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| Smoked Cheese and Pasta |
This batch used 8 oz Gouda, 8 oz medium cheddar, and 4 oz Parmesan.
At any rate, here's the recipe I used. It makes roughly 9 servings.
Showing posts with label pasta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pasta. Show all posts
Baked Macaroni and Cheese, minus the macaroni
My friends assure me that any pasta with cheese sauce can qualify to be labelled as "mac and cheese", even if you don't use the macaroni "elbow" shaped pasta. Fusilli has all these curves and holds sauces really well, which is why I stock it in the pantry. Anyhow. Be it fusilli, celantini, macaroni, or shells, it should all be equivalent in how much you cook for one 9" x 13" batch. I wouldn't advise using bowties or large pasta shapes to make mac and cheese.
I added diced green chiles to the cheese sauce to enhance the flavor; and while I only added two tablespoons, I think I should have added the entire 4 oz can. Compared to the smoky mac 'n' cheese that I had from Vancouver's food cart Esoteric BBQ, my version pales in comparison. There's no beating the smokiness of a real wood-fired smoker; plus Esoteric's might just have more salt in theirs.
This batch used 8 oz Gouda, 8 oz medium cheddar, and 4 oz Parmesan.
At any rate, here's the recipe I used. It makes roughly 9 servings.
This batch used 8 oz Gouda, 8 oz medium cheddar, and 4 oz Parmesan.
At any rate, here's the recipe I used. It makes roughly 9 servings.
Simple Stovetop Mac and Cheese
There are times when I reach for that 99-cent box of mac 'n' cheese at the store and pause for a long time on the cheese sauce ingredient list. Surely, there must be a better way to get my fix for this besides making a huge batch of it and then freezing individual portions. Besides, this is one dish that doesn't taste all that great reheated, or frozen then reheated for that matter.
Ingredients
1/2 lb elbow macaroni
10 oz shredded cheese, preferably cheddar
2 eggs
6 oz evaporated milk
1/2 tsp hot sauce
3/4 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp kosher salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter
freshly ground black pepper
Directions
1. Bring to a boil in a large pot enough water to cook macaroni. When pasta is al-dente or almost soft, drain and put back into the same pot. Add butter to pasta and stir until melted.
2. Add egg mixture to the pasta and stir to combine. Add shredded cheese and stir until melted.
Measurements can be halved to make fewer servings. You can make this with unsweetened rice milk. I've read elsewhere that you can simmer a cup of rice milk until it is more concentrated like an evaporated milk substitute; but, why not just use 6 oz of rice milk instead. After all, rice milk is just the byproduct of ground rice and water. I would not go so far as to use a cheese substitute for the cheese part. The texture would just not be the same.
Source: Alton Brown
Ingredients
1/2 lb elbow macaroni
10 oz shredded cheese, preferably cheddar
2 eggs
6 oz evaporated milk
1/2 tsp hot sauce
3/4 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp kosher salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter
freshly ground black pepper
Directions
1. Bring to a boil in a large pot enough water to cook macaroni. When pasta is al-dente or almost soft, drain and put back into the same pot. Add butter to pasta and stir until melted.
2. Add egg mixture to the pasta and stir to combine. Add shredded cheese and stir until melted.
Measurements can be halved to make fewer servings. You can make this with unsweetened rice milk. I've read elsewhere that you can simmer a cup of rice milk until it is more concentrated like an evaporated milk substitute; but, why not just use 6 oz of rice milk instead. After all, rice milk is just the byproduct of ground rice and water. I would not go so far as to use a cheese substitute for the cheese part. The texture would just not be the same.
