Mac'n'cheese

My friend Logan usually just comes over to play games on Sundays, as usual. However, I couldn't make up my mind tonight and I was running out of time. Usually, I have this planned out, but things have been insane lately as far as scheduling goes.
Safe to say, I asked another friend what I should do. He suggests mac'n'cheese. I tell everyone, and offer an opening for them to suggest things to go with it, and Logan jumps on the ability to make mac'n'cheese.

From what I saw, he did the following:


Add a cup and a half of condensed milk to an egg. Mix the heck out of this. Note: do this before making the roux.


Boil and cook your noodles of choice (enough to fill a large saucepan). Since this is mac'n'cheese, perhaps you shouldn't use spaghetti. This is up to you, dear cook. Eventually, when applicable, drain them and set them aside so the hot water doesn't make them mushy.


Make a butter-based roux from a stick of unsalted butter -- much like when I made the gumbo. You're basically lightly browning (see: malaise) a fat, such as different oils or butter. This is done on medium heat so things will melt correctly. Note: this isn't hard. Just doing boil it and you'll be fine.
While this is going, add about a half of a cup of milk (or was it a third? I doubt it'll change things much).
After this is mixed together, slowly add about a half of a pound of shredded cheese. We used a colby jack mix, but this is also up to you. It's your mac'n'cheese. If you like it sharp, then use sharp cheddar. If you like it light, use mozzarella or Swiss. If you like it smoky, use Gouda. This cheese should be added SLOWLY until it starts to thicken and become sticky, but not to the point where it readily hardens if cooled. The whole time you're doing this, stir with a whisk.

When the cheese sauce is melted, add a teaspoon or so of parsely, oregano and seasoned garlic salt -- or some salt and some more of that garlic you may have chopped for garlic bread, or minced garlic from a jar, or what have you. Just put garlic in it. Stir.

Put the noodles in a casserole pan. Put the two sauces in it, the white-egg sauce first. Lightly wiggle the pan so the white sauce spreads evenly, then follow by topping the noodles with the cheesy sauce.Top with more cheese to create a light cheesy-crust, or with cheese and bread crumbs if desired.
Top the pan with foil and cook at 350 for 12 minutes. Remove the foil and cook again for another twenty minutes or so, or until the cheese at the top is at the consistency you like.
Take out and serve.

Tonight: Garlic bread

• There are two parts to this: make the bread, then slice the bread and add a topping.
• As found here:  Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/bread-machine-garlic-bread-107933#ixzz1ktop2aHl
• To make:
• 1 cup warm water (110 degrees F)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon powdered milk
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried parsley
• 3 teaspoons minced garlic or 2 teaspoons garlic powder (I minced up about 5-10 cloves, so this is up to you about how much you want. If you love garlic like we do, then 3 ts is just not going to cut it.)
• 3 cups bread flour
• 2 teaspoons active dry yeast (I put in a packet. My bread keeps falling and I keep changing things to see what its issue is)

A few good shakes of the following, each: dried oregano, basil, marjoram, and a small shake of lemon peel. 

Directions:

1. 1
   Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer.
2. 2
   Select Basic Bread cycle; press Start.

Or... Put in appropriate pans, knead away, let it sit and rise for about 45 minutes, then bake at 350 for about an hour and a half or until it's the crust you'd want. 




To top:


Chop up a junk load more garlic. Add more seasonings of choice, as well as olive oil. Eye this to your liking and be sure to remember it may cover a lot of slices. Add butter from the fridge and microwave until it melts. Add this to slices of your freshly baked bread and allow to broil in the oven for a few minutes, until it's as crispy as you like. Serve with your yummy meal.

Won-ton Soup Recipe

It says this is usually served as a snack. Knowing how the crowd eats, though, we won't need much more than that anyway. I did dessert last week, so munchies are up to everyone else this time.


Says it serves 4.

