Stovetop Mac & Cheese

Hello, February and hello readers. The blog has been quiet not because I have nothing to post but because I am having a lot of issues with WordPress. Not only is the new editor annoying to use, but I am experiencing (rage-inducing) technical difficulties which has meant that I am losing posts and not able to edit posts in drafts. I’ve lost two posts in the last month (one of which was January favourites – I’ll try again for February). I don’t have a lot of extra time to write these days, so it’s very deflating to lose them. My new way of writing is to compose in Word and then copy and paste into WordPress. Hopefully this is a better system.

Ah, mac & cheese. One of my favourite meals! My friend K has been telling me for a while that I need to try Smitten Kitchen’s stovetop mac & cheese. So a couple of weeks ago I finally did. It seemed like an easy meal (Deb proclaims “quick” and “essential”). I ended up using a combination of mature cheddar and Parmesan. I also added bacon because we had some to use up and … why not. The most labourious part of the dish is making the béchamel sauce. I always get a little nervous making béchamels, but I find the trick is to add the milk in slowly to avoid lumps.

This pairs really well with a crisp side salad. It wasn’t my favourite mac & cheese ever, but it was satisfying for sure (particularly if you like a really creamy sauce), and fairly straightforward to make!

Buffalo Chicken & Quinoa Bake

My friend M. recently had a brilliant suggestion: a virtual double date. She and her husband, in western Canada, had brunch, and we — 8 hours away — had supper! It was such a great idea and worked perfectly, thanks to technology! 🙂

After some thought I decided to make this quinoa bake, which had been on my to-make list for a while. Like so many recipes on the Half Baked Harvest blog, the recipe seemed the perfect combination of healthy and indulgent — quinoa, chicken, broccoli, kale, with a fairly rich sauce!

It came together quite easily. I was working with raw rather than leftover chicken so I started by poaching the breasts in stock (my preferred way of cooking chicken breast). The only modifications I made were leaving out the blue cheese (which I cannot eat while pregnant), and cutting down slightly on the other types of cheeses and hot sauce. Overall this was a successful dish. I combined two hot sauces (one of which is really, really hot!) and it was a little on the hot side for me, but still really tasty. I think this would freeze well so am considering making it again to have on hand for when baby arrives!

 

 

Cheddar & Spring Onion Biscuits

Hello again. It’s been 2 months since we moved, and I only now feel that I am slightly closer to  pausing to take a breath — sort of. The blog’s been quiet, for many reasons. Life has been chaotic, sad, and tumultuous lately. Perhaps for that reason as well as others that I can’t quite pin down, I haven’t really felt like cooking or baking much at all. I’m even less excited about cooking in my new (much better!) kitchen. Weird. Many nights I don’t even feel like making supper, which is odd for me.

I’m not putting any pressure on myself to make new stuff, or share it, so I can’t guarantee what updates will look like over the next couple of weeks/months. But I can assure you I’m not finished blogging.

Not feeling like cooking or baking doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not doing it, but it’s more haphazard. A couple of weeks ago I bought buttermilk with intentions to make something completely different (an apple and cinnamon loaf). I never made it, but didn’t want the buttermilk to go to waste. Instead I used it for these biscuits.

I made these an extremely lazy way. Instead of rolling out the dough, folding it, and then cutting out biscuits, as the recipe suggests, I simply mixed all of the ingredients together, but scooped out globs of the dough, flattened it slightly, and baked it as-is. They look messier, but taste the same.

Verdict: These biscuits were not as good as the amazing zucchini ones. In fact I found the inclusion of the spring onions didn’t quite work as well as I thought it would. They were fine, especially toasted with some butter, but in comparison didn’t wow me as much.

Wings Part 2: Polenta & Blue Cheese

My second installment of my wings project posts is these, found in one of my favourite cookbooks, Best Recipes Ever from Canadian Living and the CBC (LOL at the title, but it actually is a great collection).

These were better than the first batch but still not the holy grail of wings. The good thing is that they were a lot more flavourful and had better texture than round 1. You’ll see that the original recipe calls for cornmeal. I used a combination of polenta and fine breadcrumbs. The spices and blue cheese definitely made for a deeper, more savoury taste.