Source: Alton Brown
Ravioli Filling #1 - Sausage/Ricotta/Spinach
An afterthought note on the ricotta cheese. At the store there were two types of ricotta cheese. One came in a pint tub, but was nonfat ricotta cheese. I'm not sure how this is even possible since cheese is made from the coagulation of the protein and fats in dairy. The other was dry and crumbled; and notably very salty. There was so much salt in the ricotta cheese that it overpowered all other ingredients in the ravioli. I couldn't taste the spinach or the sage. And heck, the cheese was saltier than the Italian pork sausage. If you're going to procure ricotta cheese for this recipe, skip Trader Joe's. Neither of TJ's ricotta cheese products are right for making ravioli. You'll want to get a ricotta cheese made from whole milk. Anyhow, onto the Better Homes & Gardens recipe ratio.
Each ravioli uses 1 tsp of mix, so keep that in mind if you have only made one batch of ravioli pasta dough.
Makes 1 cup.
Ingredients
4 oz Italian pork sausage (if you buy the links, simply remove the casings from 2 of them)
3/4 c fresh spinach leaves, packed
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
1/3 c ricotta cheese
1 tsp fresh sage, minced
1/8 tsp grated whole nutmeg or ground nutmeg
Directions
1. If you bought sausage links instead of bulk sausage, simply remove the casings from two of the sausages. Fry sausage over medium heat and break up the sausage as it cooks. When no more pink remains, remove the sausage to a plate and add spinach to the hot pan. Cook the spinach until it wilts. Drain off the fat, if any.
2. In a food processor, combine the cooked sausage and spinach. Pulse until it resembles ground pork.
3. In a medium bowl, combine egg yolk, ricotta cheese, sage, nutmeg. Stir in sausage mixture. Cover and chill until needed.
This is more than enough filling to make twenty 1" ravioli, each filled with 1 tsp filling.
Basic Pasta Dough for Ravioli
This recipe ratio comes from the French Laundry cookbook. First time making ravioli, second attempt at making pasta from scratch. There are two parts to any noodle dish. The most important part, I've discovered is having a pasta dough that tastes good on its own. It's not too salty; it holds up well to being boiled, and when you eat it, the pasta says: eat more, eat more. The second part is packaging. No, not how the product starts out, but how it looks when it ends up on your plate.
For a pasta-making beginner, this dough didn't exactly come together like it does in all those YouTube videos about how to make pasta dough from scratch; but what I can tell you (and the cookbook says this, so it must be true) is that you cannot overknead the dough.
I hope you are in shape because kneading the pasta dough by hand is an upper body workout!
Ingredients
1 3/4 c (8 oz) all purpose flour
6 large egg yolks
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp milk
Directions
Mound the flour in the center of a Silpat mat or large cutting board. Make a well in the center large enough to accommodate the wet ingredients (milk, egg yolks, whole egg, and olive oil). Pour wet ingredients into the well.
Mixing. Using your fingers, break the eggs up and turn the flour in a circular motion (same direction, don't go all changing direction when incorporating the wet ingredients into the flour). Supposedly this circular motion helps to incorporate the flour into the eggs otherwise it'll be all lumpy. Eventually the mixture will get too tight to keep turning with your fingers.
At this stage, I thought I had more of the ingredients stuck to my hands than what was on the board. My hands looked as though I'd been sparring with the Pillsbury dough boy. Alas, I think this is normal.
Kneading. Knead the dough by pressing it in a forward motion with the heels of your hands. Do this several times until the dough doesn't feel sticky. Let the dough rest for a few minutes. Form the dough into a ball and knead it again until the dough becomes silky smooth. What was interesting that the more I kneaded the dough, the more it came off my hands and by the time I felt like I was done kneading, most of it was off my hands.
I'm not sure that the dough ever got to the silky smooth stage from kneading; but after I let it rest in a closed plastic food storage container, the dough was smooth and pliable.
The cookbook suggests that kneading can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. This might be true if you were a seasoned bread maker with massive forearms. I think this step took me longer.
Resting. You could wrap the dough in plastic wrap, but a sealable airtight plastic container will suffice.
Let the dough rest for 30 minutes to an hour before making it into something else, like noodles or ravioli.
