Curried Mac and Cheese

I'm not the type of person that can eat the same thing everyday. I've learned through trial and error that one dish three times in a row is my limit! I was discussing this with my boyfriend, and he said it depended on the dish. Japanese food is definitely a cuisine he doesn't get sick of as easily. I guess being Japanese American, eating Japanese food growing up makes it easy for us in that aspect. He did mention that he can probably eat curry for 2 weeks straight and not get sick of it. The way he said this made me think is that he knows this fact from experience not just a "what if" situation.

When I saw this recipe for Curried Mac and Cheese on the blog Within the Kitchen, I thought "Wow, how can I go wrong? My BF loves curry ... and Mac and Cheese ... What guy doesn't love Mac and Cheese?" He loved it! As he was happily munching away on the the Mac and Cheese he said "I feel like a kid eating dessert!"

Recipe for Curried Mac and Cheese

3 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
4 T butter
1 onion, chopped
4 T flour
2 T white wine (optional)
2 c whole milk
2-3 cups shredded cheese*
1-2 t curry powder**
1/2 t paprika
salt and pepper to taste***
1/8 cup breadcrumbs (from the tin)

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Cook macaroni according to directions on the package. Do not salt the water since you do not know how salty the cheese sauce is yet.

Saute butter and onions in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat until softened. Add flour to make a paste, and allow to cook a bit to get rid of the floury taste. Add wine and mix until smooth. Add milk 1/2 cup at a time, stirring until smooth before adding more. Add all but one cup of cheese and mix until melted and smooth. Then mix in the curry powder one teaspoon at a time and tasting to check the flavor. Add paprika, salt, and pepper to your liking. Mix the sauce with the cooked macaroni.

Grease or use cooking spray**** a 8 inch square pan. Put the mac and cheese mixture into the pan. Mix the remaining shredded cheese with the breadcrumbs and about 1/8 teaspoon of curry powder. Sprinkle this mixture on top of the mac and cheese. Bake for 20 minutes or until bubbling and warmed through. If the top does not have a nice crispy top, place in broiled for about one minute.

*I used mostly sharp cheddar and some havarti, since that's what I had in the frig and needed to use up.
**Depends on how strong your curry powder is. Be careful not to use too much, you'd like it to subtly taste like curry ... think curried mac and cheese, not curry with a hint of mac and a sprinkle of cheese. Curry flavor also starts developing more as it cooks
***Also be careful with the salt since some cheese tend to be extremely salty. You can always add more salt, but you cannot unsalt a dish.
****I really like to use those floured cooking sprays for baking for casseroles. It really keeps the creamy sauce from sticking to the pan.

Yuzu Karaage (Japanese Fried Chicken Wings)

I know this may sound shocking, but my boyfriend actually enjoys eating healthier than I do. Well, okay, enjoyED eating healthier. Whenever I'd come over, he'd always have salad already cut and ready to eat in his frig. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy salad, but we like different types of salad. He likes a MAN salad, romaine cut into big chunks, carrots, mushrooms, chunks of regular tomatoes, raw onions, italian dressing ... while I like my salad all GIRLY, musclin with either fresh pears or dried cranberries, goat cheese, cherry tomatoes cut in half, oven roasted beets, steamed asparagus, shallots, balsamic vinagrette. I mostly don't eat salad cuz the ingredients for the type of salad I like don't keep in the frig very long.

So my BF thought he'd be a good influence on my eating habits. At first he made a gallant effort. He always prepped a salad for our dinner. And I dutifully ate it. Its healthy, its good for me. It'll counteract all that butter I love! But after a while, it just sat there wilting and being ignored in exchange for more unhealthy fattening dishes like mussels or the fried chicken I made this past weekend. My boyfriend didn't even want to eat rice since it took up too much stomach space with so much chicken available to eat. When I do bother to make a salad, it just its on the table ... He calls it the "bouquet", you know, the flower arrangement ...

Don't worry baby! I put veggies in this fried chicken dish ... uh, there's scallions on top ... and I lined the plate with romaine lettuce so it looks pretty. At least the romaine lettuce in the frig didn't completely go to waste!

I used a couple ingredients not usually found in an american supermarket. So I thought I'd take a picture, so you know what it looks like if you can find these at a Japanese or Asian market. I'll give alternate ingredients just to make regular Japanese chicken wings if you can't get ahold of these ingredients.

