Make-Ahead Mac and Cheese

Sometimes people work themselves into a frenzy over what to feed vegetarians at Thanksgiving..."oh no, they won't get to eat the turkey!" Really though, vegetarians tend to see lack of turkey as a solution, not a problem. Many meat eaters consider the turkey to be secondary anyway--an obligation that, when satisfied, allows for the real fun to commence (sides! pies!).

When it comes to real fun, I think mac and cheese is pretty hard to beat. For indefinable cultural reasons, it can also be considered a main dish in a way that stuffing and potatoes just can't. With its toasty brown top and general deliciousness, it answers the question of what focal-point main dish to serve the vegetarians that will be well-liked by a broader audience and can be made well ahead of time. For festive occasions, I make it in an opaque casserole dish, not the clear pyrex you see in the picture. It's a little prettier that way and goes straight from the oven to the table.

I never used to make macaroni and cheese for Thanksgiving. I reasoned that with stuffing, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes, we really didn't need another starch. This same reasoning prevented me from serving bread or rolls, until the year our Thanksgiving expanded to include friends instead of just family. It turns out that despite the super-saturation of starches, guests not raised by my mother looked forlorn if we did not also serve bread. No one should look forlorn on Thanksgiving, so let them eat rolls. And mac! At least there is enough protein in the cheese that we can wink at it.

The only problem was that my trusty Cooks Illustrated mac and cheese recipe uses chicken broth. In their characteristically verbose style, Cooks Illustrated notes that using only dairy for the sauce makes the mac and cheese taste cloudy and milky with muted cheese notes. I wanted the dish to be vegetarian but I didn't want to give up the savory punctuation that the broth provided.

With some fear and trembling, I decided last Thanksgiving to substitute Imagine's No-Chicken broth for the chicken broth in the white sauce. No-Chick is, as you might surmise from the name, the best vegetarian substitute for chicken broth I've found. Unlike most packaged vegetable stocks, which are murky brown and oddly sweet, No-Chick is more onion-y than carrot-y and is light in color. I already had a box on hand from Co-Opportunity for the vegetarian stuffing, so I decided to go for it.

doubling the recipe makes enough for Swap & Thanksgiving

When I looked at my lovely sauce coming together though, I hesitated. What if the weird vegetarian broth ruined the whole thing? Was Thanksgiving really the time to be experimenting? The recipe called for 2¼ cups of chicken broth, which was almost half of the liquid in the sauce. Hedging my bets, I added 1½ c. No-Chick broth and filled in the rest of the volume with additional milk.

After a lot of nervous hand-wringing, I was astonished to discover that the mac and cheese actually tasted better with the No-Chick broth. My carnivorous husband agreed! After Thanksgiving I made it again with the chicken broth just to make sure we weren't suffering from some kind of holiday delusion. The version with chicken broth was tasty and classic--nothing wrong with it--but the cheese flavor was duller and less pronounced. Who knew? I suspect the subtle onion-y note, much gentler that what you would get from adding actual pieces of onion (please don't do that), is what puts the recipe over the top.

No-Chicken broth has nothing scary in it (no MSG). In Santa Monica it is available at Co-Opportunity and probably Whole Foods, but not at TJs or Vons. Whether we're having vegetarians to dinner or not, I pick up a box every year when I order my turkey at the Co-Op. It makes a better mac and cheese.


Make-Ahead Macaroni and Cheese
adapted from Cooks Illustrated's The Best Make-Ahead Cookbook


1 recipe Toasted Bread Crumb Topping (see below)
1 lb elbow macaroni (Barilla Plus with chickpea flour works well in this, if you want to make it healthier)
6 TB (3/4 stick) butter
1 medium garlic clove, minced or pressed
1 t. dry mustard powder
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
6 TB all-purpose flour, preferably unbleached
1 1/2 c. Imagine No-Chicken vegetable broth
4 1/4 c. 2% milk (or whole milk)
1 lb colby cheese, shredded (about 4 cups, prefer Tillamook; I used Jack once but didn't like it as much)
1/2 lb extra sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (about 2 cups, prefer Tillamook or Cracker Barrel; do not use a crumbly aged expensive cheese, as this may cause the sauce to break)