Making. This batch of dough made 40 ravioli dumplings, though I'm sure more could have been made if I didn't waste so much figuring out the hand-cranked pasta machine. The cookbook says to take this ball of dough and cut it into thirds, then each third (roughly 5 oz each by weight) should be cut in half. The amount of dough that should be fed through the pasta machine is 2.5 oz. I used a digital kitchen scale to measure out the dough.
I ran the dough through the pasta machine starting from the largest width setting (7) to the second smallest (2). I found that the smallest setting on that machine makes a paper-thin, translucent sheet of pasta; maybe this is how filo dough is made. Run the pasta through the machine 2-3 times per knob setting, gradually making it thinner.
Most pasta recipes will tell you to fold it and turn it a quarter. I watched a YouTube video on this because I had no conceptual idea what the cookbook was talking about. I used an egg wash (1 egg yolk + water) with a pastry brush on one side of the ravioli and pressed the two sheets of pasta dough together after putting in the filling. That method worked well for sealing it.
For a pasta-making beginner, this dough didn't exactly come together like it does in all those YouTube videos about how to make pasta dough from scratch; but what I can tell you (and the cookbook says this, so it must be true) is that you cannot overknead the dough.
I hope you are in shape because kneading the pasta dough by hand is an upper body workout!
Ingredients
1 3/4 c (8 oz) all purpose flour
6 large egg yolks
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp milk
Directions
Mound the flour in the center of a Silpat mat or large cutting board. Make a well in the center large enough to accommodate the wet ingredients (milk, egg yolks, whole egg, and olive oil). Pour wet ingredients into the well.
Mixing. Using your fingers, break the eggs up and turn the flour in a circular motion (same direction, don't go all changing direction when incorporating the wet ingredients into the flour). Supposedly this circular motion helps to incorporate the flour into the eggs otherwise it'll be all lumpy. Eventually the mixture will get too tight to keep turning with your fingers.
At this stage, I thought I had more of the ingredients stuck to my hands than what was on the board. My hands looked as though I'd been sparring with the Pillsbury dough boy. Alas, I think this is normal.
Kneading. Knead the dough by pressing it in a forward motion with the heels of your hands. Do this several times until the dough doesn't feel sticky. Let the dough rest for a few minutes. Form the dough into a ball and knead it again until the dough becomes silky smooth. What was interesting that the more I kneaded the dough, the more it came off my hands and by the time I felt like I was done kneading, most of it was off my hands.
I'm not sure that the dough ever got to the silky smooth stage from kneading; but after I let it rest in a closed plastic food storage container, the dough was smooth and pliable.
The cookbook suggests that kneading can take anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. This might be true if you were a seasoned bread maker with massive forearms. I think this step took me longer.
Resting. You could wrap the dough in plastic wrap, but a sealable airtight plastic container will suffice.
Let the dough rest for 30 minutes to an hour before making it into something else, like noodles or ravioli.
Making. This batch of dough made 40 ravioli dumplings, though I'm sure more could have been made if I didn't waste so much figuring out the hand-cranked pasta machine. The cookbook says to take this ball of dough and cut it into thirds, then each third (roughly 5 oz each by weight) should be cut in half. The amount of dough that should be fed through the pasta machine is 2.5 oz. I used a digital kitchen scale to measure out the dough.
I ran the dough through the pasta machine starting from the largest width setting (7) to the second smallest (2). I found that the smallest setting on that machine makes a paper-thin, translucent sheet of pasta; maybe this is how filo dough is made. Run the pasta through the machine 2-3 times per knob setting, gradually making it thinner.
Most pasta recipes will tell you to fold it and turn it a quarter. I watched a YouTube video on this because I had no conceptual idea what the cookbook was talking about. I used an egg wash (1 egg yolk + water) with a pastry brush on one side of the ravioli and pressed the two sheets of pasta dough together after putting in the filling. That method worked well for sealing it.
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