Tagged with Vegetarian …

Dec 12 2009
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Cheese, Main, Pasta

Macaroni and Cheese

As much as I love cheese, I’m not a huge macaroni and cheese person. Sure, I ate my fair share of it when I was a kid, treasured shipments of Easy Mac when I was abroad, and still occasionally buy a box to keep in the cupboard, but to give you an idea of how infrequently I eat it I will tell you that a box of macaroni and cheese is good for at least two years beyond its expiration date. Slightly disturbing, but true.

My indifference to macaroni and cheese applies to eating it in restaurants as well as eating it from a box. I’ve had a few bites of Matt’s mac and cheese from Joe’s Garage, but I would never order it for myself because I would much rather blow calories on their fries with basil aioli. The same goes for Yum – I would choose their crispy fries with red pepper aioli over their mac and cheese any day. A few weeks ago, though, my mom, Matt, and I were eating at Nick and Eddie, and it turned out to be one of those rare occasions when mac and cheese sounded really good. To be completely honest it was the lobster that was mixed in with it more than the cheesy noodles themselves that prompted me to order it, but the bottom line is I picked mac and cheese over fish and chips. So basically, fries with good dipping sauces trump macaroni and cheese, but lobster trumps fries.

Although I have no problem going long periods of time without a dose of cheesy noodles, sometimes I do eat it more often than once a year. When I was home over Thanksgiving I went through the collection of old magazines that had been accumulating in the rack next to my bed, pitching a couple old copies of Vanity Fair and W before stumbling upon an issue of Saveur. It dated back to April 2005 (vintage!) and the theme was “American Artisanal Cheese.” I still can’t figure out how I had the good sense to buy it back then, but then I let it sit around for four and a half years before making use of it. When I saw the recipe for macaroni and cheese I knew I had to make up for lost time. It was my call to duty.

Macaroni and Cheese
From Saveur, April 2005, based on a recipe from Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating

1 lb. tube-shaped pasta
2 tbsp. butter
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 sprig fresh thyme
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tbsp. flour
3 1/2 cups milk
2 tbsp. dijon mustard
1 lb. aged cheddar cheese
Salt and pepper
1-2 tbsp. coarse bread crumbs
Although the recipe calls for a pound of aged cheddar, I couldn’t get myself to spring for an entire pound of pricey cheese. I went with a little less than half a pound of Dubliner and supplemented that with cheaper stuff. In hindsight it would have only set me back a few more bucks to just stick with the aged variety, but the combination of the two produced a perfectly acceptable result so I guess I shouldn’t worry about it.

On a side note, I heard on NPR last week that most of the cheddar you buy at the store (like the variety on the left) is only a few months old at most. It came up in a discussion of a 15-year-old cheddar from Wisconsin that’s selling for $50/pound.

Start by cooking your pasta until it’s not quite cooked through. The recipe suggests cooking it for 6-7 minutes, the box of rigatoni I used said 14 minutes until al dente, and I cooked this for about 8-10 minutes. After cooking the pasta, drain it, rinse it with cold water, and drain it again. Set it aside while you work on the sauce.

As far as types of pasta go you can use penne, rigatoni, macaroni or any other tube-shaped pasta you like.

While the pasta is boiling, grate the cheese. I just kind of guessed with amounts. You need about 4 1/2 cups, and I probably had a generous 4 1/2 cups.

Have your onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme ready.
Melt a couple tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Add the onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme. Cook for several minutes until the onion softens.
While that’s cooking, get the remaining ingredients ready. The only white-ish wine I had was a bottle of vinho verde that had been opened in my fridge for long enough that it had lost its fizz, and I don’t think it hurt the quality of the dish.
Add the wine and cook for 2-3 minutes.


Discard the herbs and the garlic, and add the flour. Cook for one minute. I’m not sure if I overestimated the amount of time the wine was cooking or not, but most of the liquid had cooked off by the time I added the flour.

Slowly add the milk and then the mustard. The recipe tells you to reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, but I didn’t have any kind of simmer to maintain after I added the milk. I guess I added it too quickly, so if you run into the same problem bring the mixture to a simmer and then reduce the heat.
Now we get to the exciting part – constantly stirring the mixture for 30 minutes! I suggest timing the cooking so this part coincides with an episode of Jeopardy. That way you can learn fun(ny) things while stirring. Did you know that another name for chewing tobacco is West Virginia coleslaw?
Go ahead and preheat your oven to 400 at some point in here.

