grilled cheese

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! What are you up to? No cook-outs for us today - we're just lounging at home, working on our film notes (for Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry and Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind) and updating our "Six Feet Under: Death and Dying in the Movies" series proposal (first vote on Fall 2009 series takes place at tonight's meeting).


As I write this, I'm heating up the Foreman for a grilled cheese sandwich. The nice thing about using the grill for these is you don't need to use any butter, so you save some fat and calories there, and you still get a nice, golden, crunchy outer crust. Grilled cheese was my favorite sandwich growing up, and I've stayed a fan as an adult, but lately, I really can't get enough of them!


I especially love grilled cheese with ketchup. Most people think this is really strange, but if you think about it, it makes sense. What side dish do you usually get with grilled cheese sandwiches? French fries. You put ketchup on french fries, right? From there it's one step to the sandwich itself. Delicious!

Cheese, glorious cheese!

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: we are serious cheese freaks. We LOVE cheese. We'd basically eat nothing but cheese if I didn't exert serious restraint and monitor our cheese consumption. Of course, living on the Vermont border, we have access to loads of amazing local cheeses, which we enjoy, but because we eat so much cheese, we also need a more utilitarian, run-of-the-mill, basic, everyday cheese. We call this "snack cheese" (as opposed to "special cheese" or "cooking cheese").


Lately our grocery store has been having amazing specials on cheese, bringing our standard snacking cheddar down to only $2.99 a pound, so of course we've been stocking up. With all that cheese on hand, however, the danger is that we'll go overboard and eat way too much cheese (yes, hard to believe, but there is such a thing). So we've rationed it. I figure that between the two of us, one 8-oz bar of cheddar per week is sufficient (especially since that's not the only cheese we eat - that's just for simple snacks). When the price drops this low, the limit is six bars at a time, so in theory, the supply should last six weeks.

We've done shockingly well with this allotment, even having some bars of cheese last longer than a week. The timing also works out well because it seems like Price Chopper runs this special around every six weeks - so right as we're running out, we can stock up again. Perfect.

When we lived in London, there was a greater variety of cheap cheeses in the supermarkets there, and we enjoyed trying out as many different kinds as possible. I especially liked to toss some Red Leicester in my mac and cheese, and we enjoyed Stilton with apricots on oat cakes. Mmmm, yummy! And of course the cheddar was great - more sharp and crumbly than supermarket cheddar here. Hard to believe it's been four years since we moved back!

What are your favorite cheeses? Anything we should try? I'm thinking a cheese taste-test series on the blog would be an excellent excuse to buy more cheese!

Mom's Mac and Cheese

Mom's Mac and Cheese

2 cups cooked macaroni (about one cup dry)
1 cup assorted, cubed cheese
milk
salt
pepper
bread crumbs (optional)

In a lightly-greased casserole dish, mix the macaroni with the cheese. This dish works best with a mix of different cheeses; I usually use three (e.g., swiss, sharp cheddar, jack). Pour in the milk until you can see it start to rise up through the macaroni - about halfway up the dish. Salt and pepper and if you want, sprinkle bread crumbs on top. Bake for about 30 minutes ina 350 degree oven, or until all the cheese is melted and gooey and the top is golden.

I've been a bad, bad blogger.

Yes, I've been slacking on the blog front. There's just a lot going on; my newest freelance client asked me to work for them in-house, full-time for about a month or so this spring, so I'm scurrying to make headway on other freelance projects before that starts, since I'll be in an office forty hours per week for the first time in a long time. I'm really excited for the change of pace; I'll get to work on some interesting projects and put on real clothes and speak with someone other than my cat.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and drop a few photos before I put up some more substantial posts later this week.