• About one cup, generous amount, of chopped pork
• 1/2 cup minced shelled shrimp
• 1 ts light brown sugar 
• 1 tb rice wine or sherry 
• 1 tb light soy sauce
• 1ts minced fresh ginger root
• 24 ready made won-ton wrappers
• about 3 cups of stock
• finely chopped scallions for garnish

1: In a bowl, thoroughly mix the pork and the shrimp with the sugar, rice win, soy sauce, scallions and ginger; set aside for about 30 minutes to blend the flavors.
2: Place about 1 ts of the pork mixture in the center of each won-ton wrapper.
3: Wet the edges of each filled won-ton wrapper with a little water and press them together with your fingers to seal. Fold each bundle over.
4: To cook, bring the stock to a heavy boil in a wok. Add the won-tons and boil for 4-5 minutes. Season with the soy sauce and add the scallions.
5: Transfer to bowls and serve hot.








As seen from Chinesefood.about.com, here's how one can make won-ton wrappers. It's not that hard, and I'll be making my own because I'm too lazy to go to Greenville to see if the Asian markets have any. It's just flour dough, guys, it's not that bad. =)





This recipe yields about 24 wonton wrappers.
Prep Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour
Ingredients:


1 egg
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 to 1/2 cup water, as needed
Extra flour as needed
Preparation:


Lightly beat the egg with the salt. Add 1/4 cup water.


Sift the flour into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the egg and water mixture. Mix in with the flour. Add as much of the remaining water as necessary to form a dough. (Add more water than the recipe calls for if the dough is too dry).


Form the dough into a ball and knead for about 5 minutes, or until it forms a smooth, workable dough. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll out until very thin, and cut into 3 1/2-inch squares. Store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator or freezer until ready to use.

Recipe: Thai Chicken and Noodle

I loosely followed a recipe Kevin wanted -- he doesn't like coconut though, and to those that like coconut it's that which makes the soup.

My ingredients were as follows:

• 5 chicken thighs
• 4 garlic cloves (we love garlic)
• About a tablespoon and a half of cayenne powder
• About a tablespoon of powdered tumeric
• A couple/few chile-type peppers of choice (to keep up with your preference of heat; I used garden ones, myself)
• 8 cups of chicken broth (hot)
• About 3 cups of water
• Roughly 2 tablespoons olive oil
• A bunch of fresh cilantro
• A box of noodles (I used a whole box of spaghetti noodles)
• About a quarter cup, or more, of coconut 
• A cup of green onion or scallions
• A huge squirt of lemon juice, to taste (or lime if you want)
• Thyme leaves
• 4 big fork fulls of crunchy peanut butter (I'm NOT measuring peanut butter.. it's not worth it)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup of shredded carrot
• 1-1and1/4 cup cream coconut (I didn't have this available today.)

1. Heat half your oil in a frying pan, if you're like me and you have all your chicken frozen. Put the frying pan on medium or so, add the chicken and let it simmer with the lid. Chop things up in the process.
2. When the chicken is about cooked, add as much thyme as you'd like. I was liberal; I have a lot of thyme left over. Dump some salt and/or pepper onto it, keeping in mind that it's going to compete with about 10 cups of fluid as well as other things..
3. Heat the rest of the oil in your soup pan. Golden up the garlic. Then, add the chicken, with spices, and let it fry for a couple minutes.
4. Sprinkle the creamed coconut into the hot chicken stock and stir until it dissolves. Or, just add both in with the chicken, I doubt it matters and it saves a pan. Up to you. Add the lemon/lime juice, peanut butter and noodles (it says thread egg noodles. I obviously used spaghetti. PF Changs uses spaghetti type noodles, too, so don't judge me.)
5. Add the shredded carrot, and just about everything else other than scallions/green onion, and the cilantro. Cover the pan and simmer for 15 minutes.
6. In a dry pan, heat the shredded coconut and the cut up peppers until the coconut browns lightly. Make up some bowls, add this coconut mixture, and eat it -- immediately. It's FANTASTIC with the coconut!

Indian Beef and Berry

Okay, for one, I've noted a lack of my (preferred) spices. That is, this soup book lacks generally any spices at all except the occasional thyme sprig or bay leaf. That being said, I found this soup to be pretty mild but widely acceptable.
Also, I didn't go by the recipe as much as I should have. It's my man's fault! So don't blame me. I asked for stew-beef and he gave me ground beef, but, then again, at the price of meat I was okay with it.

