Macaroni & Cheese

Best served with meatloaf. Its also a great way to use up odds and ends of cheeses that aren’t at their freshest anymore but you can’t bear to throw away something you spent $22.99/lb on. Or just plain old cheddar works too.

Macaroni & Cheese
1 lb box of pasta (elbows, twists, twirls, shells, bow ties, tennis racquets, whatever) 
2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon butter (clarified, if you have it, otherwise, whole butter is fine)
1 tablespoon flour 
2 cups grated cheese (cheddar, swiss, gruyere, parmesan, fancy cheeses, or a mix)
1 T dijon mustard (optional)
1/4 cup seasoned breadcumbs 

Bring a large pot of salty water to a boil. The water should be as salty as the ocean. On a second burner, heat up the milk in a small saucepan. Meanwhile, in a 6 quart saucepan, make a blonde roux. To do this, get the pot hot, then add the clarified butter. Add the flour and whisk in so that their aren’t any lumps. When the roux just starts to darken and smells like buttered popcorn, add the milk. Whisk together and bring the mixture to a boil, then turn off heat, add the cheese and whisk gently until most of the cheese is melted. Its okay if there are some small lumps remaining. If you are using the mustard, add that too.

Butter a casserole dish and when the pasta is about two-thirds done (gives when you bite it but not quite al dente) drain the pasta and pour it into the casserole. Pour the cheese sauce (classically called Sauce Mornay) over the pasta and sprinkle the top with seasoned breadcrumbs.

Bake at 350° for 45 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and the top has crisped.

The Best Meatloaf Recipe You’ll Find

When M and I met, he was The Gourmand and I was the Peasant. He, having gone to culinary school, and I making the best meatloaf he’d ever had. Times have changed and the line between who’s who has blurred, but I remain meatloaf champion of our kitchen. Here’s my recipe. I give quantities, but once you make it once or twice, you’ll be able to eyeball how much of each ingredient to add. And trust me, you’ll make it more than twice.

Meatloaf
2 lbs ground meat (I use all beef, a combination of beef, pork and veal, or ground turkey)
1 small onion, minced
2 cloves garic, minced
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1 cup milk
1 cup crushed saltine or ritz crackers (about 16) or 3/4 cup breadcrumbs
2 eggs
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T hot sauce
1 T whole grain mustard
2 tsp each of salt & pepper 
Meatloaf Glaze (recipe follows)

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients, except the glaze. Using clean hands, mix thoroughly, to evenly distribute all the mix-ins, but be careful to not over mix, as the result will be tough, grainy meat.

On a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, form the meatloaf mixture into a loaf about the size of a football* and make a shallow gutter down the middle. Pour half of the glaze into the gutter and used the back of a spoon to smear some glaze around the top and allow some to drip down the sides of the meatloaf.

Bake at 350° 50-60 minutes, until cooked through. Serve with extra glaze.

Meatloaf Glaze
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup Bragg’s apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar

In a small saucepan, mix the ingredients over low heat. Stir occasionally until the glaze beings to simmer. Take off the heat, allow to cool slightly before glazing meatloaf.

*I know there is a tradition of placing the meatloaf into an actual loaf pan and baking it that way. I don’t do that for two reasons. First, when the meatloaf cooks, lots of fat and juices cook out onto the cookie sheet. If you cook the meatloaf in a loaf pan, those juices have nowhere to go and essentially poach in fat the bottom half of the meatloaf. Second, more exposed surface area means more glaze to get caramelized and that is everyone’s favorite part.

Chili For A Cold Winter’s Night

In culinary school, we’ve been braising and stewing large, primal and sub-primal cuts of meat. This week, I had Osso Bucco and Oxtail for the first time. I loved both. Long, slow, moist cooking renders even the toughest meat, like beef cheeks, tender and juicy.

You can tell a cut of meat’s tenderness by how active the muscle was in life. The top loin of a cow, the part of your T-bone steak that isn’t the filet mignon, doesn’t do a whole lot of active work in life. It sort of passively allows the cow to stand and move its legs to walk, and therefore the loin is a tender cut. A tail does a whole lot of swooshing and the cheeks do a whole lot of cud chewing, resulting in strong muscle and therefore a tough cut of meat. 

I am excited to perfect my techniques, and promise to share them with you in the future, but for tonight, I rummaged through the freezer and alas, came upon no cross-cut veal shanks. I do however, have ten pounds of ground, grassfed, organic beef care of my parents cow-share.

A quick word on cow shares. If you want to know that your beef, in life, lived the way god intended and ate grass and breathed air without the company of thirty thousand other cows, you can buy a whole cow, or a share in a cow, from a local farmer. As you may know I am passionate about knowing where my meat comes from. If not, click here. Google search “cow share” and not only will you get information on cow, but also on milk, but that’s a whole other story.

Ok, so I’m making chili, which like tomato sauce or chocolate chip cookies, there are a million variations and everyone thinks that their’s is right. I don’t, I just think its damn good.

