done while this one is bubbling away on the stove.

Basic Beans

2 cups dried pinto beans, soaked overnight, then drained and rinsed

2 medium onions, chopped fine

2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced

1 bay leaf

2 tablespoons peanut or corn oil

1 Tbsp. salt

freshly ground black pepper

Cover the beans with an inch of cold water and bring to a boil. Add onions, garlic, and bay leaf. Lower the heat to a simmer. Cook gently, loosely covered for about 2 hours. As the water evaporated, add a little more.

When the beans are soft, wrinkled, and breaking open, add the oil, salt, and pepper. Continue cooking, uncovered, for 30 minutes, without adding more water. The beans should be soft, almost mushy, and there should be a good amount of bean gravy.

Refried Beans

1 recipe of basic beans

6 tablespoons corn or peanut oil

1 medium onion, chopped fine

4 cloved garlic, minced

1 fresh, ripe tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped (I use ones that I froze from the garden last year that were about to turn)

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil over moderate heat in a large cast iron skillet. Add the onions, saute until translucent, add the garlic for about another minute. Add the tomato, cook for 2 or 3 more minutes. Add a little of the remaining oil, then several tablespoons of the beans. Use a potato masher to mash them directly into the pan. I can usually add several spoonfuls of beans before adding more oil (in fact, sometimes I don't use all 6 tablespoons). Gradually add all of the beans, mashing and stirring as you go. This will make a thick, creamy, and somewhat dry paste.

Serve in tortillas, with avocado, chopped tomato, cheddar cheese, sour cream, lettuce, and even thinly sliced radishes.

Samosas

I can't claim this as a personal recipe (if only I were really this talented), but want to encourage folks to realize that you can make anything at all that appeals to you. A few years ago, I would have thought that making something like samosas was completely out of the question for a home cook. With a little bit of practice, planning, and a great recipe nothing is out of the question. My very favorite resource for great recipes is Cooks Illustrated. They have all the resources (and use them) to make sure that it's the very best version of any recipe. Unfortunately, their recipes also often require most of the day.

We live in a small town with a limited number of restaurants and ZERO indian restaurants. If we want indian food, I'm making it from scratch. I like this meat filling almost as much as the sooka keema in Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking. The samosa wrappers were easier to make than I had feared, and stretchy enough to be fairly easy to fill. Of course, this is a special treat.... and it was wonderful!

Focaccia Heaven

My dear husband requested focaccia to go with our split pea soup for dinner tonight.... and I remembered having watched Anne Burrell rock it out on her show, so I looked it up. Here's the

Focaccia recipe for a heavenly pillow of dough.

Focaccia can be so versatile, adding rosemary, olives and cheeses, or cutting it as sandwich bread. It's not an everyday staple, but a really nice substitute for regular old bread.

I didn't have the kind of yeast she specified (I have Rapid Rise in a jar), but used 2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast. I also have tons of bread flour, so I used that instead of the all purpose. The results were better than expected.

Tips and Tricks

I should just have a running list of helpful shortcuts and solutions for cooking that I've learned over the years. I'm not sure how it will be most helpful to categorize the tips as they occur to me.

1. Problem: Most recently, our house has been too cold for our yeast to be effective.

The solution: (thanks Tim!) is to preheat the oven to 200 while putting the dough together. As soon as it preheats, turn it off and give it a few minutes before putting your dough (in its bowl) into the oven.

2. Problem: A recipe calls for white wine to deglaze the pan, but you don't necessarily want to drink the rest of the bottle (or can't afford a bottle of wine every time for a few tablespoons).

Solution: Vermouth has a long shelf life if kept in the fridge, and should be watered down some so as not to be too strong a flavor in the recipe.

3. Problem: Buttermilk, who remembers to buy that?!? It's not like I'm doing to run to the store before breakfast.

Solution: Add a little lemon juice or vinegar to milk and let sit for a few minutes (while you combine the dry ingredients).