If you've been reading Choice of Pies, you know about my culinary slump, and the great news is I'm finally starting to crawl out of it. I decided, in a fit of frustration, to go back to the basics, and that has helped a lot. Over the past couple of weeks, I've made a few dishes that used to be old standbys for me that somehow dropped out of the rotation. Like stuffed shells:


The filling is so easy: low-fat ricotta, part-skim mozzarella cheese, maybe some parmesan or asiago if you have it, an egg, and some dried Italian herb blend (or fresh herbs, if you have them). I had some leftover spaghetti sauce that I used, but since there wasn't much of it, I sauteed a bunch of frozen spinach and mixed it in to stretch the sauce. I stuffed the boiled shells, topped them with my "Florentine" sauce, and sprinkled some mozzarella on top, then baked it at 375 for about half an hour. Easy, not very expensive, and very tasty served with a big green salad; Dan was thrilled.


I also made one of Dan's favorites: my mom's mac and cheese. It's the easiest mac and cheese ever - one dish, no white sauce - and it comes out perfectly every time. I'll post the recipe tomorrow. This is not the healthiest recipe I've got, but it's delicious and worth it and since almost all my dinners are low-fat I figure I can splurge once in a while.


And lastly, that old classic beef stew: perfect for the drizzly mud-season weather we've got now. I made this on Saturday afternoon, while we stayed home and watched movies; the whole house smelled great as it bubbled away, and I let it cook so long that the meat was falling-apart tender. We ate it while watching another movie (on Dan's laptop, since our DVD player is broken) and enjoyed sopping up the broth with spiced Ethiopian honey bread that we had picked up that morning at the farmer's market. I'm going to have to look for a recipe, because that bread was tasty.

So there you have it: there is a light at the end of my takeout tunnel, and I'm finally crawling out of this slump. Check back tomorrow for Mom's mac and cheese recipe and a review of a great food memoir that I read recently.

Notice a pattern?

Here's a shot of a recent meal: brown rice and lentils, topped with fried onions with garam masala and plain yogurt, served with a side of shredded root veg salad on romaine.



And here's another recent dinner: grilled cheese sandwiches, sliced cucumbers, and shredded root veg salad on a bed of romaine.


And you've seen this one before: a recent fish dinner served with - what else? - shredded root veg salad and romaine.


Yep, it's fair to say I've fallen in to a rut. The root veg salad is great, especially with goat cheese and pecans, but I've come to rely on it a little too much. And it's not just the salad: I've been in a cooking slump, which partially accounts for my light posting lately. Even Dan, who normally loves my cooking, has gently noted that my meals have been a bit boring lately. The good news is, I think I've finally - finally! - started to climb out of it. I'll write more next week about a couple of the things I've been doing to shake the dust off my shoulders and get moving in the kitchen.

Salad Days: Root Veg with Chevre and Toasted Pecans

This week's salad is without question the best salad I have ever had. The recipe for the shredded root veg slaw came via email from a fellow CSA member after several people had asked for recommendations on how to deal with all the root veggies. The root veg mix is delicious and keeps well in the fridge for several days; I've enjoyed having it on hand so I can serve it as a side dish, add some color to a tossed salad, or, as in this case, make it the centerpiece of a hearty salad entree.

We enjoyed this salad on Friday the 13th as part of our early Valentine's celebration, since we had plans with friends on the day itself. For the past few years, our Valentine's routine has been to pop a bottle of champagne, order Thai or Chinese, and make creme brulee (Dan's favorite). However, this year, since we're trying to spend less, I nixed the takeout and budgeted $10 for good cheese instead, planning to serve it along with a salad. We also postponed the creme brulee since this month is packed with desserts already (some of which you've already seen).


Picking the cheese was hard because there were so many amazing selections at the Coop. I went in thinking I'd like something local and made from raw goat's milk. Since we live right on the border with Vermont, the local options are abundant. However, some of the imported cheeses looked so tempting that my resolve wavered. Ultimately, I decided to split the budget, selecting one imported, semisoft, raw, cow's milk cheese and one local, soft, pasteurized, goat's milk cheese. We snacked on the imported cheese, a Morbier from France, while I grated the veggies for the salad and Dan did the dishes. Morbier is a creamy, slightly bitter cheese with a pungent smell but a mild and faintly nutty taste. It is made of two layers, separated by ash; traditionally, farmers would pour leftover curds from Gruyere de Comte in to a mold in the evening, then cover it with a layer of ash to preserve it, and top it off with more curds from the next morning's batch. Now it is generally made from one batch but the ash layer is kept for tradition. We both enjoyed this cheese very much, but I'm not sure I'd buy it again soon; there are just too many cheeses out there that I haven't tried yet.


