Macaroni and Cheese: A dish that is usually only ok when I make it.

Wherein Mr. Ullman cooks a meal that is not on his "A" list and has to take it seriously this time

Mac and Cheese is something that I am usually not going to write about. My Mac and Cheese, like its lowlife (mine anyway) brother known as stir-fry, is not something you should mention in polite company. In my extreme youth I knew a woman that did a damn good casserole. However, my stir-fry and Mac and Cheese are made for the same reason my mother made casseroles: It is hardy, somewhat tasty and, frankly, easy.

The other day I looked into my fridge and discovered very little in the way of supper. All meat and fish was frozen. Mac and Cheese was it for want of anything else.

So not being toasty, worse from drink or tired meant taking this seriously. There were veggies of various types available, one plain and one tasty pasta, garlic of course and various spices. Two types of cheese (actually three).Macaroni and Cheese

First I started the good pasta. It takes 18 minutes to finish so it had to be started first. While I was waiting for the long pasta to cook I finely chopped up two cloves of garlic, two stalks of celery, cilantro and Italian parsley with stems.  Added some apple cider vinegar for some zestiness. I mixed them all together and placed them in a Ziploc bowl and shook vigorously.

By this time the long cooking pasta was long enough along that I added the plain pasta and continued to boil. I sat down and had a beer.

Once the beer was complete I drained the pasta and put it into a mixing bowl. I then added the mixed stuff from the Ziploc bowl and tossed. Since I still had some pine nuts around I added them. I folded in some olive oil mayo I made earlier in the week for some tuna salad. I added two squirts of a mild horseradish sauce.

The two major cheeses were a mass market cheddar and a mass market Swiss. Both are tasty but nothing to write home about. I used my cheese grater to add some cheese to the bowl, tossed, added some more cheese and tossed again. Added a bit of dried Rosemary and a bit of dried Thyme. Put in some pepper oil a friend made for me and tossed again.

I turned the oven to 350 degrees and let it heat up. I put the mixed concoction into my Pyrex, grated some more cheese on top and, after noticing that I had a small bit of goat cheese, crumbed it on top. Put it in the oven and thirty minutes later I had a very tasty supper.

Serve with nothing. However, consider replacing the noodles with a baked potato.

Knives

I recently purchased a ceramic knife. A friend was praising these to heaven and, since I needed a paring knife, went ceramic. I am a believer and this same friend got me a larger ceramic knife for Christmas. These knives are terrificly sharp and keep their edge. Put a tomato on your counter for a day or two until it is soft. A ceramic knife will still go through it like butter and you can get extremely fine slices.

Cilantro. It does not taste like soap!

Wherein Mr Ullman attempts to remove the soap slander from the leafy green while Mr Broman panders to the "soapy"  intelligentsia.

Cilantro is apparently unloved mostly. I got some with my last organic box and, as is my habit, searched the web to see how to use it. The first hit was an NYT story about how it tasted like soap. The next three hits made the same observation. A search of Recipe Cilantro wasn't much more of help. So I posted on facebook.

A friend had some suggestions. While I didn't use any of the specific recipes I did get enough clues to wing it. So this is what I did.

First, boil a good pasta. In this case I used large Orzo pasta, specificity ARHEON pasta from 100% pure semolina. It is tasty but its real charm is in its cooking instructions: “In plenty of salted and boiling water add pasta and stirring occasionally.

Boil it for 18 minutes, drain it and serve.” Be prepared to have to scrape a fair amount of it out of pan when it is time to clean up.

The next step is to toast some pine nuts. Cast iron is your friend here. Put the pine nuts in a skillet, nude, no oil. Set the burner to low, you are toasting and it real easy to burn them rather then toasting them.

Once the pine nuts are toasted add the following to the skillet in this order:

1. Shrimp
2. Finely chopped green onions
3. Some snow peas
4. Chopped cilantro.
5. A chopped red radish.
6. Garlic, smashed
7. A bit of tomato
8. The pasta.
   
   
   

Add a small amount of oil and saute briefly. Move the skillet to an unheated part of the stove and let it sit ,covered, for a couple of minutes. Add a couple of squirts of lemon juice, mix and let sit for for another minute.

Serve with a good bread

This is one of those recipes that is quite tasty but not quite good enough. Should any of my readers (including the two spam bots from the EU) improve on it please let me know. 

