Tag: cheddar

Mom’s Mac and Cheese

April 26, 2012February 2, 2017

Jonah here. Mom, I hope you’re reading this. Everyone else – let me give you a little background. This was one of my favorite foods as a kid, not the Kraft Mac and Cheese, but the kind my mom would make from this simple recipe. When I was growing up, we usually had it with broccoli, or a salad.

I asked my mom for this recipe when I went off to college, so she wrote it on an index card and I made it many times throughout my 4 years of school. That index card was magneted to my fridge and now lives in Annie’s recipe box in our kitchen. It’s really easy to make, but really delicious. Thanks Mom, for a childhood of yummy dinners!

Susan’s Mac and Cheese

Ingredients

1 lb. pasta – I use penne
2 Tb. butter
Half of a white or yellow onion, diced
2 Tb. all-purpose flour
1/2 t garlic powder, or more to taste
1/2 t salt
1 cup milk
1 cup grated cheddar cheese, packed in

Instructions

Fill a large pot with water, salt it, and bring it to a boil. Add penne and cook till it’s done; drain.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan. Add the chopped onions and cook until browned and soft.

Add the flour, mix until smooth, then sprinkle in garlic powder and salt (if you don’t have garlic powder, feel free to mince up some garlic and add it with the onion at the beginning). Add milk and let it heat up, then add the cheese and mix in until fully melted.

Return the drained pasta to the pot. Pour in cheese sauce and mix in thoroughly. Serve!

Cheese Straws with a Bite

March 6, 2012February 2, 2017

For some reason I’ve been in the mood to make some kind of cheesy snacking food lately, like crackers or something. So this weekend when I was up in Seattle, I took the opportunity to make these cheese straws from Smitten Kitchen. They are ridiculously easy and have quite a bite to them due to the red pepper flakes. If you don’t want to risk them being too spicy for you (or whoever else may be eating them), you can easily reduce the amount of red pepper flakes, but I thought it was quite delicious.

Cheese Straws

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups grated extra-sharp Cheddar cheese
4 tablespoons (1/2 a stick) unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into 4 pieces
3/4 cup flour, plus some for rolling out the dough
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon milk or half-and-half

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, pulse the cheese, butter, flour, salt, and pepper flakes. Pulse it until the mixture is in coarse crumbs.

Now add the milk until the dough comes together and forms a ball. Lightly flour a cutting board or your kitchen counter, dump the dough out, and roll it into as rectangular of a shape as possible and about 1/8 of an inch thick. With a sharp knife slice the dough into 1/4 inch – 1/3 inch strips. I left some edges ragged and trimmed others, I don’t think it really matters.

Now you can gently put the strips onto a cookie sheet (no need to grease it because of the butter). You want to leave a little space between them, but they don’t need much (1/4-1/2 an inch is plenty). The dough is fragile, so they might break, but don’t worry about it. The cheese straws can be any length really.

Bake them in the oven for 12 – 15 minutes (I think I baked mine closer to 15, I like the ends nice and brown). Remove them from the oven, allow to cool for a minute or two on the baking sheet, and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Good luck keeping these around for long. They were gone pretty quickly. They’re perfectly crispy and cheesy with a bit of spice… Mm! I love them. Enjoy!

Cheddar and Sage Biscuits

November 29, 2011January 22, 2017

A couple of weeks ago, Jonah and I got that nasty cold that’s been floating around. We were both out of commission for a few days, which really sucked. When I started finally feeling a little bit better, I really wanted to make some bread. See, a couple weeks before we got sick I bought some active dry yeast because I really want to start making bread. I’m terrified of it, for some reason, and also I don’t want to go through the learning process. I just want to start making beautiful crusty sourdoughs to begin with. But I think I should learn about the process and the ingredients and all that too, rather than perhaps biting off more than I can chew.

Anyway, back to the story. So I wanted to make bread but I really wasn’t feeling up to it: I was still a little light-headed, not to mention drugged up. But I wanted something bread-like. I recalled a recipe I had seen on marthastewart.com. If you have never been to her website, you really ought to. More recipes, craft, and homemaking ideas than you will ever have time to look at. So I went to my pinterest where I had saved the recipe (more on pinterest later), and got started: Cheddar and Sage Biscuits.

Sounds good, no?

Cheddar & Sage Biscuits

I don’t think it would hurt to add a little more cheese and a little more sage to the recipe. These ingredients were really subtle, and I think I was hoping they’d be a little more obvious in taste. The recipe also says to use a food processor, but mine was not nearly big enough for all this stuff. It nearly overflowed by the time I got to the butter. What I would recommend is putting either half or 3/4 of the flour in to begin with, then everything except the buttermilk, then transferring either to an electric mixer (kitchenaid) or hand mixing and adding in the remaining flour and buttermilk. But I dont’ know, try whatever you want. Just don’t blame me when you can’t fit it all in your food processor.

Ingredients

4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for working
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 cups grated sharp white cheddar, or whatever cheddar you have around (also, a little parmesan would probably taste delicious too…)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk

Instructions

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a food processor, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add cheese and sage, pulse to combine. Add butter and pulse until mixture is the texture of coarse meal. Add buttermilk and pulse until combined. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it comes together. Don’t overknead it! With a floured rolling pin, roll dough to a 3/4-inch thickness. With a floured 2 3/4-inch round biscuit cutter (or, you know, a cup), cut out biscuits (reroll and cut scraps).

Place biscuits on a baking sheet, 1 1/2 inches apart (I did only 6 per batch to ensure they had enough room), and bake until puffed and golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

They’re also really good if you cut them in half and put them in the toaster for breakfast the next morning. I took little tupperwares of these biscuits to some friends who are still in school at Lewis & Clark. They work their butts off, and so sometimes I really like to bring them a little surprise treat. I think they appreciate it.