The issues were 1) the batter did not perfectly stick to the all of the wings, as you can see from the photo below, and 2) the sauce (buttermilk and blue cheese, to which I added a bit of mayo) really needed to be blended. Simply mixing it up did not spread the cheese around evenly. I’m also not sure that it was the best combination — I love blue cheese sauce but this definitely was missing something.

Verdicts:
H: 7/10
K: 6/10

Smoked Haddock Soufflé

Regular readers know that I share the good and the bad and the ugly on this blog. This particular dish falls somewhere between bad and ugly. It wasn’t a total fail — we still ate it, but neither of us really enjoyed it.

I wrote in January that H. & I like to try to cook together at least once on the weekends and that this requires advance planning because of our current living situation. Originally I’d planned a haddock chowder for this particular Saturday. However, when I saw this recipe from Thomasina Miers in the Guardian, I decided to make it instead. Lesson: always go with your gut instincts!

We made an error in cooking this which was part of the reason it went so badly. Instead of placing the dish in a water bath with boiling water, we used cold. This meant that it needed a lot more time in the oven. We ended up eating 45 minutes later than we thought we would. Aside from that, we just didn’t really like this dish. It was my first time making a soufflé and I’m not convinced that the combination of fish, cheese, and egg worked. Though I love haddock I will stick to other forms and will definitely not be making this again.

Pork, Tomato, & Feta “Baklava”

As I have mentioned several times before, I don’t do nearly as much cooking as I once did, now that I am living in two places. An exception to this came recently when I decided to make this “baklava,” from a recent edition of delicious magazine (it is a Sabrina Ghayour recipe, previously featured on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen which is where I have linked the recipe from). This is definitely a weekend project — preferably a cozy Saturday with a glass of wine, the paper, and some nice background music.

Although this dish takes a lot of time, it is not at all difficult and there is very little “fuss” involved. The most difficult part is assembling it, but even that is very easy. So, don’t be put off — what this requires most of all is time, not effort.

I bought a lovely pork shoulder at our local butcher — I have to admit that it was a bit unfortunate to cook it and then not just eat it right away and bury it in the baklava. Next time I buy it I’m not doing anything to it!

The recipe called for fennel, which I left out because I don’t like the taste if it. I think it’s complex enough without it though. The end result looks impressive and was really tasty — the honey means it has a tiny taste of sweetness. My only bugbear was that the sauce ended up a touch dry for me.

Zucchini, Cheddar, & Parmesan Scones

I’ve been trying to write this post for well over a month now. It is an end of summer recipe and we’re deep into fall. Nonetheless, I’ve been determined to post it, simply because these are so good.

The recipe comes from the summer edition of Bon Appetit magazine (note that the url is from a different website but the recipe is the same), though the scones originate from Flora Bar in New York. It’s actually a recipe for Gruyere and zucchini scones: I bought Gruyere but then … oops… ended up eating it all before I got around to making this — confessions of a cheese addict. Instead, I improvised and used cheddar and Parmesan.

After so many years of food blogging you start to run out of ways to describe good food. These are, quite simply, really really good. Delicious, melt-in-your mouth scones. It’s one of the best recipes I’ve tried in a while. The zucchini keeps them moist, yet the melted cheese makes them a bit crispy. They’re not difficult to make and look impressive, so would be a great brunch dish or side. Warm, with a bit of butter — these are perfection.

Cauliflower & Cheese Croquettes

They had me at croquette. And cheese. This recipe appeared in the May 2017 edition of delicious magazine and it immediately appealed to me. And boy was it good. The texture was perfect — crispy on the outside, soft, creamy, gooey on the inside. Sooo tasty. Serve with mayo or Greek yogurt dipping sauce. Serve with a side salad.

Here’s how to make them. This makes enough for 2 people for 2 meals, so quite a bit.