P.S.  I haven't a clue what is up with the "Add a small amount of oil and saute briefly" section.  Tried to fix it twice and it didn't fix. Odd.

Stuffed Chicken and Chicken Salad

Wherein Mr. Ullman discusses the limitations of a whole fowl and Mr Broman draws a zombie chicken.

Fowl lends itself well to stuffing.  If you doubt this I suggest you
think about Thanksgiving.  While I do cook myself the occasional
Cornish hen this usually means a chicken breast.

The problem with a full bird is that it is very difficult not to waste a lot of it.  While you can use it both for dinner and lunch you have to devote your week to it. I rarely want to do this  so a chicken
breast it is-- two actually since I got a good deal and purchased four.  The second two were about to get freezer burn so you get a recipe and half here – the half being lunch over the next couple of
days.

Like two weeks ago this recipe includes Italian parsley.  I really cannot get enough of this stuff. It does not include kale which might be something of a relief to my six readers (Carl, my sister, maybe my
brother's wife, two unsuccessful spammers from the EU and myself.
There is a good reason why you don't see ads here.).

Ok, lets work the veggies and greens.  I took a half of tomato, a
goodly amount of the Italian parsley leaves and a shallot clove.
Roughly chop them all individually.  Put them all in the center of
your cutting board.  Vigorously chop them into finer bits so that they
mix up well.

Take the chicken breast you are going to eat tonight and slice it
through the center as described in my first post (a la chicken book).
Sprinkle some apple cider vinegar onto both sides. Put as much of the chopped veggies into the chicken as possible.  Close the book.

Take a  Pryex dish of suitable size and put some oil (dull vegetable
oil is fine here ) on the bottom of the dish.   Add a bit more of the
cider vinegar to the oil.  Note the word bit here.  If I were a
professional I would say “to taste” and it would still be a cop out.

Put the oven on broil and let it heat up.  Put both breasts into the
Pryex and use half whatever is leftover from the stuffing and put it
on the chicken breast you didn't stuff.  Cook for 15 minutes.

When the timer calls flip the chicken breasts over sprinkle a bit more
of the cider vinegar on the top (put the rest of the leftover stuffing
on the unstuffed breast).  Cook for ten more minutes and reduce the
heat to 350 while you spend five minutes steaming the asparagus and
making the salad (at 48 roughage isn't as amusing as it was when in
college).   Serve to yourself until you learn how to properly handle
apple cider vinegar.

By the way, the residue oil, chicken broth and cider can be used for a
great gravy but we will deal with this later.

So what to do with the second chicken breast?  Chicken salad for sandwiches!

Cut the chicken breast into strips and pull it apart.  It is usually a
good idea to do this the next day after the chicken has been cooked so
it has had time dry a bit in the frig.    Get a couple kosher dills
(vlasic stackers are my favorite) and chop to a desired thickness.
Cut up so celery and carrots!  Maybe a bit of fresh shredded garlic!
Hell, throw in a some of raisins!  Put this all into a mixing bowl,
add a squirt of a mild horseradish sauce and spoon in a tasty mild
mayo and fold, stir and worry until you have the desired consistency.
If you over do it add some cabbage to bring it back.

Place in the frig at least overnight, put on bread with a bit of
lettuce.  Make fun of your co-workers who went to Subway by noting
that anyone can be a foodie at lunch.  Lunch isn't something that you
share for Christ's sake.  It is simply about making something you
like.  How hard is that?  Be smug.  Share a bite if necessary.

More then you need to know about Pryex.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex  I offer this simply to prove that
Corning Glass was once as interesting at 3M was in the 1960's.

Btw, Every time I get a box of veggies I search for how to properly store them. I am thinking about starting a page devoted to links to proper storage.

Not feeling okey dokey? BROIL!

Wherein Mr. Ullman salutes the pork tenderloin in an odd way-- it is easy

Not a great week.  Basically spent most of it feeling vile and had no
real desire to eat.  However, one must.  So this is going to be a real
easy one.

I love pork tenderloin.  I was going to do a stuffing I love.  That
didn't happen.  I was going to do a sweet and sour sauce.  I didn't do
that either.

So what is easy?  How about a more or less straight-forward broil?  Sounds good.

So this is what I did.   I had some green and red kale.  I had some
mushrooms.  I had some baby leeks.  I had an orange.

