***½~ (3.5/5)

My first attempt to make Mac and Cheese that was NOT Kraft Dinner (which I now hate oh so much). I’ve actually been pretty disappointed with the Mac & Cheeses that I’ve had. No matter how extravagent it seems it was just never that good. I’m still on my quest to find the Ultimate one. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know!

So, we made the Barefoot Contessa’s mac and cheese with tomatoes. It was actually very simple to do. The thing I was most worried about screwing up was when making the cream sauce, but worked perfectly.

Ingredients, again check the link up there for exact amounts.

So first, we boiled the pasta with a bit of oil and salt. And in the mean time, we grated the Cheddar and Gruyere cheeses. We were doing a bunch of other stuff, so it took us a little bit more time, as we were prepping 3 different dishes at the same time.

Once the pasta was al dente, I drained it, and added a tiny bit more oil to it so  it wouldn’t stick together while we made the sauce.

The sauce was pretty easy too. Just make your basic roux. Melt the butter, and add in the four and mix for a minute or two until it combines. I haven’t made a proper roux since high school (over 10 years), so I was a bit worried because it seemed a bit clumpier than I remembered but my friend said it should be fine. Oh, we also heated up our milk in another pot. We then combined the milk with the roux and whisked it together until it got a little bit thicker and took it off the heat. It smoothed and thickened perfectly. We added our cheeses and it got even more thick and creamy. So that’s how easy it is to make a creamy-cheesy sauce. I had no clue. Then we added a bit of nutmeg, and pepper to taste. We then combined  the macaroni with the sauce in the pot and mixed it all up until it was well combined and every bit of pasta was coated in cheese. Looked really good. Not fluorescent orange like KD.

We combined our bread crumbs with some melted butter and mixed them together. We then put the macaroni and cheese mixture in our baking dish. We lined the top with sliced tomato, bread crumbs, and some extra cheddar cheese that we grated. We baked it for about 40 minutes until the sauce was bubbling and the top browned a bit. We broiled it for a few minutes to help melt the cheese on top and brown it.  The first taste it was really good. The creaminess wasn’t all there anymore, as the pasta and sauce kind of set together. Maybe I cooked it a bit too long but it was still better than the Mac & Cheeses I’ve had at other restaurants.

A few hours, the creaminess was completely gone, and it was actually quite dry when I was eating the left overs. The one thing I would change for next time would be to use fresh bread crumbs as the recipe stated. I just used dried pre-packaged bread crumbs that I had lying around the house, and I didn’t really like the texture it gave to the top. It was definitely a grainy texture. Maybe I’d also put more cheese, so it will have an awesome lasagna like crust on the top. So overall, it was pretty good while it was fresh, but still not “mind-blowingly awesome comfort food”.

I just had some home-made lasagna last night, and that was heaven.

[View with PicLens]

****~ (4/5)

Level: Easy

Last weekend, we had a team lunch, and I made Roasted Vegetable Paninis. The paninis were fairly easy to make, and it is really quick if you already have left over roasted vegetables. I sort of started everything from scratch, and got the ingredients by thinking what would taste good together, and it turned out to be pretty delicious. Hope you’ll enjoy this recipe as well.

Cook time excluding roasting vegetables: 5 mins
Cook time including roasting vegetables: 45mins

Serving: 2 Paninis

1/2 Eggplant sliced 1 inch thick
3 Zucchinis, sliced
2 Red peppers, seeded, sliced
1/2 tomatoes, sliced
4 pitted medium black olives
6 big sweet basil leaves
1 loaf of Focaccia bread
6 cloves of garlic
Feta Cheese
Balsamic Vineger
Extra virgin olive oil
salt & freshly ground pepper

Roasted Veggies
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees while prepping for the vegetables. Slice the eggplants, zucchinis and red peppers; coat the vegetables and garlic with a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil, salt and freshly ground pepper. Spread them on a thin baking sheet, bake in the oven, turn the vegetables, and garlic over after 15mins and bake for another 15mins, until the red peppers are nice and wiggly.

