Pasta Shells with Gouda Cheese

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I was craving comfort food (i.e., something really unhealthy). As I watched The Food Network, one of the shows featured a macaroni and cheese dish. It looked incredible and was exactly what I was in the mood for; however, I didn’t want to make some huge casserole dish. I do have my limits when eating super unhealthy dishes so I needed to come up with my own single serving version.

For my single serving version, I figured I could just make a cheese sauce to mix with pasta shells. I did some research on cheese sauces and basically learned that you just make a white sauce and then add the cheese. I can do that! So I headed to the market and perused the cheese isle. I found gouda cheese, which sounded perfect, so I grabbed it and headed back home.

This dish ended up being pretty easy to make, and the final product was sooo luxuriously rich and tasty. The shells perfectly held the sauce to ensure every bite was a rich bite. I also added chopped sage as a garnish, but as it turns out the flavor of the sage really complimented the gouda cheese and brought a freshness to the dish.

If you prefer to cut down on the richness, just using all whole milk instead of incorporating the heavy cream should be fine. Also, when choosing your gouda cheese, find one that is relatively soft (i.e., it has not been aged for terribly long). The softer it is, the easier it will melt.

Okay, here is my recipe for the special shells and cheese:

• 1 large serving of shell pasta (or 2 small servings)
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1/3 cup whole milk
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup grated gouda cheese
• dash of paprika
• healthy dose of fresh ground pepper
• salt to taste
• chopped sage

1. Start boiling water in a large pot and prepare the pasta per the directions on the box.
2. Meanwhile, over medium low heat in a sauce pan add butter and melt.
3. Whisk in flour and let cook a minute or two.
4. Add milk, heavy cream, and bay leaf. Whisk frequently until the milk is hot. If needed, turn the heat up a little bit.
5. Remove bay leaf and then add the cheese. Continuously stir until all melted.
6. Mix in paprika, pepper, and salt.
7. Once pasta is ready, drain and mix in with cheese sauce. (If sauce is ready before the pasta, you can just keep over very low heat, stirring frequently).
8. Serve with chopped sage on top.

Enjoy!

Ramps (also called “Wild Leeks”)

I just finished serving jury duty for a trial that lasted a whopping two full weeks! On the upside the trial was conducted in the New York Supreme Court, which is the courthouse with all the steps that you see in Law & Order. That made me feel kind of cool, and of course I was sure to smile whenever I left the building since I was in the background of many tourists’ photos.

So what was my case? Well, as Uma Thurman’s stalker trial was going on a couple buildings down, I was placed on a trial dealing with the breach of an oral contract and fiduciary duties related to a hedge fund partnership. Okay so honestly I actually thought it was really interesting, but I know one of my fellow jurors disagreed as he literally slept through half the trial!

I have a bad habit of laughing at inappropriate moments, and there were definitely plenty of times throughout the trial that this bad habit was challenged. For starters, one of the defendants was named Mr. Freelove. Are you kidding me? Every time I heard the lawyers or witnesses say his name, I kept hearing in my head (set to very cheesy music) “Doctor Freeeloooove”. Yes, I chuckled each time.

I also loved that every time an important point was made, everyone’s heads would snap towards us jurors to see our reactions. Their faces were so serious. Yes, I laughed here too. Not sure how they read that reaction.

Meanwhile, our judge was a sweet older woman but she could not hear a word! Throughout the entire trial, she kept abruptly yelling out, “What? What? You have to speak louder! I can’t hear you!” Yes, I laughed out loud at these moments too.

Then of course there was one witness who had these abnormally massive hands. I kid you not, the palm of his hand alone was about ¾ the size of his face! His hands were just as out of proportion as the woman with “man hands” in that Seinfeld episode. Yup, I laughed.

Anyway, despite the entertainment of the court room, the days were long and tiring. So after being cooped up in the court room for yet another day, I decided to take advantage of how beautiful it was outside and walked home one day. Along my walk I came upon the Union Square Greenmarket. This time of year the market is filled with farmers selling ramps. I have always been curious about ramps so I picked some up and continued my way home.