1. Chop a head of cauliflower into florets. Preheat over to 200C, and roast florets with a bit of olive oil and seasoning, for 20 minutes.
2. When the cauliflower is roasted, whizz half of them, with 150ml milk, using a food processor or stick blender. Roughly chop the remaining cauliflower and set aside.
3. Make the sauce: melt 50g butter in a saucepan and stir in 75g plain flour [I found I needed a bit more better]. Gradually whisk in 350ml milk and stir to make a smooth, thick sauce.
4. Add the following to a mixing bowl: the sauce, 100g grated cheddar, a pinch of nutmeg, 2 spring onions (chopped), and 2tbsp olive oil, and all of the cauliflower. Cool, and then chill for 2 hours. The magazine recommends using cling film and allowing it to touch the top of the mixture to prevent a skin forming.
5. Get ready to form the croquettas: in bowl 1, beat 2 eggs; in bowl 2, mix 150g Panko breadcrumbs with 30g Parmesan. With floured hands, roll spoonfuls of the mixture into balls, flatten slightly, and then roll in egg and then breadcrumbs. I did this as I went, batch by batch.
6. Time for frying: the recipe recommends 1L sunflower oil. I did not use that much (probably about half). You want the oil hot — 180C on a digital thermometer (or until a piece of bread turns golden in 30 seconds).
7. Fry the croquettes for a couple of minutes on each side. Leave to dry on a paper-toweled plate.

Cauliflower & Broccoli Cheddar Bake

Soon after I posted saying I’m not cooking much new…I have a couple of posts in the pipeline.

This is like a mac & cheese except solely with vegetables. I’m not sure about elsewhere, but cauliflower rice is everywhere here: even in tiny shops it’s available, pre-chopped. I picked some up on a whim and for a couple of days mulled over what to do with it. Since we all know that I love cheese…it had to be something cheesy in the end. I loosely adapted this recipe.

I didn’t have buffalo sauce (it doesn’t seem to exist here? Maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough), so made the recipe a simple “mac and cheese,” with bechamel sauce, cheese (mature cheddar and Parmesan), and “pasta” (vegetables). The original recipe is with shrimp, but, again, I omitted this.

I won’t lie: this was not the tastiest or most thrilling dish I’ve ever made. In hindsight I would have added some sharp blue cheese to it, and if I make it again I think I’ll do that. Nevertheless, it wasn’t dull or bland — I had it with a side salad and they worked well together. I don’t think I’d go to the trouble of mincing the cauliflower by hand to make this though — some shortcuts are worth it.

 

Gnocchi with Mushroom & Kale Cream Sauce

Welcome 2017
Happy new year readers! I’m starting 2017 off not with a ‘new year new you’ green smoothie or broth, but with some comfort food. It hasn’t exactly been an easy slide into 2017 for me, although I knew it wouldn’t be. My 2016 ended with a whirlwind of change: I got a full-time job! After 4 years as a student/very low-paid adjunct lecturer, I am very pleased about this development. However…the job involves me spending my weeks in the north of England and my weekends in London, which will radically change the way I live plan and cook meals. I start next week, and am currently in a stressful fog of marking, flat-hunting, and preparing for this new job. As ever, being in the kitchen remains a form of solace.

Obviously, the blog is about to undergo a bit of a change of focus, and probably less frequent posting in the short term. I will be cooking in a totally new way and the blog will reflect that. Hopefully you will still want to continue reading. 😉

The dish
Incidentally, I had never bought gnocchi until a couple of months ago (though have made it before). I picked up a couple of packages, thinking it would be a good to throw together on evenings when I didn’t have anything planned.

I can’t find the exact recipe I used online, but this one is similar. Although it has the taste of a dish that took much longer, this can easily be made in under half an hour. The sauce is made from sauteed mushrooms, cream (~150ml), stock (~150ml), thyme, sage, and salt and pepper. The original recipe called for spinach, but I used kale instead as I prefer a sturdier leaf in this type of dish. I also modified the cheese – the recipe called originally for 75g of Gorgonzola, but I used Stilton, and much less of it, and then topped with Parmesan.

Somehow this dish manages to be comforting but not too cloying or heavy, despite the cream. It’s a great one to throw together quickly — tasty, easy, satisfying.