Toasted Bread Crumb Topping

4 slices white sandwich bread, quartered (can substitute wheat)
2 TB butter, melted
2 TB minced fresh parsley leaves
*optional: if you want to add some dry aged cheese (gruyere, parmigiano), add it to the crumb topping rather than the cheese sauce (to avoid the chance of breaking it and also get more bang for your buck)

Adjust oven rack to middle position, heat to 300 degrees. Pulse bread and butter in food processor to coarse crumbs (6 pulses). Spread crumbs over rimmed baking sheet. Bake, stirring occasionally, until golden and dry, 20-30 min. Let cool then toss with parsley; season with salt and pepper to taste. If you double the recipe, you can keep the extra crumbs in the freezer for several months and use to top other casseroles.


Mac and Cheese Directions

1) Bring 4 quarts of water to boil in Dutch oven over high heat. Stir in 1 TB salt and macaroni. Cook until just beginning to soften, about 5 minutes. Pasta will not be done yet, but should not be overtly crunchy. This should give you just enough time to run the cheese through the food processor. Drain pasta and set aside.

2) Wipe pot dry, add butter, set over medium heat until melted. Stir in garlic, mustard, and cayenne and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Whisk in flour and cook, whisking constantly until lightly golden and fragrant, about 1 minute. Slowly whisk in broth and milk.

3) Bring to simmer and cook, whisking often, until large bubbles form on surface and mixture is slightly thickened, about 15 minutes. If you turn your back and turn around to find it has foamed up, that also means it's ready. It will be thicker than when it started, but thinner than a custard. If you are planning to eat the mac and cheese right away, preheat oven to 400.

4) Off the heat, gradually whisk in colby and cheddar until completely melted. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir the drained pasta into the cheese sauce, breaking up any clumps, until well combined. Pour into 13x9" baking dish and sprinkle with crumb topping.

5) Bake uncovered at 400 until sauce is bubbling and crumbs are crisp, 25-35 minutes.

Make-Ahead Directions, up to 2 days in the Refrigerator: Wrap dish tightly with plastic wrap and then foil and refrigerate. When ready to serve, heat oven to 400. Remove plastic but cover tightly with the foil. Bake under foil until hot throughout, 40-45 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake until crumbs are crisp, 15-20 minutes longer.

Make-Ahead Directions, up to 1 month in Freezer: Wrap dish tightly with plastic wrap and then foil and freeze. Thaw casserole completely in refrigerator, about 24 hours before serving, then follow instructions above (40-45 minutes under foil, then 15-20 minutes longer uncovered).

Supersized Mac and Cheese: You can double this recipe, but when you do that you need to increase the mustard powder to 1 TB (not 2 t.) I don't know why this is, but it does seem to be important. I use the bulk mustard powder from Co-Opportunity (Frontier) but Cooks Illustrated probably used Colmans. When you double the garlic, make sure to use 2 medium cloves rather than 2 large cloves. I used 1 large and 1 medium for Swap and thought it hovered perilously close to being too garlicky. If you are using whole milk instead of 2%, consider increasing the broth ratio slightly.

If you double the recipe, it makes enough for 5 Swap-sized dishes (the clear ones in the picture, roughly 8" rounds) and 1 larger holiday side dish (the white one in the picture, 2½ quarts). The original recipe makes enough for 2 8x8" pans (or 3 Swap containers) so you can bake one and freeze one (or two) for later.

When using 8-9" dishes (instead of 9x13): Cut initial baking time in half and check to see if heated through (20 minutes if dish was refrigerated). Crumbs will take roughly the same amount of time to crisp (about 15 minutes).

This is the Cheap Candy?

