Category: minutiae

Stovetop Macaroni and Cheese

America’s Test Kitchen

2 large eggs

1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk (buttermilk)

1/4 tsp hot pepper sauce (I used more like 1/2 tsp)

1/2 tsp salt (plus more for salting the water)

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp dry mustard, dissolved in 1 tsp water

1/2 pound elbow macaroni

4 tbsp unsalted butter

12 oz sharp cheddar, American, or Monterey Jack cheese, grated

Bread crumbs, enough to top (optional)

Mix the eggs, evaporated milk, pepper sauce, salt, pepper, and mustard mixture in a small bowl. Set aside.

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil, then add the macaroni and some salt. Cook until almost tender but still a little firm to the bite (around 6 minutes). Drain and return to the pan over low heat. Add butter and toss to melt.

Pour egg mixture over buttered noodles along with three-quarters of the cheese. Stir until thoroughly combined and the cheese starts to melt. Gradually add the remaining milk mixture and cheese, stirring constantly, until mixture is hot and creamy (about 5 minutes). Serve immediately, or….

Turn on your broiler. Pour the macaroni and cheese into a 9×9 ovenproof dish and top with bread crumbs. Broil until crumbs turn deep brown (anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes, depending on your broiler strength and how far away the dish is from the heat).

Well, I finished off the banana cake this morning. I have figured out the reasons for the cake’s overmoistness. The extra banana was only half of the problem. I added an extra half cup of butter to the mix. At the time, I was not thinking, or rather, I was thinking, “One stick of butter’s a quarter cup.” Dumb, dumb Sarah. Pity her in her ineptitude.

I didn’t do any cooking today, although I did help Rob out with making cookies. He recently bought a remarkably ugly (it’s true, he agrees) KitchenAid stand mixer for very cheap on Amazon. The color is “pistaschio.” It had mad discounts. So he broke it in making chocolate chip cookes. Nestle Tollhouse recipe, very good. We went out for Indian food, discussed Dungeons & Dragons, watched Futurama (The Farnsworth Parabox), and played video games (Dr. Mario, Frogger, Rush’n Attack, and Castlevania).

I can’t believe I put in an extra stick of butter.

Fixing up the undercooked chicken

Well, at least tonight they were interesting leftovers….

I had three things I wanted to use tonight: my almost-cooked chicken, buttermilk, and lettuce. I got to thinking that even if my chicken wasn’t fully cooked, I could still do something to it. Something like… frying.

I cut up some of the leftover white meat as well as some bread into bite-sized pieces. Then, I prepared a dredge of flour, cayenne pepper, salt, garlic powder, and freshly ground black pepper. I set some chicken fat (leftover from stock makings a while back) and canola oil in an oven-safe pan over medium high heat. I put the chicken in the flour mixture, then the buttermilk, then the flour mixture again. Once the fats were plenty hot, I started frying. Use a splatter guard, if you ever attempt anything like this, because OW. You’ll probably want to use longer tongs than I did to turn the meat, because again, OW.

After the chicken was golden brown and lovely on both sides, I removed it to some paper towels. I turned the broiler on and threw the bread cubes in the hot pan, where they soaked up the lovely fat. Then, I put the pan under the broiler and waited for the bread to become those gorgeous croutons from last Sunday.

While that was going on, I washed and dried some romaine and mixed together some ingredients for a simple salad dressing (red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, tabasco, salt, pepper, and garlic powder). I removed the pan from the oven and added the croutons to the paper towels where the chicken was residing. I took the leftover fat and mixed that in with the salad dressing, then tossed it with the lettuce. On top, I put the chicken and croutons. Lots of yum. However, my amounts were a little off, and there wasn’t really enough lettuce to call it a salad. It was still damn good, though.

I know, kind of a rehash of last Sunday. I am really happy that I was able to find a use for that chicken. I thought I was eventually going to be throwing it out in all of it’s kind of gross under-cooked-ness.

blathering

Sorry I didn’t post yesterday. I was really tired.