After 30 minutes or so the mixture should be thick and creamy and will coat the back of a spoon. Here’s a little tip: slippery rubber spatulas are not as good of a tester as an actual spoon.

Remove the mixture from the heat, and mix in 2/3 to 3/4 of the grated cheese. You’re supposed to add a handful at a time and make sure the cheese is completely melted before adding the next handful, but I didn’t read that part of the recipe until after I’d dumped a bunch of it in.

Season with salt and lots of freshly ground pepper.
Mix the cheese sauce with the pasta.

Pour the mixture into a large baking dish.

Top with the remaining cheese and the breadcrumbs.


Bake at 400 for about 25 minutes, or until the top is golden.

We ate this with pieces of roasted squash to make ourselves feel better about the extreme amounts of cheese.
The only thing I would consider doing differently next time is to bake it in a large, rimmed baking sheet instead of a deep baking dish to increase the surface area of the crusty top.

One more thing, if you want to do some of the work ahead of time you can do all of the steps through adding the noodles and sauce to the baking dish, and then stick it in the refrigerator until you’re almost ready to bake it. Take it out while the oven is preheating, add the topping, and then bake it as you normally would.
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Nov 30 2009
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Main, Vegetarian

Vegetable Potpies with Sweet Potato Biscuits

The night before Thanksgiving my brother made delicious vegetable potpies from a recipe in Food & Wine. They were a great way to fill up on veggies before feasting on turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes the following day, and they’d make a good meal for any cold winter night. I’m a big fan of traditional potpies (like the chicken potpie I made a year ago), but this one comes with far less guilt since it’s stuffed with vegetables and topped with a sweet potato biscuit.

The original recipe called for parsnips, brussels sprouts, pearl onions, cauliflower, and celery root, but it takes well to substitutions. Instead of brussels sprouts ours had beets. My mom was really excited about purple pearl onions, so those went in instead of white ones. Being easily excitable runs in the family.

Bobby did most of the work on the filling.


And I got to make the biscuits.


These biscuits are delicious and would be great eaten on their own.


My mom kindly spiked some eggnog with whiskey for us to enjoy while we cooked. My dad doesn’t drink, and I’m pretty sure he thinks that one drink makes you drunk. While this is generally not the case unless you’re maybe a small child or my friend Sarah, it was certainly the case with these suckers. You could get drunk on the fumes alone. I’m not sure if it was the fact that I don’t really like eggnog or that I’m still not over the last time I drank large quantities of whiskey and chased it with karaoke, but I simply could not handle this stuff.


After being tossed with olive oil and seasoned, the vegetables are roasted for 30 minutes.

Then a milk/cream/flour/butter/spice mixture gets combined with them. I guess what I said before about this being a healthy alternative to chicken potpies is not entirely true.

The mixture is divided among 8 4-inch ramekins. It should be fine in a larger dish, too, if you don’t want to mess with individual servings.
Each dish is topped with a biscuit and a sage leaf or two.
Bake for about 15 minutes.
These go really well with a side of tart cranberry sauce.
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Nov 09 2009
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Breakfast, Vegetarian

Caramelized Onion Quiche

Quiche may be my new favorite thing to make. It starts with a delicious crust made of simple ingredients you always have around. It’s yet anouther device for transporting cheese into my mouth. Eggs! Who doesn’t love eggs? You can eat it for any meal of the day. Much like pizza, it’s a great way to use up leftover odds and ends. Most of all, there are few things more rewarding in the kitchen than pulling a pretty creation out of the oven, be it a quiche, a pie, or even a whole roasted bird. Quiche is worth making for presentation alone.

The recipe for the crust comes from an awesome cookbook I got while I was in Portland a few weeks ago: Savory Baking by Mary Cech. Unlike your standard crust this one incorporates thyme, which gives the quiche a huge flavor boost. Depending on what you’re using for your filling you could swap the thyme for something like dill or oregano. This cookbook has some amazing recipes in it (like White Cheddar-Zucchini Pancakes and Sweet Potato, Golden Raisin and Cranberry Strudel), and I can’t wait to try more of them.

