baked mac and cheese with broccoli

I got a sweet mac and cheese cookbook in December, and I finally made a recipe from it tonight! the book is: Macaroni & Cheese by Marlena Spieler.

As usual I made some modifications. I ended up using all 4 burners at a time and a lot of pots and pans to get this one done. It's not actually that simple, but super worth it. Her recipe is called "Yankee Doodle Dandy Baked Macaroni & Cheese" and I took a tip from the bottom and did a broccoli addition.

Here's the basics:

Under cooked one box (12 oz) shell pasta and set aside. It's find if it cools off.

Grate a buttload of cheese. I went with 14 ounces of Grafton Cheddar, 6 ounces of Cabot Monterey Jack, 3 ounces of crumbled chevre (the recipe calls for blue cheese crumbles, but I'm not a blue cheese fan, so I went this route instead) and half a cup of parmesan (I bought the grated kind cause I was lazy.

also cut up a head of broccoli into little florets. bowl water and cook the florets for about 2-3 minutes and then drain. they should be bright green. set aside.

in a pan melt 3 tablespoons of butter and saute half an onion and 2 cloves of garlic (all chopped) for a few minutes (they don't need to be super cooked, just good and aromatic.)

Then split the cheese into two bowls. 3 ounces of cheddar, 3 ounces of jack and 2 tablespoons of parm in one bowl. All the rest of the cheese in the other bowl (this bowl with a ton of cheese, including all the goat cheese, goes in the sauce).

Now you have to make bechamel. Heat 3 cups of milk (I used 2%, but whole is also good. But no skim. It needs fat!) until they are hot (but not boiling). in a separate large saucepan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter, when it is melted sprinkle 3 tablespoons of flour into it. mix and let cook for 1-2 minutes and don't burn it!!! then add the hot milk to the butter flour sitch. Add a bay leaf. cook while stirring for about 7 minutes so it starts to thicken. Don't boil though! use a whisk to stir/delumpify.

take the bechamel off heat. stir in 1 tablespoon of dry mustard and 1/2 teaspoon of paprika, a sprinkle of salt, and a liberal amount of cracked pepper. take out the bay leaf Now add the big bowl of cheese to the bechamel and stir. Now add the garlic/onion/butter mixture, stir that in too.

melt 2 tablespoons of butter in the same pan you already did the garlic/onions in. add 1 cup of plain breadcrumbs and combine with the butter over heat.

Now you can put it together! It's kind of like a lasagna. The recipe calls for a 1.5 qt pan (basically a loaf pan) which I think is way too small. I went with a 3 qt casserole and that fit perfectly.

sprinkle some of the cheese from your reserve bowl on the bottom of the casserole. then add 1/3 of the pasta. Then add 1/3 of the cheese sauce. then add some broccoli. then add more pasta, then more sauce. Repeat. I only had enough broccoli for 2 layers. I made the top layer broccoli though, and then on top of the top broccoli layer I sprinkled the rest of my reserve cheese, and then topped it all with the buttery breadcrumbs.

Put it in the oven at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes. We served it with kale salad and rolls. good combo.

here's a look in reverse:

floundering

So, we at 48 have been engaging in a Community Supported Fishery (or CSF, or Fish Share.) It's called Cape Ann Fresh Catch http://namanet.org/csf/cape-ann-fresh-catch We are splitting it with another household, so every other week or so we get, basically a few whole fish. We will also be getting shrimp, but that has not materialized yet.

This week, we got a whole cod, already gutted, and a flounder, not gutted. gina marie dealt with the cod, I took on the flounder. Sadly, I was in a rush and didn't take any pictures of the gutting and filleting. gina actually did the skinning.

Once that was done, the flounder sat in tupperware in the fridge for a few days. I was thinking of how to use it. I decide to do something inspired by my favorite fish dish that my Norwegian grandmother makes for me - I'm not sure on the spelling, something like "røkt kolje" røkt means smoked and kolje is a kind of white sea fish. I had a white sea fish, but it was not smoked. My grandmother prepares this in a butter sauce with carrots and hard boiled eggs, served with boiled potatoes. I was in a hurry and had no idea how to even make the sauce - so I winged it!


I put most of a stick of butter in a pan. Chopped a carrot, put it in the pan, and let it simmer. I sliced a couple of little farm share potatoes (purple and white) and put those in the pan. I added some salt and pepper. I let it simmer. I added some white wine, I turned the heart up a tad. I added some more butter. Than I popped the tiny flounder fillets on top (my skills aren't great so there was definitely some fish left on the skeleton.) then I let it cook for a while. Flipped the fillets, and let it cook a little more.





The meantime, I was hard boiling two eggs. emily, 48's other non-feline resident, advised me to boil the water, then add both eggs with a slotted spoon, then let barely simmer for ten minutes. I did that. butfor 11minutes. A quick rinse in cold water and I peeled them. Then I used my egg slicer (Norwegian invention!) to cut the eggs both ways.






then I served it on a plate, topped with eggs. It was good! very buttery. I think it could afford to be less buttery, but I hadn't wanted to risk it.

Squash soup and squash seeds. take two - with pictures.

So, I made squash soup and toasted seeds the other day and posted about them without taking pictures.

Today I gave it another try, but this time I took some pictures.

