mac and cheese centerfold

So as I've mentioned in the past, Nathan really, really likes my mac and cheese. Honestly, I think he'd be perfectly happy if I made it for him once a week. Of course, between it being supremely unhealthy, particularly labor intensive and fairly expensive, I only make it a couple of times a year, most recently being April 19th, according to the time stamp on the photos.




It was a particularly good batch, rich and gooey, studded with some nice pork sausage. No where that I eat out seems to make mac and cheese quite the way I do, so I always enjoy my homemade rendition.

Of course, my fondness for Sarah-Cascone-brand macaroni and cheese pales in comparison to Nathan's obsession with it. In the interim between my semiannual renditions of the dish, he starts to get reaaaaaally antsy. And sure enough he's been starting to whine about how I never make him mac and cheese, accusing me of taking some sort of sick pleasure from withholding it. Needless to say, he's crazy!




However, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to make some more in the immediate future, so Nathan, and you, will have to make do with these photos for now. I know I can't hope to compare to the hard core food porn of some other blogs, but I think these certainly capture the gooey crunchy melty wonder that is Sarah Cascone's macaroni and cheese. Maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get to try it some day.

cauliflower

cauliflower "mac and cheese"

No this is not the long-awaited-since-yesterday "what I cooked for the holidays pt 2." Today I am talking about cauliflower, which we were getting in alarmingly large quantities this fall. Like, if you think cauliflower looks like brains, these babies came from the head of a total giant. Beyond enormous.

Unlike Nathan, I am a big fan of cauliflower, which I usually steam until tender and serve with olive oil, lemon and parsley. I also love it breaded and fried, which, let's face it, is not a bad preparation for any food, really. Except maybe fruit. Apples would work, but can you imagine breaded fried pineapple, or berries? Yuck. I wonder if anyone's tried that.

Anyway. With such unimaginable amounts of cauliflower, I decided to branch out and try some new ways of making it. I thought about the delicious cauliflower I've had at Indian restaurants and Middle Eastern pita joints, but ultimately I stayed a little closer to home.

First I tried a simple oven roasted recipe from Ina Garten, which employed pine nuts, parsley, olive oil, lemon juice and whole cloves of garlic. It's from her book How Easy Is That, and it really did seem like it would be.


ina garten's garlic roasted cauliflower

Parboiled garlic cloves and chopped up cauliflower florets are tossed with olive oil and baked in a 475° oven for 20 minutes. Toss with lemon juice and toasted pine nuts, (or walnuts if you're put off by the astronomically high price of the former), and sprinkle with parsley and that's all there is to it. Unfortunately, my version fell a bit short. Perhaps there was something off with my oven temperature, because my cauliflower was a little too brown, but not yet cooked through. It was one of those situations where I probably should have just put everything back in the oven, but was too hungry to wait. Impatience does not a good cook make.

My second cauliflower dish was a play on macaroni and cheese. I created a rich bechamel sauce with butter and blue cheese, and then stirred in my cauliflower florets. After I time, I sprinkled the top with breadcrumbs and baked the dish in the oven. With a little parsley and chopped scallion for color, this was cheesy and good, but no match for the pasta laden original. And, like this previous dish, the cauliflower wasn't cooked evenly. While some of it was meltingly tender, cooked through with buttery cheese, other bites were almost crunchy. It was very strange. I think I probably should have boiled the cauliflower and then put it straight in the oven.


improvised cauliflower bake

While the flavors of both these cauliflower dishes were good, they both suffered from being unevenly cooked. I hate hard crunchy cauliflower, (although I admit it's no good mushy either), and I failed to reach that fork tender ideal. It wasn't a huge failure, but both dishes had their shortcomings.


blue cheesy cauliflower

I think I'd prefer to make macaroni and cheese in lieu of trying my cheesy cauliflower again, but I'd definitely try Ina's recipe out again, especially if I can get my hands on some pine nuts without losing an arm and a leg.

mac and cheese take three

As promised, I welcomed Nathan home from Italy with that all-American classic, macaroni and cheese. I know I've covered this before, not just once but twice, but you know what they say. Third time's a charm. Also, while the repetition may bore the three readers we have, it's good for me just to keep a record. Plus, it doesn't hurt that this may have been the most intensely delicious mac and cheese I've made yet.




A rich, creamy bechamel sauce loaded with butter, flour, half and half and parmesan cheese. Having tried milk last time around, I have to say that it comes out so much creamier if you splurge on half and half. It really improves the dish.




