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Ultimate Beef Macaroni and Cheese

Stuart Broz — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:54:33 +0000

Yesterday, I made a pot roast.

(I also, incidentally, made some of the best broccoli ever, but we'll talk about that another time.)

Arguably, the best thing about pot roast is the jus left over. It can become an awesome sauce, gravy, or whatever. I'll occasionally save some to add a boost to soups.

Today, I used the leftover sauce to make the world's beefiest mac and cheese.

Did you know that you can cook pasta like you would risotto? You can. I did. With that sauce. What resulted were deeply-flavored, toothsome noodles with a strong beef flavor with a bit of starchy sauce left over. Big time umami bomb here.

I tossed this in a oven dish with some shredded cheese, half a pint of heavy cream, and a couple of eggs. Baked it for about 25 minutes at 350, and ended up with a totally nonstandard, but totally tasty, beef mac and cheese.

Use Leeks as a Vegetarian and Kosher Sausage Casing

Stuart Broz — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:51:40 +0000

I read a lot of food blogs. One of the original purposes of this blog was for it to be a place to collect the best ideas from them. I need to do that more. Today, over at playing with fire and water, I saw just such a great idea: using leeks to make vegetarian sausage casings. Think about it: Leeks, like onions, have rings. Leeks, unlike onions, are long. Thus, the rings form a series of concentric tubes. Cut off either end, and what do you have? Tubes. Perfect for stuffing things in. Well, honestly, leeks are a bit stiff. You probably want to boil or steam them first, so that they gain some flexibility and can be tied off at either end once you've stuffed them. There are a lot of things I like about this idea:

It's vegetarian (not that I make a lot of vegetarian sausage)
It's kosher (some of my friends keep kosher)
It's a sausage casing that could add a nice complementary taste/texture to your sausage.

I'll definitely have to try this one and report back, but it looks like a winner.

New Year's Eve Special: Carbonated Champagne Ice Cream

Stuart Broz — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 06:02:02 +0000

I'm not certain why I decided that I needed to make champagne ice cream for New Year's Eve.

It was a good idea. No. A great idea. Definitely great.

Crimfan suggested that it be expanded into a grape-centric menu. Unfortunately, that was not to be - I just got back into town late Wednesday, and I wouldn't have much time for menu-planning and such. I was actually a little worried that I wouldn't be able to find some dry ice in time. Fortunately, Harris Teeter carries it (and I now live within reasonable distance of Harris Teeter).

Dry ice?

Yup. How else am I supposed to carbonate ice cream?

So this was my (remarkably quick and easy) project tonight.

Step One: Create Champagne Flavoring

I took a few cups of sparkling wine and reduced them down. I didn't want to overdo the flavor here. I just wanted enough for it to be recognizable. Once I got it down to about 1/3 cup, I stuck it in the freezer to cool down for a few minutes.

You lose the carbonation here, but that's OK. You'll get it back. Yes, I probably could have just used some wine. Given that the carbonation was going away, it didn't need to be sparkling.

Step Two: Make the Ice Cream Base

This was easy. I just took

2 cups of heavy cream
1 cup of half and half
3/4 cup of sugar

and mixed them until the sugar dissolved. You don't want to overdo the mixing here and accidentally end up with butter or something. Once the sugar is dissolved, I add in the no-longer-sparkling wine syrup and mix it a touch more.

Step Three: Crush the Dry Ice

This was the tricky bit. I tried to use a paper bag and hammer, but the paper bag didn't hold up. At all. I ended up moving to a mortar and pestle. This worked much better, but probably wasn't the safest method. You should be more careful than I am when using dry ice. You probably want about 2 cups of crushed dry ice. If you have extra, you can add some water and generate a bunch of fog that is great for freaking out your cats.

Step Four: Freeze the Ice Cream

Add the dry ice a bit at a time, while mixing. The dry ice will sublimate (go from solid to gas) a lot - you'll have that wonderful dry ice fog all over your kitchen and you won't be able to see what you are doing. That's OK. It will clear up after a moment... and you'll see that your ice cream base is bubbling

Keep adding the dry ice a bit at a time and mixing until the stuff freezes. The mixing will get noticeably harder (even with a stand mixer). Once it does, you're probably done. If you overmix it, you'll probably lose the carbonation... so don't do that (unless you want normal ice cream - this is a totally reasonable/simple method for making normal ice cream).

Step Five: Enjoy

OK. I put most of mine in the freezer for tomorrow. I'm not actually sure if the carbonation will keep until tomorrow. I'm hoping so. We'll see.

I did taste some, though, and it was pretty darn tasty.

Update:

The ice cream went over very well. It definitely lost some carbonation over 24 hours, but there was just enough of it left to make it clearly recognizable as champagne ice cream.

Cooking with Eggnog

Stuart Broz — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:06:41 +0000

'Tis the season to find eggnog in your fridge.

Truth be told, I never have a problem finishing eggnog off... unless you count "too quickly" as a problem. Still, it is (barely) conceivable to me that someone might find themselves with too much eggnog.

It is more conceivable to me that someone might say, "I like eggnog. What can I do with it besides drink it (not that there's anything wrong with that).