Left: Yuzu Kosho in tube
Center: Katakuriko (Potato starch)
Right: Yuzu Kosho (dehydrated skin of a yuzu)

Marinade:
2T yuzu koshou from tube
1 lemon, juiced and skin cut into chunks
1/8 cup salt
2T sake
2T mirin -OR- mixture of sugar and sake
1T yuzu ponzu -OR- regular ponzu or more lemon juice
1T soy sauce
1/8 t sansyo (optional)
thumbsize piece of ginger, grated, and juiced (keep only the juice)

1 large package of chicken wings (about 3-4 pounds), tips removed, broken down to wings and drumettes
1-2 cups katakuriko -OR- mixture of flour and cornstarch
cooking oil
yuzu kosho powder (optional)
1 bunch scallions, chopped

Dressing:
1 lemon, juiced -OR- 2 T rice vinegar
2 T roasted sesame oil
1 t yuzu kosho from tube (optional)

Mix all ingredients of marinade together. Place chicken wings and drumettes in marinade. Allow to soak in flavor at least 2 hours, up to overnight.

Heat cooking oil in large pot over high heat to fry chicken. You will want to cook the chicken at least 375 degrees F. The oil may get hotter than this since when you add the chicken to the oil, it will lower the temperature of the oil. Take the chicken out of the marinade and light dust the chicken with katakuriko. Fry in small batches for about 3-6 minutes depending on the size of your wings, until the chicken wings have a nice color. Drain chicken on newspapers lined with paper towels (cuz don't you think those newspapers are really dirty?).

After all the chicken has been fried. Line a large plate with romaine lettuce. Place a layer with half the chicken, sprinkle with the powdered yuzu powder and half the scallions, then do another layer and add more yuzu powder and scallions. Whisk together the lemon juice, roasted sesame oil, and yuzu kosho from tube. Pour the dressing over the chicken immediately before serving.

Note: The lemon in this recipe is to bring out the subtle yuzu taste. Do not substitute out for rice vinegar unless you are not planning to use the yuzu ingredients.

Hearty Beef Stew with Mushrooms

I remember my first year here in New York City. I moved to NYC end of August. It was so hot and muggy, the air felt heavy around me. I didn't have an A/C for the first few days, so I had to suffer through that oppressive heat. By end of September, the temperature was already down into the 40s. Being from Los Angeles, I thought I was going to die from cold. 40s! That's colder than winter for LA! My classmates laughed hysterically when they saw me wearing gloves at 40 degrees. "Wait til it actually gets cold!" Boy were they right, that winter, the winter of 2003/04 was COLD! With wind chill it was subzero for about 2 weeks after New Years. I remember when the weather hit 14 degrees, I saw joggers outside cuz it was "warm" out!

Now that I've been here for a couple years, I've acclimated to the cold. I don't even wear gloves. I just shove my hands into my big puffy down jacket. But I still get cold pretty easily. My boyfriend is from Alaska, so we're polar opposites when it comes to weather. We can sit in the same room, (obviously) at the same temperature, but I'll get colder and colder, while he gets warmer and warmer. He would feel my hand and it'd feel like ice, while his felt so warm to me. We'd always joke about this fact.

As the weather has been getting colder, I've been craving warm hearty stews. We had a couple chuck steaks in the freezer from when I stockpiled it during the previous sale, so I decided to make beef stew. I also like making food in large quantities and throwing a couple aliquots into the freezer for rainy day. Beef stew was the perfect candidate for my rainy day freezer meal stockpile.

Recipe for Hearty Beef Stew with Mushrooms

3 pound Chuck Steak on the bone, deboned, cut into large chunks, keep the bones
Flour
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Vegetable oil
4 T butter
4 or more cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 onions, cut into large chunks*
1 carrot, shredded
3 ribs celery, finely minced**
2 cups red wine
1 can lager beer
water or beef broth
2 bay leaves
2 T tomato paste
1 t Worcester sauce
1 T Balsamic vinegar
5-8 potatoes, peeled cut into large chunks
4-5 carrots, cut into large chunks***
2 large packages mushrooms, cut in half

Mix flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder in a bowl. Dredge beef in mixture. Heat vegetable oil over high heat in large dutch oven (at least 5 quarts) or pressure cooker. Brown beef in small batches, careful not to overcrowd, place in separate bowl. Lower heat to medium, throw butter into dutch oven or pressure cooker, and saute garlic, onions, shredded carrots, and celery. After this has softened, add the meat back into the pot along with the meat bones. Then add red wine, beer, and water until it barely covers the beef. If you are using a pressure cooker, bring to high pressure for 12 minutes and then use natural release (Tho I got impatient waiting for the pressure to release, so i ran it under cold water after waiting 15 minutes). If you are using a dutch oven, cook over medium heat until the meat has softened but not melting, approximately 1-2 hours. Add the remaining ingredients and allow to cook until the vegetables are cooked and the stew has thickened. At the end you can season to your liking.