Sweet Italian sausage sauteed with half and onion and a garlic clove left over from the chicken parm's tomato sauce. Then add a tiny jar of olive oil marinated artichoke hearts. Sautee and toss with pasta, bechamel sauce, and plenty of sliced basil for extra Italian flair and flavor.




A whole pound of mozarella cheese and a quarter pound of cheddar shredded and melted between layers of bechamel laden pasta shells. Dare I say this was almost too cheesy? Don't worry, I said almost.




A crispy topping of breadcrumbs grated from an old loaf of Arthur Avenue bread in the freezer. Extra romano cheese on top.




A triumph of artery clogging proportions. What my boy wants, my boy gets.

skillet mac and cheese with bacon/fried goat cheese salad

Nathan got really mad at me for this one. He's always suggesting we make mac and cheese, and I'm never in the mood and then he gets cranky and accuses me of cruelly withholding his favorite thing that I cook. And then a couple of weeks ago, I made mac and cheese without him. Oops. When he gets back to the states I'm going to have to welcome him with a big cheesy American style pasta dish to make up for it. Maybe I'll go uber traditional and use elbows. Or maybe I'll make it Italian style and add pepperoni and sundried tomatoes. We shall see.

This mac had five cheeses plus bacon and onions. I didn't deviate much from my previously described method. (If you are looking for more mac ideas, Mark Bittman unsurprisingly has some great ones, or you could make Gordon Ramsay's.) I made a cheesy bechamel sauce with butter, flour, a spash of hot sauce, a dash of worcestershire sauce, some salt and pepper, shredded parmesan and grated romano. I fried a couple of slices of bacon and some sliced onions. I cooked up a pound of orecchiette until tender and then mixed that into the sauce with the bacon and onions. I think I also added some little slices of garlic scape. I layered the pasta mixture with grated cheddar, monteray jack and gouda cheeses, and topped with breadcrumbs and extra of all five cheeses. Then I baked it in Laura's cast iron skillet. When we inevitably part ways as roommates, I will miss that the most. Like, aside from her, obviously.


macaroni and cheese

It was pretty good. Orecchiette is one of my favorite pastas, but I think it might be a little too thick and chewy for macaroni and cheese. I'm afraid that the pasta on top got a bit dried out and tough. Otherwise, it was delicious. Obviously a little smokey bacon and sweet onion take things up a notch,and the bacon and gouda really complimented one another well.


skillet baked mac and cheese

I also tried to pair it with a fried goat cheese salad. This didn't end up working out so well, so the horribly out of focus photo is somewhat appropriate. That isn't to say it wasn't tasty, just that I didn't wind up with the beautiful and neat little crisp golden goat cheese cakes that the recipe's author promised...


fried goat cheese in a lemon mayo dressing

As you can see, the breading burned and kept sticking to the pan, and I had to kind of stick it back onto the cheese... And it looked so good, too! In retrospect, it's probably my fault though. I didn't feel like breaking out the eggs, so I just rolled my freezer-firmed goat cheese rounds in bread crumbs and tried to fry them up in a hot pan of melted butter. I bet the egg would have helped everything stick together better. Obviously goat cheese + butter + bread crumbs still = TASTY, but it was a good deal messier and far less attractive looking than I would have hoped.

What was just a perfect as I imagined it would be was the dressing: olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, homemade mayonnaise, white vinegar and dijon mustard. Salt and pepper to taste. If I had had poppy seeds, I certainly would have added them, but this dressing was delicious even without them. Very bright and fresh, it tasted delicious over food co-op greens and some of my never ending $1 radishes.

A Cautionary Tale

We were making some steak, or something like that, I don't really remember. I thought it might be pretty cool to make a blue cheese sauce with it, so I went on the internet and searched for a recipe. The first recipe I found suggested that all you really had to do was put equal parts butter and blue cheese in a pan, turn up the heat, and let the ingredients do their thing. Bitchin', I thought, how easy!

Unfortunately, this was not the case. It quickly became apparent that the blue cheese wasn't melting right, instead separating into the oil and the solids. The butter just kind of added to the oilyness of the pot. It became a sort of yellowish-grayish-blueish miasma of crap.

We tried adding flour to solidify it, but this did not help. The flour absorbed some, but far from all, of the greasy soup. It ended up as a fluffy mess instead of an oily one, looking sort of like the bastard son of the worst matzoball in the world and some grayish goop. Believe it or not, it didn't taste half bad - it retained some of the blue cheese flavor despite this abuse - but it was absolutely unappetizing to look at, and it did not qualify as blue cheese sauce.

We ended up draining away some of the oil, shredding up the floury puffs, and mixing it into some spinach and mushrooms that we had made. It was okay.

