Nicely toasted Mac&Cheese

When I was growing up, we rarely ate food that came out of the box.  Typically if there was part of our food that came out of a box or can, it wouldn’t have comprised the whole meal – instead it would have been spaghetti noodles, to be boiled and added to a sauce made from canned tomatoes, to which onions and probably a ready-made spaghetti sauce flavoring mix would be added.  Not that our meals were fancy: one of the highlights of Sunday mornings was scrambled eggs with Spam – yep – that infamous not really ham but what do you call it in the distinctly blue tin, and Sunday afternoons was cream of tomato soup (of which I was not a fan as a kid) and open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches, made on my sister Melissa’s homemade bread – baked in Folger’s coffee cans so the bread slices where round, topped with Tillamook cheddar and a slice of summer sausage (also round, incidentally) and grilled face-up in our oven.

One serving: gone.

Now this, so far, is reasonable.  But the one thing I do remember coming out of a box was something we had rarely, but for some reason, my younger brothers and I loved:  Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.  Those of you who know what it is are probably either recoiling in disgust at the thought of such nasty fare, or chuckling a little because you, too, loved it as a kid.  For those who don’t know what it is, let me explain.  Kraft Macaroni & Cheese comes in a tall, skinny blue box (at least it did when I was kid – the labeling may have changed).  In the box was dried macaroni and a little white package that contained a powdered yellow substance: “the cheese”.  The macaroni was boiled according to package instructions:  roughly 10 minutes if I recall.  Then the water was drained off and to the macaroni was added the dubious contents of the white package, a few tablespoons of butter, a little milk, and you stirred until all the yellow powder was evenly distributed, wetted with the aid of the butter and milk and any moisture clinging to the noodles after draining.  The result was a sticky, gooey, pumpkin orange macaroni slop that we were inexplicably thrilled about.

Fortunately, things have improved since then in the Macaroni & Cheese department.  Thanks once again to my favorite cooking magazine, Fine Cooking, we were able to dine on something that was much closer to what you will find at Beecher’s Cheese near the Pike Place Market, or from Rita & Skip’s corner market (which they very suitably served with meatballs – thanks again!)

Give it a try for yourself!  The recipe requires dirtying a whole pile of pots and pans, but is oh-so-worth the effort.  And so vastly different from the Kraft version, I’m not certain that a comparison is even fair.  And here’s the thing:  you can use whatever mixture of cheeses it is that you think will make you happy.  Ditto for the add-ins:  vegetables, meat, mushrooms, spinach, herbs, and spices.  Go a little wild with it, and Enjoy!

Something to smile about!

Macaroni & Cheese
adapted from Fine Cooking, Jan/Feb 2012


Preheat the oven to 350°F/170°C.  Position the rack in the center of the oven.

Prep your ingredients:
Pasta
1 lb of you choice of pasta (I used penne, but anything that the sauce will cling to works well.)


Heat water to a boil and add pasta.  Cook for one minute less than manufacturer’s instructions; drain; set aside.


Add-ins (whatever you want – here what’s in mine)
1 leek, white and light green parts only, washed and cut into 1/4″ thick rounds
1 cup chopped Savoy cabbage
1/4 cup water
1 cup of frozen peas
1 teaspoon of dried thyme

Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat and add 1 Tablespoons of oil.  Add leek and cook until leek softens.  Add cabbage and water.  Steam cabbage and leeks together until cabbage is softened.  Remove from heat and stir in frozen peas and thyme.  Set aside.

Topping
1 clove of garlic, crushed or smashed into a paste
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
2 cups fresh, course bread crumbs, lightly toasted (if you have a food processor, toast the bread first and put the slices into the food processor to make crumbs)

Melt the butter and stir in the garlic.  Pour the garlic butter over the bread crumbs and toss to combine thoroughly.  Set aside.  


Cheese Sauce

2 Tablespoons of flour
3 1/2 cups of milk (I used 2%)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups of mixed cheeses, grated (I used 2 cups Gruyere and 1 cup Fontina)
2 Tablespoons fresh, chopped parsley

In a heavy pot over medium heat, warm butter until completely melted.  Add flour and stir with a whisk until flour and butter are fully incorporated.  Add 1/3 of the milk, and whisk vigorously until the mixture is smooth, lump-free and begins to thicken.  Add the remaining milk, raise the temperature to medium high, and whisk constantly until the mixture begins to bubble.  Turn the heat down to low so the mixture bubbles quietly, and, stirring occasionally, let bubble for 5 minutes.  Add the salt, the grated cheeses and the parsley and whisk until the cheese is fully incorporated and melted into the sauce.


Assembly
Add the noodles to the vegetables in the frying pan and toss to combine.  Pour the cheese sauce over the noodle & vegetable mixture until everything is well-coated with cheese sauce.  Pour the entire pasta mixture into a 9×13″ baking dish (or whatever you have that fits this quantity of ingredients).  Sprinkle the bread crumb mixture evenly over the top.  Place mixture into the heated oven and bake until the bread crumbs are nicely browned and the mixture begins to bubble; about 15 minutes.  