Ramps, also known as wild leeks, have a taste that is somewhere in the middle of onions and garlic. If you buy some, you will quickly smell that they have a strong odor that is closer to garlic (I might even go as far to say that they have a stinky smell). As I suggested above, ramps are only in season in the spring time. I also learned that they are native to North America, and I believe that they are most popular in the Appalachian Mountains.

So where can you find them? Unfortunately, even with access to all the wonderful grocery stores in New York City, I have only seen them at the Farmers’ Market. So you may need to go to your local market to find them (but how great it is to support local farmers!). I also found that you can order them online from Earthy Delights.

So what did I make with my ramps? I sautéed them for a sauce served with a delicate white fish, which was such a great combination. Stay tuned as I plan to post my recipe for the dish I made…

Orange Rice Pudding

I am not a huge dessert person so when the occasion arises to make one, I want it to be quick and easy. I still have lots of Arborio rice sitting in my cabinet, so I decided to look for recipes for rice pudding. I have always loved rice pudding but never actually made it so figured this would be fun to try.

This recipe particularly stood out not only because the orange aspect sounded so interesting and yummy, but there are hardly any ingredients! How easy! Not to mention, a lot of the other recipes I looked at included more fattening stuff so I felt as though this was somewhat on the light side for dessert.

As I had guessed, this was super easy to make and the final product was very, very good. In fact, as I let the rice pudding cool in the refrigerator I seriously ate like half of it—my fridge must have lost all its cool air from me opening the door so much to have just one more little taste! I also think this is a great dessert for entertaining because you can make it ahead of time, and since it is so quick and easy, you can focus your efforts on the rest of the meal.

The only thing I want to note about the recipe is that it calls for four oranges when I think you can get away with just one. The idea is to serve the orange pieces with each serving, but do you really need a whole orange for each serving? I think just a single orange segment on top is plenty. I also suggest that you remove the membrane from the orange segments—it looks so much nicer. Or you can skip the orange slices all together and garnish with either chocolate shavings or orangettes.

Lastly, the recipe claims that it is for four servings, but I think they are pretty small servings so this may be more for three healthy size servings (either the French really do eat tiny portions, or may be I misjudged the amount before eating half of it from the fridge?).

So here is the recipe (for 4 servings) from Daniel Young’s The Bistros, Brasseries, and Wine Bars of Paris:

• 1/2 cup short-grain rice
• Salt
• 4 oranges
• 2 cups whole milk
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons orange marmalade

1. Place the rice in a saucepan, cover with cold water and a pinch of salt, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and drain.
2. Grate the zest of 1 orange (don't be shy zesting--this is where most of the orange flavor will come from!). Peel all the oranges, divide them into sections, and refrigerate until ready to serve.
3. Combine the orange zest, milk, and sugar in a saucepan and heat over high heat to a boil.
4. Add the rice, cover, lower the heat to very low, and cook, stirring occasionally so the rice does not stick, for 30 minutes.
5. Remove the rice from the heat, add the orange marmalade, stir well, and let cool. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
6. To serve, surround each serving of rice pudding with orange sections.

Enjoy!

Soft Boiled Egg with Prosciutto & Rustic Toast

Ginny at Just Get Floury is hosting a food blogging event. For those you not in the food blogging world, a food blogging event is when a blogger comes up with a theme or challenge and fellow food bloggers create a dish that abides to the rules of the event. In other words, it’s one of those dorky things that foodies do!

Anyway, back to Ginny’s event…her theme is coming up with a dish that serves at least two people for less than $5. Seeing that I blew too much money the other day after spending a relaxing afternoon sitting at Café Cluny while grazing on a wonderful selection of dishes (coupled with an excellent white ale from Maine, whose name I wish I could recall), this challenge was of a particular interest to me.

Since I live in New York, everything has an automatic 10% increase in prices. So the focus of my dish needed to be really cheap to allow me the budget to dress it up appropriately. Mmm…what is super cheap? Eggs! Okay, I now had something to work with.

