Standing in line at the Co-op deli this morning I zeroed in on a new little sign stuck into a leopard-print wheel of cheese in the display window. It read: Sticky Toffee Cheese. Well, OK.
SINCE YOU PUT IT THAT WAY.
I bought a chunk and took it home for my very own. Rich, salty-sweet and dense, almost like a soft cows’ milk cheddar, studded with a soft brown sugary toffee of sorts, it was not long for this world.
I was there in the queue to buy cheese for research purposes, on assignment for next Friday’s issue of Swerve (the Calgary Herald magazine). (I love it when cheese becomes a business expense.) I chose to make a mac & cheese. My capacity for the stuff is near limitless; especially when it’s made with bacon, onions, roasted garlic, kale, and old Gouda and manchego cheese, then baked with a crusty halo of olive-oily bread crumbs. I picked at the crispy edges and finished the last dozen or so spoonfuls cold, standing up at the stove.
(Since this is technically for Swerve I’m going to hold out on you – I’ll post the recipe when it comes out next Friday. You’ll just have to come on back. Sorry.)
So yes, we’re cleaning out the fridge to take off to Jasper for a week for Christmas in November, a week if eating, drinking and being merry like no other. I CAN’T WAIT.
One thing that had to go was a big bunch of kale. I had seen something, somewhere, made with kale that made me want to eat it. Where was that? Wading through torn-out magazine pages (which are scattered through my house like – I fear I’ll decades from now become a spinster with a house full of torn-out recipes instead of cats) I spent a couple days scrolling through my memory to try and retrieve the file. Fortunately, the world-wide inter-web makes a fine filing system, and if I can at least trigger the memory of which publication it was in (I knew it was Molly, and she has a new column in Bon Appétit – the first I flip to), I can look it up. Bingo.
1/2 lb. spaghetti
canola or olive oil, for cooking with
1 large onion, chopped
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and chopped
1 large bunch of kale
a squeeze of lemon juice
grated Parmesan cheese
salt & pepper
Put a big pot of water on to boil, and cook the spaghetti. Meanwhile, heat a drizzle of oil in a heavy skillet and saute the onion for about 5 minutes, until golden. Add the garlic and cook for a few more minutes.
Rinse the kale, pull out the tough ribs and coarsely chop or tear apart; add another drizzle of oil and then the kale to the onions and garlic. Add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water, straight from the pot, to the pan as well. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 10 minutes, until tender.
Drain the spaghetti, reserving a bit of the cooking liquid. Add the spaghetti to the kale mixture. Add lemon juice and a few spoonfuls of the reserved cooking liquid; toss to combine, adding a handful of Parmesan cheese and more liquid by tablespoonfuls if it’s too dry. Serve immediately.
W maturely dined on plain pasta drizzled with good olive oil and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Snif.
Bit of a week. My head hurts. It’s after midnight. I can’t seem to spell without the aid of spell-check. Still on Thursday and Friday’s to-do list: find a Julia Child wig (and build a costume around it, then practice my higher-octave voice) for Breakfast TV Friday morning (I’m hoping they’ll let me bloodily cut my finger on the air à la Dan Ackroyd on Saturday Night Live), shop and prep for two different cooking segments (cupcakes, shaggy monster cookies, spun-sugar cobweb croquembouche, stuff with pumpkin in it), make green food for a photo shoot for ParentsCanada magazine tomorrow afternoon (at which I’ll also be taking the pictures), finish two articles and take photos for one of them, and cook for a Napa Valley wine event at Willow Park on Friday night, which 250 hungry people will be attending. That’s not including the little stuff, and the outline and sample chapter of a book manuscript I was supposed to have done this week, which obviously won’t. And oh yeah-
I have a 4 year old.
Luckily (for so many reasons) I have a next door neighbour who happens to be a chef. He comes in handy because 1) we’re tag teaming on this Napa Valley event, which is a very good thing because he’s far more cheffy than I, making things like seared scallops over radicchio slaw in soup spoons, and there’s no way I could pull it off myself. Also, he sometimes brings us food. Some days he leans over the fence to give me a taste of a duck confit or some little cornucopia filled with something interesting. Earlier this week he brought over cold rigatoni stuffed with goat cheese and tossed in pesto, which we’ve been dipping into for the past few days.
Tonight at around dinnertime they came in handy-we set the last of them out in a bowl at the table and nervously scarfed them down with our fingers, dunked in chipotle aioli, as my sister filled out paperwork to make an offer on a house. Her very first house. Directly across the street.