Cool 5 minutes.  Serves 6 generously.

There’s just so much good stuff in here. Perfect winter food.

Tasty Morsels, hot from the oven

A tomato in winter is rarely inspiring.  Now, there was a time I would have said that a tomato outside of a pasta sauce or salsa was rarely inspiring, no matter what time of year it was, but things changed during a blistering, humid Minnesota summer, when, late one night after a a particularly sweaty soccer game in the persistent humidity that doesn’t disappear even when the sun goes down, my friend and I stopped by her brother’s house at around 10:30 PM for a short visit and snack.  His kids went to bed around 10 PM, I guess, so that’s when he started to cook.  As he was warming up the pan to begin production of a different drool-inducing delicacy, he set before us a plate with giant slices of beefsteak tomatoes fresh from the garden (his), topped with light drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt, a splash of balsamic, and a few shredded basil leaves (later I would discover that adding fresh mozzarella to this ensemble is what Italians call Caprese, but I’m getting ahead of myself).  Now, I was a strictly non-tomato eater.  I would push them aside in salads, decline them on my tacos, and just didn’t get the appeal of popping cherry tomatoes, one by one like grapes, into your mouth, raw, whole.

But there I was, attempting to be polite company, with a plate full of giant, admittedly beautiful, fresh Minnesota summer tomatoes staring back at me.  I tentatively speared a forkful, and put it in my mouth.  Wow!  Incredible!  The surprising sweetness of the tomato paired with the sharpness of the vinegar and the smoothness of the olive oil, enhanced by the slightly cinnamon flavor of the fresh basil and tempered by the salt danced around together in my mouth – I was having a glorious gastronomic moment.  I devoured the entire plate full as my friend, who well knew my disdain for fresh tomatoes, looked on in great surprise.

Not bad for winter tomatoes!

Beautiful color and stainless steel

I don’t remember what else was served that night – maybe some fried Chicken of the Woods (mushrooms) or something along those lines, but I’ve never forgotten how good a fresh summer tomato can be.

Before Roasting

In the winter, though, no matter where I’ve been in the world, it’s a bit hopeless.  No amount of doctoring or additives gets me excited about a raw tomato in the winter.  But, there is another way to fix them that creates the same burst of joy in the mouth as my friend’s brother’s tomatoes:  Oven roasted cherry tomatoes.  Serve them warm or cold, in sandwiches, salads or with eggs…if you can resist eating them all with your fingers as soon as they are cool enough to pick up.

Oven Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

1.5 cups (300 g) cherry tomatoes, any color or a mixture
3 Tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 Tablespoon of Italian seasoning
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400°F/205°C

Wash and halve the cherry tomotoes and place them in a bowl.  Add all remaining ingredients and stir until tomatoes are completely coated.

Arrange tomatoes, cut side up, on an oven proof baking dish.  Pour any liquid remaining in the bowl over the tomatoes.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.  Turn off heat and let sit in the oven for 20 minutes longer.

Serve warm or cold.

Grilled Halloumi, Oven Roasted Cherry Tomato and Basil Sandwiches

1 package of Halloumi cheese, sliced into 16 thin slices
8 slices of firm white bread (ciabatta and pugliese are great options)
1 recipe Oven Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, above
16 fresh basil leaves

Pan fry or grill the halloumi until both sides are golden brown and crispy.
Lightly toast the bread

Top each slice of bread with two slices of Halloumi, 5-6 tomato halves, and 2 leaves of basil.  Serve warm at room temperature.

Serves 8.

Vanha Kirkko, Helsinki

Finland doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving Day, although the style of their Independence Day is far closer to our Thanksgiving celebration than it is to the whoop it up, fireworks watching, BBQing casual affair that makes me love the American Independence Celebration so much.  But it’s November, and I’m a long way from a BBQ and even further from an American Thanksgiving table at the moment.

But.  Thanksgiving isn’t just a holiday.  It’s an act.  Of giving thanks – for friends, family – our own and adopted, and a time of remembering all the bits and pieces in our lives that make us feel fortunate, or, well, thankful.

And then there is Father’s Day.  Celebrated in America not long on the third Sunday in June, usually with another BBQ and a gathering of families together to thank Dad for all he’s done for us over the years.  To my mind, it’s a Thanksgiving Day too.  In Finland, it’s celebrated on the second Sunday in November.

This year, I thought it might make reasonable sense (I love that term in so many ways, but I digress…) to combine the Thanksgiving meal and the Father’s Day celebration, and serve up turkey and all of the fixings to the family I’ve adopted through marriage.

A beautifully set table

The preparations for the dinner spread, as they often do for large-scale celebrations involving large quantities of food, over a period of several days.  As I planned and we chopped and prepped and cooked (more thanks to my willing helpers, a.k.a. husband and brother-in-law), my memories drifted back to moments with two fathers, my own, and my husband’s.