For the filling I just used things I had around: an onion, a little spinach, and Emmentaler.

Caramelized Onion Quiche

Crust recipe from Savory Baking

For the crust:

  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2″ cubes
  • 1 tsp dried thyme (or 2 tsps fresh)
  • 3/4 tsp salt
  • 1/3-2/3 cups cold water

For the filling:

  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups of a combination of cream, half & half, or milk
  • 1 large white or yellow onion, sliced into strips
  • 1 cup or more Emmentaler, grated
  • A few handfuls of spinach (optional)
  • Salt & pepper

Put the flour, butter, thyme, and salt in a food processor.
Pulse until the largest chunks of butter are pea-sized.
Slowly add water until the mixture forms into a ball.
Like this.
Transfer the dough to a floured surface.
Knead it a couple times, and then shape it into a disc that’s about an inch thick. Making this dough was insanely easy and took maybe five minutes from the time I started measuring ingredients to the time I formed the dough into a disk. Working with any dough is pretty easy after making homemade pasta and dealing with very dry, crumbly dough.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes. I let it rest for over an hour while I went to pick up my awesome new toy.

When you’re ready to start baking, preheat your oven to 400 with a rack in the lower third of the oven. Dust whatever surface you’re going to roll the dough out on with flour.
Place the dough on the floured surface, and roll it out until it’s 12″ around. My silicone mat has rulers along the edges, which makes this part very easy. I’d say that makes it worth the investment. Depending on the surface you’re using, you may need to keep moving the dough around to ensure that it doesn’t stick to that surface.
Fold the dough in half and transfer it to your pie pan or baking dish. I believe I used an 8″ glass pan, but the actual crust recipe is for a 9″ pie pan.
Unfold the dough and press it firmly into the bottom and edges of the pan. You can chop off the excess dough around the top if there’s a lot. I started to even out the edges, but then changed my mind and started to reattach them. I figured I’d rather bake all of the crust that I made instead of discarding bits of it just to make it look better.
Cover the crust with a layer of aluminum foil, and fill the foil 2/3 full with dried beans or pie weights. I didn’t have enough of a single kind of bean, so I made a foil boat of black beans to fill half of the crust and filled the rest with garbanzos. I saved myself from painstakingly separating bean varieties later on, and I successfully reproduced the title of a Michael Jackson song in a legume on foil medium.

Place the baking dish or pie pan on a baking sheet, and bake for about 30 minutes. Carefully lift up the foil and check the bottom of the crust; it’s ready when it’s beginning to brown. At that point remove the foil and the beans and continue to bake the crust until it’s golden brown, probably 5-10 more minutes. Remove the baking sheet and the baking dish from the oven, place them on a cooling rack, and reduce the oven temperature to 325.

While the crust is baking, you can get the filling ready. I had a little bit of spinach sitting around that I decided to use, so I started by sautéing that. Then I squeezed out as much moisture as I could before chopping it into smaller pieces.
Heat a little oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, and then add the onions and a little salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they soften and brown. Set aside. I guess mine are more towards the raw end of the caramelization spectrum, but they were done enough for me.
In a large bowl combine the eggs, the milk, and the cream. I am ashamed to admit this, but I used about 1 1/3 cup cream and a tiny bit of skim milk. I thought I had more milk than that and was planning on doing more of a 50/50 mix, but as I poured the milk into the measuring cup I realized I had less than 1/4 cup of it. Sorry, arteries.
Whisk the eggs and cream together as well as a little freshly grated pepper. 