Unfortunately, I haven’t made anything of real interest this week. Today I had highly-caffinated tea and a slice of banana cake for breakfast, pasta with sauce I made over the weekend for lunch, and a twice-baked potato for dinner. It’s an exciting life. The potatoes have been brilliant, though. I made them both last night and tonight. It’s basically the same thing as the minis, but using russets. It’s less annoying to scoop out only two potato halves rather than twenty. But now I’m out of potatoes, so I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow. Probably something involving the leftover chicken from Sunday. Perhaps I’ll make a salad again- no, I won’t, I’m out of lettuce. Hm.

Here endeth the stream-of-consciousness.

Cake or Bread? Hm.

This is the recipe for the Banana Cake I made yesterday. Every family’s got their own recipe that they hold dear, but I implore you, try this one out. Unless you screw it up by adding extra bananas like I did, it will turn out great. (In my family we call it Banana Cake instead of Banana Bread because it’s so moist, but it’s kind of halfway between the two. Sort of.)

So I had company!

Better late than never.

My friend R☆ came over and I made many things. First off, Banana Cake, from a recipe of my fraternal grandmother. Unfortunately, I fell victim to one of the pitfalls of baking- if you change the amounts of things, it won’t bake properly. I added an extra banana that I had swiped from my brother’s house earlier. The extra banana threw off the amount of moisture in the cake, and so it was undercooked when I pulled it from the oven. “Why didn’t you use the toothpick test?” you ask. Well, I have no toothpicks. And after searching through my apartment, I have nothing resembling a toothpick. It’s still good, mind you… it’s just a little gooey in places.

For dinner I made a chicken. I put it into a simple brine for an hour, then butterflied it, rubbed under the skin with garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then broiled it. Yeah, it burned a bit. I think my rack was a little too close to the broiler. So, first the skin was a wee blackened, and then… it too was underdone. Seriously, it tasted fine, and R☆ said it was good, but I was still a little ashamed of my work.

Alongside the chicken I made a salad. The croutons I made out of some cubed bread tossed in the remaining fat after the chicken was removed from the pan. These I broiled for a few more minutes until golden brown and EXTREMELY delicious. (I got this idea from Alton Brown’s book I’m Just Here for the Food.) The dressing was the leftover chicken fat, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, Tabasco sauce, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.

The star of the meal was definitely the croutons. I want to make those again. Actually, I want to make them now, just to snack on. Mm….

Potatoes!

Okay, so I made those potatoes again. And they were WONDERFUL. Time-consuming, but so good. An excellent appetizer.

One tip- when cutting the potatoes in half, cut them so they will stand up and be stable on the baking sheet. This will probably mean you’ll have a lot of long, shallow halves, which is in no way a bad thing. More surface area to brown.

Have you ever watched “Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee”?

If you haven’t, you should. You’ll be appalled. It’s terrible. It’s the worst thing ever. How this woman got a show on the Food Network is beyond me. The only good thing I can say about it is that it makes you feel wonderful about your own cooking skills, because no matter how bad a cook you are, if you at least put forth an effort you are better than this woman.

Earlier today, I was browsing through the forums of Television Without Pity. I love the thread for “Semi-Homemade” because it is full of remarkable vitriol. Apparently Sandra was on “The View” this morning. I, unfortunately, did not get a chance to see it, but one of the posters there did and wrote a recap. It’s hilarious.

Man, I’m full.

That’s a problem, trying a new recipe out and being the only one around to eat it. Well, I guess it didn’t have to be a problem. I could have saved the leftovers. But I wasn’t all that thrilled with how this turned out, so I knew I wouldn’t eat it if I stuck it in the fridge, and I don’t like throwing food out.

Anyway, these Parmesan Potato Bites I adapted from a recipe in Cooking Light. I find CL’s recipes are generally pretty good, especially if you use full-fat versions of whatever they call for and add more cheese. Or cream. Or butter. Basically, do whatever you can to unlighten them, and it’ll taste great.

These were tasty, but they were just more time-consuming than I wanted- I was looking for a good, easy appetizer for my parents and brother when they come over this Saturday. This, however, was my fault- the potatoes were underdone when I took them out of the water, so instead of broiling them, I baked them at 350 for half an hour, to try and get the potatoes themselves a little softer.