So I chopped up the kale and the mushrooms.  I peeled the orange.  I
took a couple of slices from the orange and rub the tenderloin and
sprinkled some thyme on it.  I then took the kale, leeks, mushrooms
and two more orange slices into the blender. Hit chop.

By this time the oven should be about to broiling.  I rolled the pork
in the blended mixture and put into an over safe pan with a bit of
oil.  Whatever of the blended mixture that was leftover I tossed into
the pan.  Broiled for 15 minutes, Flipped and add some goat cheese on
the upside (goat cheese tends to toast rather then melt).  And I also
noticed I screwed up the rice which should give you an idea about how
bad I was feeling.

Served with a salad.

Not bad but it needs a little work.

Bell Peppers – They are actually botanically fruits which explains a lot!

Wherein the character of bell peppers are questioned

Bell peppers exist to offend no one. The choice of red, green or golden bells has more to do with your taste in colors then your taste in flavor. No one would mistake these things for apples.

But stuffing them does give them a bit of a shine. The bells really don't add anything but but are pleasant enough and seem to encourage better conversations between the other flavors. I know people who provide the same service at bars.

The base of the stuffing is important but a little experimentation will be your guide. I have used sausages, pulled pork and chicken with great success. Rice or potatoes work well. Tofu too.

I am going to use Bulgar wheat simply because I am eating to much meat recently. It is a friendly grain for someone who cooks for themselves. For the most part you use 2 parts of water to one part of wheat. This makes it easy to prepare as much Bulgar wheat as need. What makes Bulgar even more friendly it that it can be soaked rather then boiled.

One of the problems with a lot grains is the difficulty in using them without some waste. Short grain white rice is equally friendly ratio-wise (though not necessary tasty). Brown rice is a good example of the problem.

Take a look at the instructions on the back of the package of brown rice. One cup of rice, 2 ½ cups of water to make 3 ½ cups of rice. However, all I usually need is a ½ cup of rice. The rice to water ratio won't work in this case – most of the water will boil off before you can use it to simmer the rice. If you try to add more water there is a good chance you will add to much and end up with soggy rice. Not that big of a deal with rice since you can use it in a number of ways. Other grains are not so useful.

Cook the Bulgar wheat per the instructions on the package. I usually just soak it but that is a personal choice. Since I am going to make two peppers I would make about a half a cup raw, a full cup when the water is adsorbed.

Grab an apple and mince. Get a sweet onion (Walla Wallas are great) and finely chop up about a third of it. Take a couple of good tasting mushrooms and slice them. Mince some flat-leaf parsley and mix in a bit of cumin and rosemary. Take two cloves of garlic (or one clove of a shallot) and finely chop.

Get a pan and add some oil. Turn the knob to medium and allow it to heat up. Toss in the onion and mushrooms into the pan and saute for about four minutes. Toss in the garlic and let cook for about 30 seconds. Add in the parsley mixture and chase it around the pan for a lap. Place all the items, except the bell peppers, in a large bowl and mix heroically.

Heat the oven to 350f. Slice off the top of the peppers and remove the seeds. Fill the pepper about half way with the Bulgar wheat mixture, add some cheese (I would suggest a soft cheese), fill it most of the rest of the way, more cheese, and put a hat of the mixture on the final layer of cheese.

Place in the oven on a baking pan and cook until the tops are brown and the peppers are soft.

I usually eat with cottage cheese & oranges as the salad.

Roasted Garlic and the Breast

Wherein Mr Ullman professes his love for roasted garlic while Mr Broman appears to express some doubts.

Chicken breast. This isn't that sort of Blog.

There is nothing bad to be said about roasted garlic. I eat it alone. I spread it on crackers. I use it on salads. I have used it on fish, beef, pork, lamb, potatoes and corn. Should someone start a religion that worships roasted garlic I will be the first to the baptistry pool.

Let's start with roasting the garlic because this is where heaven is announced. This is the very definition of simple.

Heat your oven to 400 F.

Remove the outer layer of skin – the packaging so to speak – so that the individual cloves, still in their skins, are exposed.

Chop the top ¼ inch off the top of the cloves.

Drizzle olive oil on the heads of cloves. Don't over do it but make sure each clove is covered. By the way, feel free to go crazy here. I have used seed oils, nut oils, veggie oils. I have yet to meet a oil that that garlic didn't like.

Place the garlic into a muffin pan (or, if you are like me and view baking as someone else's problem, a cupped bit of aluminum foil).