<Panini
Take 1 table spoons of extra virgin olive oil and 1 tea spoon of balsamic vineger and mix them in a little bowl together. Brush the olive oil and balsamic vineger mix onto the inside of the Focaccia bread. On half of the focaccia bread, layer roasted garlic, zucchinis, eggplants, and red peppers. Add on olives, freshly sliced tomatoes and basil leaves. Finally, put feta cheese, and some freshly ground pepper on top of the layered vegetables. Put the other half of the focaccia bread on top and send it to the panini press for 5 minutes or until the cheese are melted and the bread is a little cripsy on the outside with nice grill marks on them.

Tip: You can roast a lot of vegetables in advance, for more paninis later on. I tried this recipe with 2 different types of breads, Ciabatta and Focaccia. I liked the panini with Focaccia because it was softer, but you can also use Ciabatta if you like.

Paninis from meplusfood on Vimeo.

[View with PicLens]

***½~ (3.5/5)

Hahaha I realized today that the title’s of the dishes in this cookbook are all Italian and that’s the reason why I don’t know what they are.

Note: There’s a video this time, so just go watch that if you don’t want to read through my ramblings.

Afterwork today, my fellow me’s went to get their plusfood on at a pho joint in Surrey to review, so I thought I’d do something too. Two mins into my cookbook, I found something I’m not sure if I liked or not, but the ingredient list was small, and it seemed easy to cook. Yeah.. no.

Mafatti Ricotta E Spinachi is Naked Ravioli – Riccota and Spinach with Brown Butter Sage and Shaved Parmesan. I’m normally not a fan of ravioli in general because in restaurants, they only come in like 3 or 4 and they never look like they’re filling. I hate going to eat some place, dropping 20 dollars for something, then feeling like I need to order more. Yes, I know I’m not built for fine dining.

The end result looked alright, but I think I may have screwed up the recipe. I made a few guesses here and there because the book is detailed but a little vague for me since I’m not an everyday cookster (yet). First there was the issue of what the hell a C was… it’s Cup.. I think lol. Then there was this thing of “1 Nutmeg grated” and for the life of me, I couldn’t find Nutmeg i could buy that i could grate myself.. in fact, I don’t know what Nutmeg looks like. The last major issue I had was making the Brown Butter Sage to go with my raviolii. I have officially made a mental note to practice making sauce, or at least butter sauce. I don’t know what I did wrong, i kept it on low heat and the butter never melted.. cranked it up a bit and then it kept getting these brown bits in it rather than thickening up like the book said. Added the water and stuff and the end product.. loads of crud floating at the bottom of my pan of melted butter. Sigh, I’ve failed my cooking mentor.

“Mi dispiace, Fabio!” yay for google translation.

The end product was a little on the salty side for me, I have a feeling this was my fault. I had to estimate the portions since I cut everything down by half since I didn’t want to make a serving for 4. And yes, i know dividing by 2 isn’t all that difficult, but you try to get exactly 1.5lbs of spinach from a giant bag of spinach.. and if you do you know, please email me or comment below cause I have no idea. =D Other than that, I think I would have liked it more if I had not turned my Sage butter into just butter.

Again, not normally a fan of this dish in any form really, but it was a good try. I’ll have to rate this a 3.5/5.. I’d like to try it again, but not bork the sauce up *sigh*

Notes for the video:
- I bought 2 boxes of baby spinach, Ricotta cheese, Parmesan, Nutmeg, and Baking Soda.. i had the rest at home.
- One of the steps for the spinach is to boil it, then de-water it by squeezing it dry, and let me tell you.. 15 mins after i let it drain, it was still stupid hot when I tried to squeeze it out. Sigh.

Cafe Firenze Cookbook
Food and Drink Recipes from the Tuscan Sons
Mafatti Ricotta E Spinaci

I used the Microsoft HD Cinema Webcam to film.