Rigatoni Stuffed with Goat Cheese
from Chef Wade Paterson-thanks Wade!
1 package (500 grams) good quality dried rigatoni
1 lb soft goat cheese
¼ cup sun dried tomatoes packed in oil (well drained)
1 14 oz can artichoke hearts (well drained)
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
¼ cup ground Parmesan
½ cup pesto
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
salt & pepper
Cook rigatoni in a large pot of well salted boiling water until just al dente. Drain well and immerse in cold water to stop cooking. In a food processor add cheeses, tomatoes and artichokes. Process until smooth. Add in basil and pulse until just mixed. Season with salt and pepper.
Fit a piping bag with a small straight tip small enough to fit in the rigatoni. Fill bag with cheese mixture. (Alternatively, fill a large ziploc bag, seal and snip a corner off to pipe from.) Drain rigatoni well and pipe cheese mixture into rigatoni. Be careful not to overfill or the rigatoni might break.
In a large bowl combine pesto and olive oil and mix well. Add stuffed pasta and toss to coat. Serve at room temperature. Store in the fridge up to 3 days. Does not freeze well.
W asked for noodles and meatballs for dinner, and he got it. Brown rice noodles, which of course are made with brown rice rather than white flour, but which have the same mouthfeel as regular white pasta; none of the tweediness of whole wheat pasta. I like it. (When I was a kid, I actually avoided going to a certain family’s house for dinner because they served whole wheat spaghetti, and I, obsessed with the idea of Kraft Dinner, thought it was just too weird.)
But I still had a salty peanut bar for dinner.
This, dear friends, is what my life amounts to these days. The song has crawled into my ear and embedded itself on my brainstem. I cannot rid myself of it. Fortunately, W sounds cute when he sings it, making up words that sound sort of like “catches thieves just like flies”.
I want to advise you not to try this at home, but really you should. Especially if you happen to be a marathon runner in need of a carb load or someone who is trying to put on weight. (ie: not me.)
For the first week of July, I can’t help but be swept up by the Stampede, and inevitably a pot of canola oil shows up on my stovetop with which to fry corn dogs and mini donuts, which goes along way toward winning friends and influencing people. This year I was challenged to make deep-fried mac & cheese; a midway staple that popped up a few years ago, but the novelty has worn off in the presence of newer deep-fried products with higher gross-out factors, like deep fried Coke, Oreos, and this year – jellybeans. (For those of you who are curious how one might deep-fry Coke, they just make a sort of beer batter with Coke and flour, and dribble it into hot oil. The result is a little like those crispy bits you get in the bottom of your fish & chips box, only sweeter. I can’t imagine the markup on this particular product.)
I am more old school – mini donuts (but only from the vendors with the yellow and orange sign – preferably the one closest to Weadickville) maybe a Fiddlestick (those slabs of vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate and doused in chopped nuts), and Mike and I always share a corn dog, which is enough for me for the year. When in Rome, you know.
As it turns out, deep-fried mac & cheese is a lot like far more refined arancini, which is not at all balked at, and in fact those with appreciative palates have been known to pay upwards of $8 at certain Italian groceries about town for one. And although it might be a little more lowbrow, it’s simple to make. Just like risotto, mac & cheese solidifies overnight in the fridge, so that you can cut it into neat cubes which are easily rolled in shallow bowls of flour, beaten egg and Panko (in that order), and fried in hot oil. They are crispy on the outside, soft and cheesy within. (They reminded me of those old-fashioned marshmallows dipped in coconut.) I made some for CBC this morning, and fortunately my sister and her kids popped in around dinnertime and kindly allowed me to pawn off the rest. Otherwise I’m sure it would have whined at me from the fridge until I put it out of its misery.
Deep-fried Mac & Cheese
1 batch macaroni and cheese, from a recipe or a box of that white cheddar stuff
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
2 cups Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs) or breadcrumbs
canola oil, for frying
Prepare the macaroni and cheese and pour it into a pan – a 9″x5″ loaf pan works well, or a 9″x9″ square pan. Cover and refrigerate overnight, or until solid.
When ready to fry them, put the flour, eggs and Panko in three shallow dishes; beat the eggs a little with a fork. Heat the oil in a deep pot until a bit of bread sizzles when put in, but the oil is not smoking. Cut the macaroni and cheese into blocks about 1″ x 1 1/2″, roll each in flour to coat, then dip in the egg, and coat in breadcrumbs. Fry in the hot oil until crispy and golden. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Serve warm.