I have a picture of my dad, sitting in the long grass, his dog by his side, at the top of the bluff overlooking the Ranch.  He looks happy, in his element, and no doubt wondering, as he would say “what the poor people are doing” – meaning all those people who weren’t having the same level of enjoyment that he was at that moment.  My dad loved the Ranch, and loved even more when we were up there visiting to enjoy it with him.  Another memory of my dad keeps coming to mind, particularly as the chill of winter settles into Finland:  I can picture him on those cold winter mornings at our house in Clearview, kneeling in front of the open door of the wood stove in our living room, building a fire, blowing on the coals to spark a flame against the wadded up newspaper and the chopped bits of kindling.  I took it for granted as a kid that the house was always warm; the fire always lit and cared for.  Now I know it was one of those chores he did as another way to show us that he loved us.

Ready and Waiting

My husband’s father also has a place he loves:  the family cabin on Lake Päijäni, and loves it when we come to visit and enjoy the peaceful setting with him.  I didn’t have a camera to capture the memory of a moment J and I shared with him out on the lake, pulling up the nets to see how many fish we’d secured for dinner.  As he pulled up the nets slowly, the setting sun glinted sharply, gloriously, off the droplets of water clinging to the ropes, and off the scales of the wriggling perch we’d soon be eating with garden fresh potatoes and salad.  This is a man who finds great joy in giving.  He’ll call and ask – not if you would like a bucket of freshly picked lingonberries, but rather, would you like your bucket of lingonberries whole or crushed?  This is one of the many ways he shows his love for us.

Cranberry Chocolate Cake, Pumpkin Cheesecake, Jello Jiggler Pie

I am thankful for this – for the father I can no longer see and the one I’ve been given through marriage.  I am thankful for family and friends around the world and the ones in Finland – and I would have to say, that I am hard-pressed to think of a single family member or friend with whom I have not shared a meal, large or small.  Food brings us together, but it is just an excuse – it is just one more way of showing how much we care.

Here are a few recipes for Thanksgiving – for those of you gathering in a couple of weeks around your family tables in America, and for those of you curious about what it is Americans serve at the celebration.

Bread Stuffing with Fresh Herbs
modified from Fine Cooking Make Ahead Holidays 2010

Note:  unlike most recipes for stuffing, this one has only 4 Tablespoons of fat in the whole thing.  Nice!  And delicious!  Don’t be tempted to cook this inside the turkey – you’ll have a soggy mess that no one will want to eat.

One day ahead, spread on a baking sheet:
1 loaf whole wheat bread, sliced and cubed
1 loaf white bread, sliced and cubed

The morning you want to serve it, toast the bread in a 400° F/ 205°C for 10 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from oven and let cool. You should be 10-12 cups of bread cubes.

While bread is cooling melt 4 Tablespoons of butter in a large frying pan on medium-high heat and add in:
1 leek, white part only (halve lengthwise and chop into thin half moons)
1 onion, diced small
2 large ribs of celery, diced medium (I don’t like big celery chunks)

The day after – a lighter fare

Stir until vegetables are tender, 8-10 minutes.  Add:
1/3 cup finely chopped parsley
1 T finely chopped sage
1T finely chopped thyme
1tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

Stir just about 2 minutes until the herbs are fully combined and softened slightly.  Remove from heat.

In a large bowl, combine bread cubes, vegetable mixture, and
3 cups of chicken broth
2 eggs, beaten 

until all of the bread crumbs are fully moistened.  Transfer to a large casserole dish, and bake in a 400°F/205°C oven for 30-40 minutes until hot all the way through and crisp and golden brown on the top.

Since the turkey has to rest 30 minutes before you cut it anyway, that’s the perfect time to cook the stuffing so it’s nice and hot.

Serves 20-25 generously as a side dish.

Green Beans with crispy pancetta, mushrooms and shallots
Say goodbye once and for all to the green bean casserole.  From the same source as above, these take Thanksgiving green beans to a whole new level.  The beans can be cooked the day before and refrigerated until needed.


1 1/2  (500 g) pounds of green beans, trimmed
2 1/2 oz thinly sliced pancetta or Serano ham, cut into strips.
3 T extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup wild mushrooms, sliced or chopped if large (I used yellow foot a.k.a. suppilovahvero)
2 medium-large shallots, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
1/4 cup very thinly sliced sage leaves (tip: stack all of the leaves and slice through at same time)
1 T sherry or apple vinegar
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard


Fill a large bowl with water, add about 12 large ice cubes, and set aside.

In a large pot, bring water to a boil and add the beans all at once.  Cook uncovered until tender when you bite into them, but still a bright green.  Drain beans and pour them immediately into the bowl of ice water to cool.  Drain and pat dry.

In a non-stick pan cook pancetta over medium-low heat until crisp and browned.  Set aside.  In the same pan, add 2 Tablespoons of olive oil, the mushrooms and the shallots.  Cook until tender.  Add the sage and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Remove from heat and add the mustard, vinegar, and remaining 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.  Stir to combine.

Return the pan to medium heat and add the beans.  Toss to combine and cook until hot.  Season to taste with salt and transfer to serving dish.  Top with crumbled pancetta.

Serves 8.

Still making me happy.