Supper Swap: Part III

I enjoy cooking for Supper Swap. It's an opportunity to make a glorious mess and cook the kind of food that doesn't make sense for two people on a weeknight. While I scrub pans, I look forward with great anticipation to having the rest of the week off!

I've also been enjoying the modestly communal aspect, meeting other cooks and trying other peoples' recipes. It's easy to get caught up in going to work, coming home, and not seeing much of people outside of those settings. The neighborly vibe of Swap is very welcome.

It was difficult to decide what to cook this month. The weather has been all over the place, which has a big influence on what I want to eat. I thought of Indian food--in this case, Tandoori Chicken--because I tend to like eating it regardless of the weather (it's good cold), and Sunday was cool enough that having the oven on was pleasant.

I thought the recipe would scale up well. I was actually rather wrong about that: Tandoori Chicken isn't the best thing to make for 10 people. The twice-dipping step that seems negligible with 6-8 pieces of chicken is more difficult to manage with 20. Also, the two-part cooking process becomes a bit of a saga. It was definitely a live and learn experience. If you enjoyed it, make sure to get the recipe from me because it's quite reasonable as a weekend dish for four people (and you'll like it even better if you have a working broiler). If you didn't enjoy it, rest assured you probably won't be seeing it again at Swap.

Then there was the question of what to make with it. If I were making it for just us, I would probably have served the chicken on a bed of fresh spinach (healthy, fast, better than rice for the waistline), but I didn't think the spinach would last well for Swap. I decided to make a rice dish using brown rice (jasmine, TJs)  instead of white, which I actually really liked. Also, part of the fun of cooking for Swap is making things that I like but that I should not keep in large quantities around the house. Since most of the rice was destined to go out the front door within hours of my making it, it seemed a safe way to try out a new recipe.

When I finished the rice dish, I was feeling really good about it. This was the first time since college that I made rice without using a rice maker, and I was pretty impressed with myself for not scorching it (it's the little things...). When I tasted it, I really liked the delicate floral and herbal notes. Two days later, eating the leftovers, I was underwhelmed. The floral/herbal notes had largely evaporated out, and it was frankly a bit boring. Moral of the story: I should not talk up my dish at Swap. I will jinx it and look immodest at the same time. Sorry Swappers, I didn't know!

Fortunately, everyone else's food turned out really well this week. Mine wasn't awful, it just wasn't great. In the parlance of X-Play, I give it a 3 out of 5.

Coming into the week as a two-time veteran of Swap, I've discovered some helpful pointers on how to make a good thing even better for us:

1) Pick at least one dish that sounds appealing and practical as a lunch item. It's a pleasure to start the work week with tasty lunches.

2) Pick at least one dish that is likely to freeze well (two, if not planning on a lunch item). Five nights in the fridge is too much to ask, even of a "good keeper."

3) Taste everything before serving. Adjust seasoning to taste.

It simply isn't possible for a cook to season most dishes so that they are ideal both for Day 1 and Day 5, especially when some will be going into the freezer and some won't. Some flavors get stronger over the week while others peter out a bit (like bass notes vs. top notes in perfume). Also since some people in our Swap like heat and others are violently opposed, I think we're all going mild and relying on the other cooks to add cayenne or red pepper flakes at the last minute for the salamanders amongst us.

We chose the turkey chili as our Designated Freezer Item. I spent the extra time it took to reheat preparing the cornbread, which happened to get done before the chili did (appetizer, bonus!). Husband's comment, "I would never have put carrots in chili, but I like it."

The lasagna would also have worked well as the Designated Freezer Meal, as its label gently suggested, but we par-froze it instead by putting it in the section of our fridge that absolutely destroys any fresh vegetable that inadvertently finds its way there. It's how to make a bad fridge situation better. The lasagna baked up beautifully and husband ate it for lunch before I could get a second dinner out of it.

Pork and mashed potatoes was delightfully warm and homey mid-week, after an absurdly long day. Husband ate the leftover mashed potatoes for lunch.