Chili 
grapeseed oil
1 onion, diced 
kosher salt
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 T dried thyme
1 T chili powder
1 T dried red pepper flakes
2 tsp ground cumin  
2 tsp ground coriander 
2 chipotle chiles, seeds removed and chopped
2 lbs ground beef
2 cans tomatoes (diced, whole, chopped, whatever, doesn’t matter)

In a heavy-bottomed pot large enough to hold all the ingredients, pour in grapeseed oil to coat the bottom. Heat the oil over medium-high until it shimmers, then add the onions. Add a generous tsp of salt and toss to coat with oil. Sweat the onions until they just begin to soften, then add the garlic. Cook a minute or two more, until the garlic is fragrant. Add the dried spices and stir allowing the flavors to bloom. Add the chipotles and stir. Cook two minutes. Add the beef and cook, stirring occasionally until it is all browned. Add the tomatoes, stir to combine, and bring to a boil. Lower the temperature to simmer and cover. (Careful here. Covering the pan holds in heat so it requires less burner power to maintain a simmer than if it was left uncovered.) 

Simmer the chili for 1 hour, stirring occasionally and monitoring that it is just simmering and not boiling away. After an hour, check the seasoning (aka saltiness) and adjust as necessary. Continue to cook another hour. Check seasoning. Remove cover, simmer 30 minutes more, skimming any fat (the oil slick you may or may not see) as necessary.

Serve over rice.

Optional garnishes:
shredded cheddar cheese
sliced green onions
sour cream
sliced avocado or guacamole
diced onions
diced caramelized onions
hot sauce of your choice

Stay warm and hearty!

Authentic Japanese at Village Yokocho

Ok, so perhaps the use of “authentic” isn’t exactly fair because I’ve never actually eaten in Japan, but having watched lots of Anthony Bourdain and Andrew Zimmer tells me that this place is the real deal in New York City.

Yokocho’s entrance is at 8 Stuyvesant Street, between 3rd Avenue & 9th Street, next to St. Mark’s Bookstore. However, its on the second floor and there’s another Japanese restaurant on the ground floor, so make sure you head up the stairs.

Inside feels like what I imagine the Tokyo equivalent to Brooklyn might be. Its filled with hand-drawn flags advertising the food options. Sadly, they are in Japanese and so I could only guess at things based on the accompanying drawing, if there was one.

Additionally, there is an extensive English-language menu with lots of tapas style choices, including a kind of Japanese BBQ skwere called yakitori, fresh salads, soups, noodle dishes and so on, but no sushi, so if that’s what you’re in the mood for, you won’t find it here.

What you will find are unique selections on every page, including on the sake menu – oh and did I mention its affordable?

For starters, we ordered a Junmai Daiginjo sake, a large carafe for $16. This grade of sake is considered high end. A minimum of 50% of the rice must be polished away before fermentation and no additional alcohol can be added. The result is clean, floral and light, without any morning-after side effects.

Then, we ordered lots of little plates of interesting sounding things off the menu, and by pointing to other patron’s plates and saying “one of those, please.” I had octopus salad, steamed green beans with black sesame sauce, and deep-fried squid legs. We also shared a plate of Japanese pickles, a barbecued rice caked filled with pickled plum, dumplings, chicken liver yakitori and quail egg yakitori.

By the time I ordered the quail eggs, I was full and really didn’t need anymore food. However, when something like BBQ eggs is on the menu, and I know that yakitori involves skewering something, I can’t suppress my curiosity. Three perfect little eggs appeared, skewered through the poles and tea-colored. The eggs had been hard-boiled and brushed with the BBQ sauce before grilling and were a blend of custard and chalk mouthfeel; familiar, yet utterly unlike any preparation I could have imagined for the humble egg. Oh, and the skewer cost $3.00.

The only thing that wasn’t stellar were the chicken livers, not because they weren’t good, but they were unadorned. I might have liked a brush of plum sauce or something to cut the minerality with some sweetness.

We ended with mochi ice cream. Mochi is glutenous rice that is pounded out into a gummy circle or square and wrapped around a filling, like red bean or ice cream. We had chocolate and black sesame and they were awesome, except that you had to order two pieces and when the server told us that only the chocolate and black sesame were available (from a list that also included strawberry and green tea) one of us asked if she could only order one, as her second choice was sold out, and she was refused. I found that slightly annoying but perhaps the byproduct of a complex, computerized ordering and inventory system. 

I will certainly be back and am looking forward to being a little more adventurous in my ordering (beef tongue yakitori!) and also dipping in to the adjoining Angel’s Share bar that is known for an extensive list of specialty cocktails, but was to swanky for my jeans and t-shirt of choice.

Happy New Year Post!

A warm Happy New Year to all of you foodies out there. Cheers to all that 2009 has in store for us, may it all be delicious!

As for me, culinary school is swimming along and the tension is mounting, which is strange, considering no one is actually competing for anything, except center stage. Speaking of which, last night I performed at my very first storytelling event at The Creek in Long Island City, Queens. Storytelling is kind of like doing stand-up but there is no requirement to be funny. But I was and it was really fun. The theme was “2008″ and I told the story of how I quit my life to start over as a chef. I didn’t make it too well-known in advance that I was actually doing this until I was sure I could… actually do it. The place was packed and I left a room full of strangers entertained. Thanks to Brad and Cindy! 

The Gourmand & I will be spending this evening in the best way we know how – eating beef bulgogi & cheetos and drinking Pain Killers and cava and setting the alarm for midnight to get up and watch the ball drop. Perfect.

The painkiller was our specialty cocktail at our wedding and has a long story behind it that I’ll tell you someday. In the meantime, the recipe consists of good quality dark rum, orange juice, pineapple juice, sweetened cream of coconut, shaken and poured with crushed ice and served with a hefty grating of fresh nutmeg.

Cheers!