This is the situation I found myself in the other day. I responded (as I often do) by turning to the ingredient list. Eggnog is basically milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, and some flavorings. To me, this means I could easily use it in anything where I wanted sweet, eggy, milk. Custards and french toast are obvious. Rice pudding. Bread pudding. Various cakes. Cheesecake. Pancakes. Waffles. Oatmeal.

None of these seemed to really excite me, though. I think they were just too close to eggnog. They were things eggnog practically belonged in... If I saw an eggnog cheesecake somewhere, I might think it sounded good, but I wouldn't say it sounded interesting.

Then it hit me.

Fried chicken.

I have to admit, I'm not very good at fried chicken. I don't deep fry things often, and the whole process of coating things usually results in a frustrating (if tasty) mess. Also, I burn myself.

Still, I was excited by my idea and chose to press forward. I didn't do anything unusual. I let the chicken marinate in the eggnog a bit and then used it as I would egg in breading the chicken. The result was a success. The chicken, as expected, was fairly sweet... but not overly so. The eggnog I used wasn't overly spiced, and the flavors that were there complimented the chicken fairly well, particularly with the added crunchy texture.

Eggnog

Chicken

Deep-frying

Gorgonzola-pecan chicken and orzo

Stuart Broz — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:55:04 +0000

Tonight's dinner was fairly simple, but quite tasty. I took a couple of chicken breasts, sliced them up, and sauteed them with butter until they were beginning to get nicely browned. While they were cooking I added 2/3 of a medium shallot and a handful of pecans. While that was going, I lightly toasted some orzo in a sautee pan, added the rest of the shallot, and doused it with some pecan liquor. Then I poured in some boiling water, salted it, and let it simmer until done. I added the drained orzo to the chicken. The result was very brown, so I decided to add a bit of frozen spinach. (I'd have used fresh baby spinach if I had it. I didn't. The frozen stuff isn't bad as an accent, and it is handy to keep around when you want a bit of extra green in a dish. Lastly, I stirred in some crumbled gorgonzola. The result? Pretty darn tasty. The trick here was balancing sweet and salty, while emphasizing those strong flavors from the Maillard reaction and the toasted orzo. I served this with Brussels sprouts, because... well... because Brussels sprouts are awesome.

Grocery Adventures: a minor diversion

Stuart Broz — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:03:39 +0000

Sometimes, when I'm in the grocery store, I look at what other people have in their carts and imagine what they are going to make... or what I could make with what they have. On occasion, this leads to good ideas. Other time, not so much. Yesterday, the woman in front of me in line had nothing but:

frozen pie crusts
a bottle of hot sauce (a brand I was unfamiliar with)
a bag a onions (yellow. maybe sweet. I couldn't tell.)

Clearly (or so I imagine) these things were meant to be used together in a spicy caramelized onion pie. At a minimum, all she'd need to add would be pantry items like butter and eggs. I'm not the only one who does this sort of thing, am I?

Grocery Adventures

Inspiration

It's been a while

Stuart Broz — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 07:17:44 +0000

The last year has been a busy one for me. I got married a bit over a year ago. My duties at work have been expanding. I moved (again). What I haven't done, is blog. That's going to change. I made some necessary updates to the code that runs this site. I'm redesigning it, too, but I didn't want to wait to finish that to get back to blogging.

Yet Another Episode of "Obvious In Retrospect"

crimfan — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 19:00:56 +0000

Reuben

A while back I noted something about cheese storage. Here's another one:

Don't press a reuben unless you've really, truly dried the sauerkraut well. Generalizing this result is left as an exercise for the reader.

Steel Cut Oats: Worth the Hype?

crimfan — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 16:12:19 +0000

Yes, absolutely, the fact that they take a half hour to cook is irrelevant.

0% (0 votes)

No, they're really not THAT great.

0% (0 votes)

Oats are for horses, why would I eat them?

0% (0 votes)

Other (add a comment).

0% (0 votes)

Total votes: 0

Great Toast Sans Toaster

crimfan — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:33:56 +0000

Toast

Toaster

I don't own a toaster. I haven't had one for a long time for a number of reasons, but perhaps the main one is counter space, or rather lack thereof. (I don't own a microwave either.) Thus a lot of things people usually do with a dedicated device I do with a pan and the stove. Toasting is one. Here's the best way I've come up with, after trying many methods, most obvious the broiler. Take a frying pan, put it on medium low heat. Put some butter or olive oil in the bottom of the pan and place the bread in it, making sure not to crowd the pan. Place another pan on top (I use my cast iron for this). Optional to put a piece of foil between the top pan and the bread. The top pan acts as a lid but also gently presses the bread into the cooking surface. Check occasionally as you don't want to burn the bread. The first side takes about three to five minutes. It will be time to flip when the bread gets browned on the bottom side and is otherwise soft from the natural steam. When you flip turn the heat off. There will be plenty of residual heat in the system to finish the other side of the bread. This is great if you cooked something in the pan first and want to get the flavor into the bread. For instance, if you cooked bacon in the pan, remove most of the grease, leaving behind perhaps a tablespoon, and fry the bread in the pan. It won't be greasy, but it will taste quite intensely of bacon. Edit: I guess in retrospect this should be obvious. A toaster is a unitasker, after all.