4. Problem: Bland pasta noodles, boiled potatoes, etc.

Solution: Salt the water A LOT! This is the only chance you really have to add seasoning to the starch, so the water should be really salty. Warning: This does not apply to rice. The water should only have a little salt for rice as the rice absorbs all of the water.

5. Problem: Your produce rots before you get to use it.

Solution (s): Buy some produce with a long shelf life (cabbage, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, etc), and use the more tender items first. Also, certain foods need to be in bags to last well (carrots, for example). Others can be loose in the veggie bins with no ill effect. Also, bananas and apples placed next to one another on a the counter will ripen more quickly, so don't put them in the same fruit bowl. The same is true of potatoes and onions.

6. Problem: Your grocery bill is more than you can afford.

Solution: Plan your meals, and stick to a list! We have a weekly meal plan now that included 1 night of beef or pork, one night for beans, one for eggs, one for homemade pizza, and one for chicken or fish. This is based on the "main protein" and we have many recipes for each of these proteins. I allow for 2 nights of leftovers each week.

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure there will be more later.

Sandwich Bread

Allie's new stand mixer's primary purpose is to make bread. She's looking to replicate something close to the soft, smooth texture of store bought honey wheat.

Here's what I make, if I'm planning on using the bread for sandwiches:

1 3/4 cups AP or bread flour (about 1/2 pound)

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (about 1/2 pound)

2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons yeast

2 Tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons of butter (room temperature helps)

Scant 1 1/2 cups milk (2% recommended)

1. Mix flours, salt, and yeast in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment. Add honey, butter and milk until dough forms. Then switch to dough hook to knead for a few minutes. Knead by hand for about one more minute.

2. Grease the bowl with melted butter, place dough in bowl, and cover with plastic wrap or a damp towel for at least 2 hours (about doubled in volume). Deflate the ball and reshape it into a ball, let rest on lightly floured counter, covered for about 15 minutes.

3. Flatten into a rectangle with barely floured hands, fold the longer sides in toward each other, and pinch them together to make it into a longer, narrower but thicker loaf. Flip it so the seam-side is down and place in a greased loaf pan, flattening the top with the back of your hand. Cover and let rest for about an hour (top of dough will be nearly even with top of loaf pan).

4. Preheat oven to 350, brush top of loaf with water, then put it in the oven. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on a cooling rack.

Hope this is closer to what you had in mind.

Frittata

I think of frittata as a healthier version of a quiche (partly for not having the crust, and partly because it requires less dairy). We try to have eggs as a main dish for dinner about once a week, so this is a great recipe to have in the repertoire. Also worth noting, that this is a fairly quick dinner, and can be a great way to use up leftovers. You can make this for just one person or a family.

Frittata

Olive oil

salt

pepper

onion, diced

garlic, minced

bacon, fat rendered and crumbled(and/or diced peppers or spinach or cooked chicken, chopped, or par-boiled potato/leeks.... or whatever veg/meat combo appeals to you)

eggs (for my family I use 6 eggs)

a splash of milk

grated cheese (we keep sharp cheddar, but other cheeses work too)

parmesan cheese

Start by sauteing up the onion in a drizzle of olive oil in an oven proof pan (I don't use non-stick here, also check that the handle isn't plastic). As onions begin cooking, add in veggies/meats according to what needs to cook longest (peppers need to cook longer than spinach and garlic needs just 30 seconds or so). Meanwhile, crack eggs into a large bowl, season each egg with a pinch of salt and freshly cracked pepper. Add a splash of milk and whisk together. Stir in grated cheese, then pour this mixture into the pan, and stir to combine with the veggies/meat. Once combined, stop stirring, and allow the egg to begin to set up. Turn on the broiler, with the rack about a foot away from the broiler. Top the eggs with a little parmesan cheese, and then pop it under the broiler. It will finish cooking there, puffing up and getting a nice golden brown color. Remove CAREFULLY as handle will be HOT, and using a spatula serve in wedges.

Too many options? No such thing!