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the cloves are soft.

Let those suckers cool enough to touch-- if you raise a blister it is to soon.

Reserve two cloves to be spread on wheat cracker or if you have a date – sorry about that, it is not that sort of blog (as an aside of you are blending it with mayo make certain the mayo is allowed to get to room temperature).

Create bread crumbs. I usually just toast some bread and crush it into fine chunks and dust. In this case I used whole wheat since I didn't want the bread fighting with the garlic.

Chop up some leeks, a bit of mint and mushrooms as finely as possible and toss them into a bowl with the bread crumbs. Throw is some thyme just for the hell of it. A zest would be good too but I haven't tried that yet. Toss.

I should have mentioned that this should all be done while the garlic was roasting. However, I got distracted.

While the garlic is still warm squeeze the garlic out its skin and rub it on the boneless chicken breast . I use about two cloves per side and only leave a few chunks behind. Put the breading mix into a plastic bag, throw in the chicken breast and shake vigorously so that the chicken if fully covered.

Heat the oven back to 400 F. Cook for thirty minutes, 15 on aside. I usually serve with coleslaw for no particular reason.

 

Halibut that (Or you have my phone number damnit!)

There are certain people in my life who I find breathtaking interesting but with whom the relationship is confined, slightly creepily, to a certain location. There are other folks who, on brief occasions, I wish were bit more location specific.

I know a 46 year old who is brilliant, smart, well read, funny, outlandishly beautiful and (damn it) a lesbian. She also has a weakness for appearing at my doorstep a couple times a year with a small group of people and an entree. She doesn't call in advance.

 

So this is a story of such a visit. Halibut was the dish. Skinned thankfully but one large fillet.

Unexpected fish is something of a pain. Bring me unannounced lamb, pork or beef and I can wipe up something up regardless of the state of my larder. With care, something that tastes good on pork will taste good lamb or beef. This isn't really true with fish. 

Fish is all about textures. Throw a tilapia into boiling water with a good selection of herbs and I am with you. Do the same with salmon or trout and I'll not only pity your guests but I am likely to hunt you down and make the last hours of your life notable.

When I have guests over I will usually do a recipe mainly because the quantity of the food involved. If I want to wing it I would cook something that has individual servings like pork chops. No big deal about making sure the meat is not going to taste wildly different on different areas. Each has a pork chop and I can do each pork chop the same way.

Halibut is a shared dished so I would usually do a recipe. This assumes that the halibut and three diners don't show up out of the blue. It assumes you have some time for prep and for shopping.

So it was a time to open some wine and give the fridge a cold, hard look. There were some onions, some kale and some other very sharp veggies and roots. Halibut is a sweet fish so you don't want to overpower it. However, I did have a good supply of fruits. 

This is what I did. I cut up a Honeygold grapefruit and put it off to the side. I also vigorously chopped up two mandarin oranges, canned pineapple (eek), a bit of mango,two green, red or yellow peppers and put them off on a different side. I gave the avocado a serious looking at and decided to pass (ripeness issues).

Most fish cooks fast so you have to prep things before you start cooking the fish. I took the mandarin oranges, pineapple and mango and put them in a mixing bowl. I added some lemon juice ( a couple of squirts), a bit of chives and some lime zest. For some shapeness I added three cocktail onions that were drained, rinsed and chopped finely. I added a dash of oregano simply because there was no reason not to add it to the dish. Thought about some honey and decided to pass again. I tossed this together.

I got out a baking dished. I took the Honeygold grapefruit and squeezed some juice on both sides of the fish. Then I took some grapeseed oil and rubbed it on the fish. I placed the fish into baking dish and peeled the skin off the remaining grapefruit slices and placed it around, not on, the fish. Heated the oven to 350 F and tented the dish with some aluminum foil to slightly hold in the essence of the grapefruit slices.

You should cook the halibut for about five minutes (it depends on the thickness, see the internet). For the last two minutes stick the mandarin orange, chives, pineapple et al into the oven in a covered dish to heat that mixture slightly.

Divide the fish and put the fruit mixture on top. On the side, offer sour cream with a some grated cucumber, dill weed and minced garlic just in case. The veggie in this case was lightly fried asparagus (that will be addressed later) -- the fiber was wild rice.

Just a note about the art.  Carl Broman did the drawings.  With a bit of luck this will become a feature. I certainly hope so.