The shrimp stir-fry was the Designed Lunch Item for me. I really like it when there's an item that has a starch but isn't starch-dependent. The stir-fry was tasty, healthy, and low-carb. The morsels of coconut rice I was permitted complemented it well, adding to the flavor of the dish rather than merely stretching it.

Next month: macaroni and cheese!

85°C Bakery Cafe -- Or, someone finally figured out how to market an Asian bakery to a wider U.S. audience

85°C - It's apparently a bit culty in Irvine: the line is long and replenishes quickly whenever there is a lull. We went there Saturday after dim sum at Capital Seafood [sic] in the same mall complex. The dim sum was tasty but I was too absorbed in picking up the slippery spareribs with my slippery chopsticks to think about taking a picture. The reviews are right to point out it's pretty salty; I was drinking water all day. Dim sum however remains one of the best bargains in food. Lots of food, lots of shrimp, and an army of ladies in the back making wrappers added up to $9 each (with tax). That was with 5 people paying for 6 because of a birthday. Unbelievable. It made me worry about working conditions.

Afterward there was interest in 85°C, as several people in the group had heard of it but had not yet gone because the line was always too long. Having already blown through my carbs for the day with the dim sum, I had planned on just sitting with the group. My resolve was lost in the face of a counter of adorably cute little pastries. Note that on yelp, there are 455 pictures. 455. Seriously, you'd think it was the cast of Twilight or something.

I usually know better than to order chocolate desserts at Asian bakeries (we seem to have different ideas about chocolate), but the adorable little piece of chocolate orange cake was appealing. S., having more sense about these things, got the strawberry cream roll cake that you see (note the cute box). The other item in the picture is a coffee-flavored cake.

As cute as the baked goods are, the reason the line goes out the door isn't the cakes or the buns. The really culty item to get is the sea salt coffee (the paper cup in the picture). As several signs will tell you, it can and will only be served iced, and consists of a study in contrasts with sweet cool coffee and salted foam. I was not on a straw-sharing basis with anyone who ordered one, but it was acclaimed as amazing by those who partook.

Meanwhile, the chocolate cake was reasonably tasty, but I probably wouldn't order another one. The chocolate factor was okay on first taste, but failed to have the complex, lingering finish that one expects with a quality chocolate experience.

As someone who is a fan of Asian bakeries, I'm glad someone has figured out a way to market one to a wider U.S. audience. I am also glad they are not Americanizing it too much. There is taro, buns stuffed with various fruit and custard concoctions, and I heard there were squid ink buns as well, but I couldn't see them past the crowd of people crowded around the bakery case where they were. And, despite the high demand, you'll pay less than you will at Starbucks for anything comparable (the pastries are certainly better than Starbucks).

JJ Bakery

 If you aren't ordering sea salt coffee, I would still recommend visiting if you are in the area, but I think my favorite bakery still remains JJ Bakery (see left). I've only been to the one in Arcadia, across from Din Tai Fung which is very much worth a visit as well. I got my dissertation party cake from JJ Bakery, so there will always be a special place in my heart for their chiffon, fruit, and cream.

Overall Conclusion: If you are intrigued by the sea salt coffee, it is worth the pilgrimage. Otherwise, it's fun if you're in the area. If you have a JJ near where you live, give it a try. I particularly like the taro bun, custard bun, and chocolate raisin bread.

A Tale of many Pumpkins

I should start out by saying I love pumpkin pie, by which I mean the usual, basic, classic pumpkin. I prefer recipes with fresh dairy instead of evaporated milk, but will accept Libby's quite happily if someone else made it. Food magazines though are a little like graduate students with dissertations to write: they have to find something new to contribute to the field. Food writers can't very well expect to sell magazines to us every Thanksgiving with articles about how the pumpkin recipe on the back of the can is pretty good.

from Elana's Pantry

And so, every year, I indulge my holiday cooking magazine addiction, read through the Thanksgiving issues, and encounter a chorus of variations on pumpkin. Many of these sound interesting: pumpkin pie with pecans or walnuts or macademia nuts, pumpkin pie with scotch or bourbon or amaretto, pumpkin pie with cream cheese, pumpkin pie with maple syrup or lyle's syrup or caramel.