Changes: the squash soup this time was more of a root vegetable soup - in addition to a winter squash, a delicata, another little one, and a butternut squash, I also roasted 4 beets and a kohlrabi. I roasted the beets on top of the squashes because I was worried they were too small. That turned out not to be necessary.


In the actual making of the soup this time I just added one can of coconut milk and an equal amount of water and about 1.5 teaspoons of thai red curry - and then used the immersion blender. The color was way cool this time - I think because of the beets.


For the seeds - I did the same procedure as last time, except this time I went dessert themed, and I tossed them in t tablespoons of melted butter and 2 tablespoons of maple syrup with a sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice.



they were *really* good.

vegetable soup made with water and tomatillos

I have made this soup twice now, so I am starting to feel like a real expert.

We are getting lots of great vegetables from the Stone Soup Farm CSA, and the regular distribution ended last week. One of the things we got was tomatillos, which like like little green tomatoes wrapped in corn husks.

When I don't know what to do and it's fall, I make soup. Mark Bittman explained to me in How to Cook Everything that it is okay to make soup with water instead of stock, so I did. Here's the story:

dice an onion, a giant carrot, a celery stock. dump in soup pot with olive oil.
Cook on low while you cut potatoes into chunks (I also added rutabaga in the second time I made this soup.) add the potatoes (Mark B. calls these hard vegetables). then you add the tomatillos - take the husks off, wash, and then chop. I added about 1.5 cups of tomatillos and also a can of tomatoes.

Salt and Pepper

Then add a parmesan rind (optional, but recommended.) I also added marjoram and thyme.

Then add about 6-8 cans of water (I use the tomato can to get all the juices.)

while it comes to a simmer, chop a bunch of chard or kale, 3 or 4 green or red peppers, and a bunch of parsley, if you have it. Once the water bubbles, add those things (Mark B. terms these soft vegetables) and 2 bay leaves.

Soup the first time:


Soup the second time:

Now let it cook. The longer the better. and it will be even better the next day.

Serve it with crusty bread and olive oil for dipping the bread into and also with parmesan for on top of the soup.

(more second time):

thai red curry squash and coconut milk soup (and toasted seeds)

So I read this blog, SouleMama, which is written by a woman in Maine. She tends to make pretty and delicious things. I don't manage the pretty things much, but I do aspire to the delicious.

The other day, in her post about fall's harvest, she recommended a recipe from 101 cookbooks. It was perfect. I had an acorn squash, a sugar pumpkin, and two butternuts at home aching to be eaten. it's been too warm for them to store well, and I knew I needed to cook them before they started to rot.

I split them all in half, scooped the seeds out into a separate bowl (so I could make Simply Recipes toasted pumpkin seeds - recipe acquired via 101 cookbooks' toasted pumpkin seeds) and then lay them all out on a cookie sheet with the cut side up. I sprayed them with a little canola spray, and then rubbed them with butter and ground salt over them, letting most of each pat sit in the holes formed by the scooped out seeds. I put it in the oven at 375 for an hour.

When they came out, the squashes smelled and tasted delicious. I almost gave up on making soup to just eat them right there. but then I decided that was too much squash for little old me and I settled into just a few bites and scooped the rest out laboriously into a big soup pot. (this was probably the hardest part - the squash skins were so tender they just sort of fell apart - and there was butter everywhere).

then I turned the heat to medium high and added two cans of coconut milk (first press - not light.) once it was getting simmery, I turned off the heat and hit it with the immersion blender till it was very smooth. Then I added a little more than a teaspoon of red thai curry paste and some smoked paprika, and blended some more.

Then I went out dancing.

the next day the soup was still sitting on the stove with the lid on. Iw as going to have some friends over, so I heated it back up, added some water (I have no idea how much - just until the thickness seemed good) and some salt, and... voila! serve with bread. delicious reheated.


while I was out dancing I also put the bowl of squash seeds in the fridge covered with a towel. The next day I rinsed them in a colander as best as I could, picking out the squash-meat chunks, and then I put them in a saucepan of boiling water with some salt. I simmered them for 10 minutes. I drained them in the colander, and then tossed them with about 3 tablespoons of melted butter in a bowl.

I spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet and put them in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 12 minutes. I took them out, sprinkled them with smoked paprika, and put them in a bowl. they were the best snack ever. soo good. and they were nice and tender so they didn't need shelling. and it wasn't just the pumpkin, but also the other squashes, and all the seeds were good.

(p.s., while I was making these foods, I may have dropped gina marie's camera on the floor and broken it... I will try to salvage some pictures when I can...)

grilled farmshare of joy.

Over the summer there was a lot of grilling. one of the special things that happened was a lot of grilling packets.


to grill in a packet: chop vegetables, add oil or butter, add spices/salt, wrap in tin foil. Grill until delicious.

so easy, and the things taste amazing.

Good combos include: pretty much any vegetable with garlic and oil, any fresh herbs you have are good.


I did an experiment and did some potatoes with butter and some with olive oil. I expected the buttered ones to be better, but actually they were both really good!







You can even do dessert, you'll see some peaches grilled in a packet with ice cream down here.


We also did some skewering, which is nice if you want the char and grill marks, but the packets really pack a flavor punch!