So, let this be a lesson. I'm sure there are a lot of great recipes for blue cheese sauce out there. Mixing blue cheese and butter, then trying to salvage it with flour, is not one of them. Maybe you can find one - I sure couldn't.

everyone loves macaroni and cheese

macaroni and cheese stuffed artichokes with goat cheese bechamel sauce and lemon zested breadcrumb topping

The one thing that I cook that I'd really say is a crowd pleaser is macaroni and cheese. Two years ago, Laura and I were hosting a joint birthday party in our on campus apartment, and I decided that some really good mac and cheese would be the perfect party food. Macaroni and cheese is one of those foods that can be really really great when it's done right, but I find that it's often too dry, too creamy, or too processed tasting for me to enjoy it. In my opinion, a good version of the dish has a nice cheesy bechamel sauce holding it together, but also plenty of melty gooey cheese layered into it, and a crispy top.

I don't know where you all stand on the creamy vs. cheesy macaroni spectrum but this New York Times article provides some interesting commentary. Despite the current fashion for creamier versions, some purists actually consider what they call "macaroni and cheese sauce," to be an entirely different and entirely inferior dish. To a certain point, I agree. I find overly creamy mac and cheeses can actually trigger my gag reflex. And don't even get my started on the abomination that is Kraft— I may have tried it once, buy my brain has clearly surpressed that terrible memory. However, that is not to say that a cream base is not an essential part of the dish. Without enough of one, the cheese can congeal into an equally unappealing block of oily pasta.

Luckily for my dinner guests, and for you, I've found a recipe that successfully balances the two elements to form the perfect celebration of cheese and carbs: Emeril Lagasse's Macaroni with Four Cheeses

Emeril starts off by making a bechamel sauce from half a stick of butter, four tablespoons flour, two cups of half and half, 4 ounces grated parmesan, a dash of hot sauce, salt and pepper. He pours this over a pound of buttered elbow macaroni mixed with some minced garlic, and then layers the pasta into a buttered baking dish with a pound and a half of cheddar, fontina, gruyere and parmesan cheeses. On top of the final layer of cheese, he adds seasoned breadcrumbs, and then he lets the oven work its magic for 45 minutes or so. This mac and cheese is irresistably good, and whenever I make it everyone always raves about it.

Over the past two years, I've made this recipe many times, including for my and Matt's graduation party, where we totally overestimated and made enough bechamel sauce for ten pounds of pasta—what normally took took 4 to 5 minutes to thicken became a 45 minute affair! After following the recipe very carefully the first couple of times, I've been able to play around quite a bit: using varying the types of cheese included based on what's around and what I can afford, adding sweet or hot sausages, and even baking the pasta into hollowed out artichokes. (As you might now guess, this was the only mac of which I took decent photos. This recipe was our guide, but we ignored large chunks of it.)

My only rules when it comes to the dish is that some of the cheese has to be mixed into the sauce, and that there needs to be lots of it shredded and layered inside to make for gooey cheesy strings when you dig into it. I've used parmesan, romano, goat cheese or even cheddar in the sauce, using more or less of it depending on how much I have, although more is always better. The shredded cheese is usually cheddar with the fontina and gruyere only if I can afford them, although I recently used mozzarella to great effect. I really like to make this with the traditional elbows, but I am not into the skinnier straight macaroni, as it's too reminiscent of Kraft crap. I've also had success using the little shells, or conchigliette, which Laura particularly liked, and to a lesser degree the corkscrew cavatappi. I think my favorite though, is radiatori, because the cheese really clings to its many little ridges.

I actually made a wonderful gluten free version of the dish for Matt just last month with his special penne. It was probably not the best noodle for this dish, but that didn't diminish his enjoyment of the dish. I used Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour to make the one batch of bechamel, which I divided between Matt's pasta and everyone else's, and no one was the wiser.

Macaroni and cheese is such a classic dish, and everyone loves it. As much as I recommend the Emeril version, there is no one definitive version of this dish, and I encourage you to play around. Throw in some bacon and crispy onions, or use mustard powder or dijon to kick up the flavor a bit. Lots of people like to add roasted tomatoes, and I personally think artichoke hearts or roasted peppers would be lovely with the right cheeses. Despite the Italian ban on mixing seafood and cheese, lobster or shrimp macs are hugely popular. Nutmeg and worcestershire sauce are other common flavoring agents. Personally, I'm wary of eggs, evaporated milk, cream cheese or cottage cheese, but I do think there's plenty of other ways to change it up. If you're looking for more ideas, the Chowhound message board is a great place to start. There is so much to experiment with, I don't see how anyone could ever be satisfied with a box and a packet of powered "cheese mix"!