I recently was reading about the various ways of preparing eggs and learned about soft boiling eggs. Yum! So elegant yet simplistic. I love eggs on toast so this was the next logical item to add to the dish, but I still needed something more. I wanted it to be special so I figured prosciutto would be fabulous with this. Oh, and topped with some parmesan cheese and a little sage…now I have the perfect dish.

Soft boiling the eggs did take a few tries—I’m not going to lie. In a large pot you need to boil enough water that will cover the eggs by a couple inches. Once the water comes to a boil, quickly turn down the heat to bring it to a simmer. At this point, lower your eggs into the water and cook. I had large eggs and found that 6 minutes cooked the whites of the eggs but left the yoke nice and gooey. You may need to play with this to get it right. When the eggs are ready, remove them from the pot and place them in a cool water bath. Serve soon after.

To remove the top of the egg shell, take a spoon and firmly (but with caution) tap around the top of the egg (about 1/3 way down from the top). I basically created a dotted “crack” line around the top and then went back to further crack the remaining line. Then, take a pairing knife and cut around the egg where you broke the shell with the knife. You can now remove the “lid” of the egg.

If you prefer to make an easier egg, I think serving a sunny side up egg will work just as well.

This dish is super simple, but is really good. The gooeyness of the egg is such a great compliment to the crunchy toast. Furthermore, the saltiness if the prosciutto helps make the egg taste somewhat sweet. The sage then brings in a really nice earthy tone to the flavor. I originally meant for the sage as only a garnish, but it actually brings a lot to the dish and pulls together all the components.

So, how much does this dish cost for two servings (note, we get an exception for 3 staple pantry items)? $3.66 (taking into consideration unit pricing).

So here is how you make it for two people:

• 2 Sourdough bread slices ($0.30)
• 4 tbsp Olive oil (staple pantry item)
• 4 slices of Prosciutto ($2.10)
• Fresh parmesan cheese, to garnish ($0.25)
• 6 large Sage leaves ($0.25)
• 2 large Eggs, soft boiled (see my explanation above) ($0.76)

1. Place a grill pan on high heat. Lightly brush olive oil onto both sides of sourdough bread slices and place in hot grill pan. Let sit until toasted and then flip bread over. Once toasted, remove and put aside on serving plates.
2. Drape two slices of prosciutto over each slice of toast.
3. Grate or slice fresh parmesan cheese on top of prosciutto. Place sage leaves on plate next to toast (or you can also chop it up and sprinkle the sage over the prosciutto and toast).
4. Once eggs are ready, quickly serve next to toast. You will need small holders for your eggs (you can find actual “egg holders”, but I used sake cups).

Enjoy!

Note:
If you have leftover prosciutto and sage, you can use it for a pasta dish. Tonight for dinner I cooked up some pasta. As it was cooking, I chopped up some prosciutto, sage, and garlic. I then drained the pasta, reserving some of the water. In the pasta pot I added some olive oil and the garlic and quickly sautéed it. Then I added back the pasta and mixed in the prosciutto, sage, some pasta water, a little heavy cream, and fresh ground pepper. In the serving dish, I topped it off with some fresh parmesan cheese. It was so easy and so yummy!

The Pretzel Croissant

I was reading the food section of my New York magazine a few weeks ago and they had a feature about unique pretzel products in the city. One caught my eye in particular—the pretzel croissant from The City Bakery. Apparently, this croissant has such a following that it even has its own website. Its own website? I had to try it for myself.

So one Sunday afternoon after running my errands for the day I treated myself to one of these famous croissants, and it was certainly divine. As you would expect from a croissant, it was rich and buttery. The croissant was very fresh (even still warm from the oven) filled with doughy layers inside with lots of flakiness outside. The pretzel aspect added such a nice salty compliment to the buttery flavor, and the toasted sesame seeds added an extra texture and flavor. I am definitely a fan of this croissant and have actually already been back to have another one!

So if you find yourself in the Union Square area, I recommend you stopping by The City Bakery for this special treat. (They also have locations in California.)