Add the onions and spinach to the crust, and spread them around so they’re evenly distributed.
Top the onions with a layer of grated cheese. I used Emmentaler, but you can use anything you have around.
Pour the egg mixture over the onions and cheese. You could also add the other ingredients to the egg mixture and pour the filling in all at once. Layering ensures a little onion, a little cheese, and a little egg with every bite, though.
Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the eggs are mostly set and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the quiche rest for at least 10 minutes before slicing.
Here’s a nice view of the layers: onion, cheese, and egg. Serve warm or at room temperature.
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Oct 05 2009
3 Comments
Cheese, Pasta, Vegetarian

Eggplant Lasagna

As promised in my last post, here’s my pre-marathon meal. I can’t guarantee that it’s the best meal in the world, as I had zero appetite on Saturday and only ate it because I knew I had to put something in my body. My stomach was really sensitive all day, as if it knew that it would be spending 5 grueling hours the next day bouncing around the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul being fed nothing more than Powerade, an orange slice, a couple gummy energy blocks and a packet of Gu. The only thing it would readily accept was half of a cupcake that a certain someone brought over along with some lovely flowers.

Because I cannot vouch for the actual quality of this meal I’m posting this recipe more for the idea and the process than to give you actual amounts and exact ingredients. I more or less threw this together with stuff I had on hand, and the recipe is more of the ideal ingredient list rather that what I actually used. For example, I used cottage cheese instead of ricotta because the grocery store was somehow out of ricotta. While cottage cheese is an OK substitute after a quick trip through the food processor, I much prefer ricotta. So feel free to improvise, add, subtract, tweak, or completely ignore this recipe.

Eggplant Lasagna

1 medium-large eggplant
Lasagna noodles
1-1/2 cups ricotta
Tomato sauce
A few handfuls of spinach
About a cup of mozzarella, provolone, or some similar cheese
1/4 cup parmesan, grated

This fairly large eggplant was more than enough to fill my 8″x 8″ dish.
Start by slicing the eggplant into about 1/4″ slices. I sliced it lengthwise, but you can do it widthwise as well. Sprinkle both sides of the eggplant with salt, and stick it between a couple layers of paper towels for an hour or so.
In the meantime, if you’re using cottage cheese run it through the food processor until it’s fairly smooth.  I generally mix spinach in with ricotta when making lasagna, and I decided to just toss a few handfuls of spinach into the food processor.  While it kind of looks pretty (or slightly like mint chip ice cream), I would recommend just stirring them together so the flavors still stand on their own instead of completely melding together. I often lack foresight in the kitchen.
After an hour or so rinse the eggplant and pat it try.  Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish wish a little tomato sauce. I only had cans of diced tomatoes, which I heated up with garlic and some oregano. I wish I would have used tomato sauce, though. Smooth sauce makes for better layering, but chunky tomatoes will work in a pinch.
Cover with a layer of lasagna noodles. I started out with no-bake noodles, but I eventually ran out I had to boil a few of the regular kind.
Spread 1/2 of the ricotta mixture over the noodles. If you’re using a really deep dish you could probably squeeze in three layers, in which case you would only use 1/3 of the ricotta per layer. I hope I didn’t insult you by doing that math as if you couldn’t figure it out yourself. I’m just trying to help here.
Next comes a layer of eggplant.

Top the eggplant with tomato sauce.
And repeat. Once you have a second layer completed, top it off with a final layer of noodles and a generous dose of tomato sauce.
Then the most important part: cheese. For some reason I went with fresh mozzarella. It was fine, but next time I would use grated cheese. I like the crust formed by grated cheese better. You could also get away with using very little cheese. I made a slightly different veggie lasagna a couple weeks ago using only a little freshly grated parmesan on the top, and it was awesome. Before then I thought you needed to load on the cheese to make it really good, but my taste buds and my arteries were pleasantly surprised.
I had leftover everything, so I threw it all into a mini dish to bake and freeze for later. It looks like it could be some country’s flag. Or the crest on More Cheese More Chocolate polo shirts for our upcoming MCMC regional blogger convention at Super 8 conference room #4.

Moving right along, bake the lasagna at 350 for about 40 minutes, or until the top is bubbly. Let it cool for 5 or 10 minutes before slicing.

I couldn’t talk about the marathon without sharing some photos, so here you go! I think this is around mile 10. It was around here that I was thinking how lucky all of my friends were who chose to run the 10 mile instead of the marathon. I’m still trying to figure out why I look so happy in this picture.


Here I am showing off my medal and being very happy to be home. In case you were wondering I finished in 4 hours and 52 minutes, beating my previous time by over 30 minutes and meeting my goal of finishing in under 5 hours. And I am in serious pain today.
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