Mac and Cheese Pizza

Tried my hand at mac 'n cheese pizza for the first time last week. It came out ok but I would definitely use less onion (and Bob said less garlic) next time, Also less mozarella and more cheddar. Here's what I did.

• Saute 1/2 medium onion (maybe 1/4 next time) and 1 1/2 teaspoon garlic (cut to 1?) in a little olive oil. Then remove from pan and set aside. {To be honest I follow a couple different recipes I read online, I thought this step would add depth of flavor much more than it did. I might just try cutting it next time.}
• Melt 4 tablespoons butter and whisk in 3 tablespoon flour. Then whisk in approx. 1 cup milk and cook until thickened.
• Add in onion, garlic and aprrox. 2 1/2 cups cheese (I used half mozzarella and half sharp cheddar, but need to play with different combinations more). Stir until melted and even combined.
• Add to 2 cups cooked macaroni and spread over pizza crust. (I didn't use all of it.) Top with additional cheese and bake at 400 until golden brown.

As I said this was a first effort. I'll report on tweaks when I try it again.

Happy Birthday Hubbie!

My Hubbie's birthday was a couple of weeks ago and being the foodie that I am I cooked him a special meal. Now my husband is not a foodie, I don't mean this as an insult, just to say that given the choice of what to have to celebrate the only instruction I was given was red meat and cake. This left it open to way too many possibilities. So I started with dessert. My husband has always had a fondness for lemon cake; however I didn't want to cook just any lemon cake. Finally after much agony and searching I found a recipe on joyofbaking.com for a Lemon Sponge Pudding. It looked incredible, if perhaps a little ambitious, so onto the actual dinner. Since I had decided on a fairly time-consuming desert I decided that I would make a pot-roast for dinner. For whatever reason since we moved down here we have had a lot of potatoes so I wanted something else for a side I decided on rice and asparagus.


I don't often make pot-roast so I took a little guidance from Alton Brown but as anyone who has cooked with me knows I don't really use recipes, I see them more as guidelines as one might say. I at this recipe and went from there. I rubbed my roast with goodness (in the form of cumin, coriander, ancho chili powder, salt and a few other odds and ends from the spice cabinet) and browned the sides. Then I sauteed garlic and onion in a little olive oil. I added balsamic vinegar, red wine, tomato paste, raisins, green olives, and a couple fresh tomatoes that needed to get used and let the whole thing reduce down. I then wrapped up the meat and the sauce in foil and cooked it in the oven (200 degrees) for 3 1/2 hours. When it was done I took the dripping and the chunky stuff and pureed them in the blender to make a nice smooth sauce.


A couple of notes on my pot-roast recipe. It came out well but I think that I would use a can of diced or crushed tomatoes instead of the paste next time, the sauce was delicious but the tomato overpowered the other components a bit. Also I will warn you that this sauce stunk up my house, it ended up being delicious but while it was reducing it was stinky (to quote the Hubbie). I served this, as I said, with brown rice and asparagus. I made a risotto-like dish with a little red wine and Parmesan it was pretty good. I am still trying to find a way to make risotto (or something that tastes like it) from brown rice. This attempt was closer but I won't share the recipe until I perfect it.



My nest post (tonight or tomorrow ) I will move on to the best part of the meal. The dessert.

Until next time. Eat. Drink. Enjoy.

French Harvest Pie

We went to the restaurant on post for a Thanksgiving buffet yesterday. The food was pretty good but there were some of our traditional foods that were missing, also the desserts left a lot to be desired. We were in the second seating and by the time were got to the dessert table all that was left was still-frozen pumpkin pie and various thaw-and-serve cakes. It isn't Thanksgiving to me unless the meal finishes with some delicious, harvesty dessert. So being the proactive foodie that I am I went home and started researching desserts that I could make.

There are so many kinds of pumpkin, apple or pecan pie out there it was quite overwhelming. I have almost settled on a caramel apple pie when I found this recipe on saveur.com and it looked so good I decided to give it a shot. It's got apple, squash (because who makes pumpkin pie with pumpkins anyway) and pecans all rolled up in puff pastry; in a way its like all three traditional pumpkin pies rolled into one.

Start with 3 lbs of squash (I used kabocha at the suggestion of the original recipe however next time I might try something like a butternut or a pie pumpkin.) and 2 granny smith apples. Peel, core and dice everything. Melt 6 Tbsp of butter in a large skillet and add squash and apple. Cook for 8-10 minutes. Add 3/4 cup brown sugar and seasoning. I used vanilla, roughly 1 Tbsp, and some nutmeg, cinnamon and a dash of cloves. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until squash it VERY soft (mine was a little underdone, ... patience, patience, patience) and let cool. Once cool stir in 1/3 cup of chopped pecans.

Meanwhile roll out 2 sheets of puff pastry. The original recipe called for doing these next steps with the aid of a pastry ring. I, ever the planner, do not have a pastry ring as I discovered about 5 minutes before I would have needed one. So I improvised. I rolled the dough to roughly 12" squares, one slightly bigger than the other. Place the larger one of these sheets onto parchment paper on a baking sheet. Then I piled my filling onto the center of the pastry sheet the spread into a 10 inch diameter circle. Place additional pastry sheet on top and seal the edges. Pull corners of square to meet at the top and brush whole thing with egg. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes.


Overall I was impressed with how it turned out. I thought the flavors were great. My only comment would be that the prep work was pretty intensive, dicing 3 lbs of squash was harder than I had anticipated.


Until next time. Eat. Drink. Enjoy.

Bring on the Kitchen!

Hello all!

I am an army wife. Until recently I worked full time and spent the rest trying to enjoy my one year old son and still maintain a social life. Now I have moved away from home to Alabama because duty calls. I am excited that this gives me time to get back into the kitchen. I love to cook so I am excited to try some new things and if my adventures are enlightening or amusing then all the better.

That's all for now. I will start posting later this week.