The local chevre went on top of the root veg slaw, along with some toasted pecans, all with a bed of mesclun. The combination was simple but fantastic. You know how when you taste something delicious, the first few bites taste the best, but then you sort of get used to it? That didn't happen with this salad. With every bite, I was surprised; every forkful was bursting with flavor and new taste. I think it's just the perfect balance of earthy, tangy, sweet, and nutty flavors, and the mix of textures - smooth, crunchy, crisp - offers so much variety that it stays interesting even if you eat a huge platter. We've already repeated this salad and I know it will become a regular menu item for us.

Judi's Winter Root Salad

8 cups grated root vegetables (beets, turnips, carrots, daikon, celeriac, etc., plus one garlic clove)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
1.5 tablespoons vinegar

Mix it all together. Lasts in the refrigerator for several days. I omitted the garlic and used a German stone-ground mustard instead. I only used beets, carrots, and celeriac in mine. Grating all these veggies by hand would be a pain (literally, for my bad wrists); my yard-sale Salad Shooter does the trick in two minutes.
Best Winter Salad

4 cups mesclun (rinsed and spun)
3 cups Judi's Winter Root Salad
2 oz chevre (about half a small log)
1/3 cup chopped pecans

Set oven to 300. Spread pecans on an ungreased cookie sheet and toast in oven until they smell wonderful (about eight minutes). Divide mesclun between two plates. Scoop half of the root veg slaw on to each plate. Top each serving with dollops of chevre and toasted pecans. Serves 2.

Salad Days: The Ploughman's

I'm running a little behind this week. The special project that I've been talking about for the past couple weeks will finally be posted here TOMORROW, so hopefully that will make up for it.

Anyway, on to this week's salad. I had big plans for this week. These plans involved corn, sauteed with scallions and garlic, and an avocado, and a salsa dressing. I was excited about this salad. It was almost finished, too, when I popped a piece of avocado in my mouth - and promptly spit it back out again. I'm not sure why, but it was horribly bitter, and the awful taste lingered for a long time.

Without the avocado, I had nothing - it was to be the centerpiece of this salad. But we still needed to eat. Luckily, I had baked some fresh bread that day (my first ever loaf from scratch - a 7-grain sourdough boule), and that had actually turned out pretty well. So I quickly added some cucumbers to the prepared lettuce to make a simple side salad, and shifted the focus of our dinner to an old favorite from our time in the UK - the ploughman's lunch. The ploughman's, a staple of British pubs, is simply bread and cheese, usually served with some sort of pickle relish and some greens on the side. Depending on how fancy the pub is, you might get a token shred of wilted lettuce or a full, fresh salad, and either one hunk of cheese or a nice assortment. All we had on hand was some sharp Vermont cheddar, but that was good enough, especially paired with the homemade bread.


This meal was just another reminder that in the kitchen, as elsewhere in life, things don't always go according to plan - but they usually turn out okay.

Out of the Box, Week 14

I'm back! I apologize for the posting drought. After a frustrating month of borrowed cameras, I finally got a new camera and will resume regular posting. These tomatillos came in the box on week 14 (September 19th). I've always been intrigued by tomatillos - their brilliant color! the contrast between smooth skin and papery husk! - but I've never actually tried them. Once again, this CSA has expanded my boundaries.

The weekend the tomatillos arrived, Dan and I went back to Maine for our niece's birthday party. We got in late after picking up my little brother Zach and his girlfriend Maria from the bus station. As I unpacked the CSA box, we all stood around the kitchen chatting. When I pulled out the tomatillos, Maria, who's from Texas, got very excited. She described the flavor as like a tomato, but more tangy and sour - as though infused with lime. This description fueled my excitement, as lime is one of my all-time favorite flavors. If the acid weren't so bad for my teeth, I would eat a whole lime every single day.