Generally the stew is best when you use a drinkable wine for the recipe and stew always tastes better the next day. Serve with crusty bread. Or if prefer, serve it over rice with an egg on top, which is how we had it for breakfast the next day. Also if you decide to freeze leftovers, I would keep the size of the carrots small and fish out any potatoes before freezing because the texture after freeze thawing is not appealing.

*If the onions are too small, it'll completely melt into the stew.
**I don't like eating celery, but I like the flavor it imparts on the stew, so i finely mince it, so I get the flavor, but don't have to eat celery. It also melts nicely into the stew making it thicker.
***I added shredded carrots to the earlier cooking with the meat to melt into the stew, and larger chunks later so they don't get too soft and mushy.

Butter~~~~ (NYC Butter Sale)

Let's be honest, I love butter. Not just love, but LOVE!!! butter. (I sound like Paula Deen don't I?) Its the MSG of real chefs, it really does make food taste better! As Anthony Bourdain mentions in his book Kitchen Confidential, to make your food taste and look like restaurant quality, use such ingredients as shallots, garlic, fresh herbs, garnish your plate, and use BUTTER! He even says that Italian chefs throw butter into their marinara! Believe me, I tried it ... butter makes your marinara taste better. It mellows out the acidity in marinara, I was quite amazed ... and converted!

Okay another confession ... Being a poor starving student, I am very careful with my money. People can call me frugal. But you try living off my grad student stipend, in NYC, while still wanting to go out and party with your friends, or your BF's friends, who have real jobs that make real money!

Borrowed from: "Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

My family didn't raise me to be in debt. Its just against my nature. I'll be in my mid 30s when I finish grad school, who wants to crawl out of debt at that age? I walk over a mile one way to work to save subway fare (unless its raining or I'm very late), cuz it seriously cuts into my budget. So how do I eat the way I do? Honestly, I watch the supermarket sales, and stock up when prices are down. I don't coupon cuz New York Times weekend edition is $4, I'm not sure if I'll get enough coupons to recover my losses, so if you know of other newspapers in NYC that you can get coupons for cheaper, let me know! Anyways, so butter, my love, when its on sale in NYC, its $1.99 a pound, sometimes $1.79, and the cheapest I've seen it, but only once, $1.49. Its not the good stuff like Purga ... But for everyday cooking, buttering the pan for eggs or chocolate chips cookies, generic butter is fine. Though I guess if you want really good butter for cheaper, you can shake heavy cream until it makes butter ... or "overwhip it" in your KitchenAid Mixer.

Time to stock up on butter for all that Holiday baking and cooking! Just throw it in your freezer to keep it fresh if you decide to stock up!

Butter is currently on sale at the following stores in NYC for $1.99 a pound.
The Met Supermarket until Saturday, November 7, 2009
C-Town Supermarket until Thursday, November 5, 2009
Morton Williams Supermarket until Thursday, November 5, 2009

Tsukune (Japanese-style Chicken Meatball)

A while back, I went to go eat at Yakitori Totto with my BF. If you are unfamiliar with yakitori and live in NYC, I highly recommend this spot in Midtown West. Yakitori is Japanese chicken grilled on skewers over charcoal. The chicken they use at Totto is organic and very juicy. One of my favorite skewers to order is tsukune which is a chicken meatball.

I recently attempted to make tsukune at home on a frying pan. Came out pretty okay, but no where as good as the ones at Yakitori Totto unfortunately. My BF must have thought they were damn good, evident by the fact a whole pound and a half of tsukune was gone in a day! I made mine as a donburi with yamaimo and scallions.

Recipe for Tsukune

Chicken meatballs:
Package of ground chicken, appx 1.5 lbs
1/3 cup breadcrumbs
juice squeezed from thumb sized piece of ginger thats been shredded
1 small onion, grated or finely minced
1 egg
1/2 t salt
splash of sake

Tare (sauce):
4 T sake
5 T soy sauce
1 T mirin
1 T sugar
1 T cornstarch mixed well with 1 T water

To make sauce, mix the sake, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a small pan. Bring to a boil, and then lower heat to a simmer for 10 minutes. Add the cornstarch and water mixture and continue to simmer until thickened. (I actually didn't make the tare, I was given some from someone so I cheated!)

Gently mix all the ingredients for the chicken meatballs. Form meatballs somewhere between the size of ping pong ball and a golf ball.

Heat a non stick pan over medium high heat with some oil. Fry the meatballs until lightly browned, approximately 3-5 minutes, then flip over. Brush tare sauce on the cooked side. Allow to cook the meatball another 2-3 minutes. Flip over onto a plate, and brush additional tare on the other side. Be careful not to overcook these meatballs since it is chicken and it tends to get dry. The breadcrumbs help in keeping the texture soft and preventing it from drying out as easily.

Serve over hot rice with extra tare and scallions. We served it with some yamaimo, a sticky mountain potato.