I turn down pages, bookmark blogs, and file recipes, but I never actually make any of them. When I'm in the midst of orchestrating the massive culinary endeavor that is the traditional Thanksgiving, I resist innovation. Some number of years ago, I forsook Libby's for Cooks Illustrated (Spiced Pumpkin Pie--not that dreadful pumpkin-sweet potato hybrid they've been hawking lately). There I have remained, following a regrettable incident with The Hybrid, but every year I wonder--is there something more?

Enter our household's first annual pumpkin pie tasting, held in October to avoid stressing out the cook. I baked half batches (sans crust) of three recipes I was interested in. The pie filling had to stand by itself without any fancy crusts or creams or sauces to confuse the issue. B. and I sampled each one, varying the order of tasting, and exchanged notes. Here is how it went down.

from Gourmet (sniff)

The first contestant, and the one I was most initially excited about, was the Bourbon Pumpkin Pie from the 2009 Gourmet Thanksgiving issue, which turned out to be their last one ever. I'm not much for drinking whiskey straight, but I often like it in food. The other interesting twist was the substitution of allspice for clove and/or nutmeg.

The color of the pie filling came out lighter than I expected given the magazine picture. The flavor was very...boozy. Raw boozy. I was disappointed and B. didn't like it at all. I must admit though that there was something very compelling about the flavor combination. Next time, I will mix the bourbon with the sugar and reduce it in a saucepan before adding it to the pie. That should take the raw edge off and if anything should improve the custard's consistency

Overall conclusion: if you are intrigued by the bourbon/pumpkin idea, I recommend making a bourbon whipped cream and serving that with your favorite traditional pumpkin pie instead. If you decide to play around with reducing the bourbon first, please write and tell me how it went.

The second contestant was the Santa Monica Farmer's Market Cookbook pumpkin pie. Admittedly the centerpiece of this recipe is supposed to be an actual fresh pumpkin that is roasted and scooped out in the time-honored way. In this case, the organic canned stuff from TJs was standing in. This recipe is basically a classic pumpkin pie recipe that uses a 50/50 mixture of milk and cream instead of evaporated milk or just cream. The spice combination bore a strong resemblance to the one on the back of the can.

As expected, this was a traditional pumpkin pie. When comparing the taste/texture of milk and cream in the filling vs. just cream, it was slightly cleaner but also a little more on the watery side. B. thought it was fine.

Overall conclusion: if you are looking for a traditional pumpkin pie recipe without evaporated milk, this is not a bad one to start with. It turns out I prefer the richness of an all-cream pie. However it is good to know that if the carton of cream lied about its volume (most of them cheat a bit), and you don't have enough in the carton for the full measurement, it is okay to fill in the remainder with milk. It may be that using milk brings out the fresh taste of a roasted pumpkin. It would be worth trying the experiment again with actual squash.

from Bon Appetit

Contestant number 3, Pumpkin Pie with Brown Sugar-Walnut Topping, was a last-minute addition to the tasting. This is a basic pumpkin pie recipe with the addition of a nut-sugar-cinnamon topping before baking. The crunchy cinnamon-spiced nuts brought out the smooth coolness of the filling. It did not get soggy in the refrigerator overnight and I found myself munching away on it without half thinking about what it was doing to my carb count for the day.

I am torn about whether to make it for Thanksgiving because it seems in every gathering, there is someone who does not like walnuts. Pecans would be tasty, but I liked the sharp, slightly astringent walnut-y note with the sweet custard.

Overall conclusion: The crunchy nut topping was a surprising winner, and is a great idea if you want to make a "pumpkin crisp" without making pastry. For the filling that goes under it, I think I'm going to use a variant of the old Cooks Illustrated recipe--again.