The City Bakery
3 West 18th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
(212) 366-1414

Avocado and Watercress Salad

I was thumbing through the light recipes on Epicurious looking for an idea for lunch. I came across this recipe for an avocado and watercress salad, which was featured in Gourmet magazine. This recipe evidently originates from Natori, a Japanese restaurant in New York. The recipe looked so great. A soy sauce based dressing that includes grated apples? How interesting! And how can you go wrong when avocados are a main feature to the dish? Plus I love the bitter taste of watercress.

I think this dish took me a whopping 15 minutes to make—perfect for a lunch. I even had some leftover to have along with my dinner. The dressing is so tasty that you should save any extra dressing for salads later in the week. I bet it would also be great served over steamed veggies, potatoes, or even a fish.

A hint: When preparing the watercress (it needs to be just the leaves and thin stems), hold the stems of the bunch in one hand. With your other hand take a chef’s knife and at an angle slide the blade along the stems away from yourself such that the leaves and thin stems are sliced off leaving behind the thicker stems. Keep doing this until all leaves are removed.

Okay, here is the recipe from Gourmet magazine (May 2008), which makes 6 servings:

• 1/4 cup rice vinegar (not seasoned)
• 1 tablespoon grated sweet onion such as Vidalia or Walla Walla (use large holes of a box grater)
• 1/4 cup finely grated peeled Gala apple (use small holes of box grater)
• 4 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 6 cups watercress (thin stems and leaves only; from 1 large bunch)
• 1 firm-ripe avocado

1. Stir together vinegar, onion, apple, soy sauce, and sugar until sugar has dissolved, then stir in oil.
2. Just before serving, toss watercress with enough dressing to coat.
3. Quarter, pit, and peel avocado, then cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Gently toss with watercress.

Enjoy!

Boqueria - New York, NY

While watching Colameco’s Food Show this past weekend, the host took us (you know, me and the other viewers) to one of his favorite Spanish tapas bars in New York—Boqueria. If you are not familiar with the TV show, the host is extremely knowledgeable about food and is refreshingly not the least bit pretentious about it. Therefore, when he makes a strong recommendation for a restaurant, I know it will be excellent.

I went to Barcelona, Spain once a couple years ago for my friends’ wedding and during this trip really fell in love with the city (you may recall the series of Spanish posts that followed). I loved the laid back culture, and the food was so fun and creative. Therefore, I am always looking for great Spanish tapas places in the city where I can relax with a glass of red wine and graze on a wide selection of small dishes. When a friend wanted to meet up the other night, I was quick to use this as an opportunity to try out Boqueria.


Boqueria is named after an area in Barcelona that is known for hosting many of the cities tapas bars. The restaurant serves mainly Catalonian and Basque dishes, but other Spanish regions are also represented. Boqueria was opened by Suba owner Yann de Rochefort and Chef/Partner Seamus Mullen.

I arrived a bit early so I ordered a glass of wine and settled at the only open spot at the bar—conveniently right where the starter dishes are arranged. As I leisurely sipped on my wine, the guy in charge of the platters kindly explained to me all the various cheeses, meats, and condiments. (FYI, being seen taking food pictures at a restaurant does always help get better service.) I was in heaven.

My friend soon arrived so we moved onto our table. True to my memories of dining in Barcelona, the waitress made of point of letting us know we could take our time and followed through on her promise by allowing us to just catch up for a little while before even looking at the menu. I really love restaurants that recognize the dining experience is not always just about the food.

When we finally moved onto the menu, we learned that it consists of a wide selection of dishes that are served everyday and also includes a list of specials. In addition to this, they have a chalk board that lists the dishes the chef came up with on a whim for the day (I suppose you could call these the specials of the specials?). We selected about five dishes, mostly from the everyday dishes. My favorites were the Datiles Con Béicon (dates stuffed with almonds and valdeón, wrapped in bacon) and the Pintxos Morunos (seared lamb marinated in lemon and cumin, salsa verde), but honestly all the dishes were great. (Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of these since the dining area was a bit dark.)

So if you are in the mood for some Spanish tapas, I definitely recommend Boqueria!

Boqueria

53 W 19th St (between 5th & 6th Ave)
Phone: 212-255-4160