If using ground beef, and it's anything like the one I used, be sure to let it cook for a while with some extra water to soften it all up. The recipe really does lend to tender meat, and ground beef is a bit chewy and resistant to be the texture it should. Keep in mind, too, that this generally makes your house smell like sausage and you may find yourself feeling like eating breakfast for lunch.

The recipe is as follows:

2 tablespoons veggie oil (I use olive for things like this)
1 pound TENDER BEEF STEAK. Or, if you're me, then ground beef.
2 onions, finely sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 quart good beef stock or bouillon
1/2 teaspoon salt, if desired (that's your choice)
1 cup fresh huckleberries, blueberries or blackberries, smashed up some (I attacked mine in a small bowl with a shot glass. It works well.)
1 tablespoon honey (Go local!)

1: Heat the oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan (the one you've been using for any of these other recipes) until almost smoking. Add the steak and brown on both sides over medium-high heat. Remove the steak and set it aside.
2: Lower the heat to low and add the sliced onions and butter to the pan. This will smell fantastic with the beef still looming in the air. Stir well, scraping up all the meat juices. Cook over low heat for 8-10 minutes or until the onions are soft. (This made everyone in the house melt. I swear it was this step that made them almost run me down to get to the finished product.)
3: Add the beef stock or bouillon, and salt, and bring to a boil while stirring often. Stir in the mashed berries and the honey and let simmer for 20 minutes.
4: Meanwhile, cut the steal into bite-sized slivers. Taste the soup and add more salt or honey as you see fit. Add the steak to the pan and let simmer for 30 seconds, stirring the whole time. Serve when desired.

Orange cupcakes.

Homemade icing :D

If you're like me and you have ground beef, don't take it out of the pan. Let it cook for a few hours and then just add the butter and onions to it like you normally would; this would turn out slightly different, I'm sure, than the original recipe, but not by much. Also, it saves you from having another pan to clean, which is amazingly useful after one serves 8-people like I do.
Also, I added a few trace things -- some rosemary, curry powder. Not a lot, but it seemed to help. The berries definitely make it and you don't want to overpower them, so be careful with strong herbs and spices like that. Be sure to taste the soup FIRST, and add things gradually.

Also, I made more cupcakes. They were delish. I never had the chance to take a photo of them with icing because they all got eaten pretty fast. =)

Berries

Poll: in my Indian Beef and Berry stew, it calls for beef with stock and onions; and, a choice of blackberries, blueberries or huckleberries. I'm not sure I can find the latter without unwanted effort.

So, blueberries or blackberries? Leave a comment below! :D

Small sized orange habanero

 I promised myself I would add more pictures. This is my first attempt at making this a little more than my rambling on and on about food (now, you can see the food!)
This is a habanero. I was fortunate enough to grow them in my back yard this year. I had many more that were bigger than this, but at this time of year it's hard to grow them big (at least, for me).

Hot peppers on a large plate

 I had about 4-5 of those small-ish habaneros, two jalapenos, and a mix that I can't differentiate between tabasco, cayenne and something else I forgot the name of (I bought the plants and forgot to tag them, so this whole summer I've been asking people if they remembered the name of that last plant. We didn't. Oh, well, too bad. Still yummy!)
I plan on doing something very similar to these as to the recipe for the bell peppers. On top of the bells, I had about 5 or 6 green bells from out back, which were about enough, each, to fill maybe a 1/3 measuring cup. I'm supposed to make hot pepper oil out of them, for winter use, but I can't keep myself from eating them. Oops.
I'm not done making food. I still have a little while (someone's bringing my onions. This meal isn't free for them, despite their disappointment). But, I've already roasted all the peppers and I plan on doing a small-scale soup for the hot ones. That way, if people want, they can add a little hot pepper soup to their soup, allowing for an increase in heat. Every pepper I used is organically grown -- the hot ones are from my own yard -- so I'm looking forward to how this will turn out!









Oh, and then we get to have dessert!

Strawberry cupcakes

 These are strawberry cupcakes with buttercream icing (whip two sticks of butter like mad, add 3 cups of powdered sugar, spritz it with salt, spritz it more with vanilla, and add cream until you're happy with the consistency.) I wanted to play with the cream. I preferred the flavor with more cream, but it ruined the whole spreading concept. I don't care what they look like -- those babies are kickin' some serious strawberry-cream tush!