I took Maria's advice and decided to use the tomatillos for a green salsa. I was surprised to find the tomatillos were much more firm than tomatoes, but it gave the salsa a nice, chunky texture without too much juice. I husked and sliced three tomatillos and threw them in the mini-Cuisinart with an onion, a jalapeno, a few cloves of garlic, and a squirt of lemon juice. The result was delicious, but way too hot! My mistake was throwing in the whole jalapeno (and some seeds) without testing it first. I've made salsa before with the same kind of jalapeno and found it too mild; I forgot that every pepper can be different.

I first served the tomatillo salsa with burritos filled with brown rice, black beans, and chopped heirloom tomatoes, covered with some cheese and baked in the oven. Because the salsa was so hot, we could only use a little bit at a time. However, we had plenty of leftover beans and rice, so we ate that for lunch a few times with the green salsa mixed in.

While the tomatillo salsa was great, and I would definitely like to experiment more with tomatillos in the future, there was another surprise benefit to this experience. As I went to throw away the waste - tomatillo husks, garlic peels, onion skin, and jalapeno seeds - I suddenly saw a beautiful combination of colors and textures in my hands, and decided a photo shoot detour was necessary before heading to the trash can. Here's a few examples. Now am I crazy, or is this beautiful?





More husk photos here.

catching up

There are always a few meals that, for whatever reason, don't make it on the blog during the week I make them. They linger in the corners of my memory, haunting my "to blog" list, and are borne ever farther back by the waves of new photos in my Flickr photostream. They are perfectly good meals, decently photographed, so there's no reason not to post about them. So now, when I don't have regular access to a camera, is actually a perfect time to sweep the corners and post the pieces that I've missed.

This was a fantastic and satisfying veggie-only dinner from week 10. I made a simple red sauce from mushrooms, onions, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, and rosemary, and I served it over faux-fried eggplant. Tasty as it is, I don't fry eggplant (or much of anything, really) - most of the time, fried foods just aren't worth the calories to me. I'd rather have ice cream. So my favorite way to prepare eggplant (and zucchini) is to fake-fry it: I dip the sliced veggies in milk or plain yogurt, then in bread crumbs (seasoned with herbs and sometimes parmesan cheese) and bake them in the oven at 375 for 20-30 minutes. The result is unbeatable - all of the crispiness of fried eggplant (or zucchini) with none of the grease. In this case, I also served corn on the cob and sliced cucumbers.

One of my favorite vegetables this summer is yellow squash. It's a new favorite for me; while I liked it alright before, for some reason this summer I just can't get enough of it. I especially love the teeny, tiny baby squashes we've received so often in our CSA box; they are awesome raw - crunchy yet tender. The larger ones usually end up grilled, with peanut sauce and other grilled veggies, or sometimes very lightly steamed. Several weeks back, I decided to experiment with the squash and use up several pantry items at the same time.

I ended up with this tasty, if a little strange, concotion: sliced squash, sauteed and sprinkled with balsamic vinaigrette, tossed with Wacky Mac and feta cheese. I was inspired in part by recipe that I stumbled across for pan-seared balsamic squash; since my squash was only lightly cooked and not seared, I'm not sure it quite stood up to the balsamic. Maybe it's just me, since I'm actually not a big fan of balsamic vinegar in general. But the feta worked nicely with both the squash and the balsamic, and Dan enjoyed the dish. Luckily, he's pretty easy to please.

Caprese

Blech. Is there anything more disgusting than tomato innards? So slimy and goopy and gross. I'm not a huge fan of raw tomatoes. I'd much rather have them cooked in a sauce, stuffed and baked, or lightly grilled. But with tomatoes and fresh basil in the box this week, only one thing made sense: caprese. It's one of the few ways I will eat raw tomatoes. So I bought some fresh mozzarella and powered through the gross part to get to the goodness. Chopped tomatoes, chunks of mozz, fresh basil, and a little olive oil on top, served with a side of focaccia bread. Dan, my hubby, loves raw tomatoes, and both the tomatoes and cheese were soft and small enough for his post-surgery self to swallow. It's not exactly the healthiest salad on earth, but after the week we've had, we deserve some cheese.