Simple Shortcut to Great Macaroni

I am all about the shortcuts - especially when I can find a good one. Tonight, I definitely found a good one for you guys.

Everyone loves some homemade macaroni and cheese. There is nothing like having that bowl of cheesy cheddary pasta. But it can be so difficult to get just right. The boxed stuff ends up being salty and they don't really taste like they have real cheese in them even when they say they do on the box. Making a cheese sauce is really the way to go, but if you're always multitasking like I am - cooking two or three things all while handling the intricate negotiations of situations like "he took my toy" and "don't lay on your little brother" - then making the sauce from scratch might not be the easiest thing to do. Enter the shortcut.

Believe it or not this can of "soup" makes a mean cheddar cheese sauce, and can be easily kicked up or customized to your liking. If you like it a little cheesier, you can simply shred in some more cheddar cheese. If you like more of a blend of cheese, it is also easy to add some swiss, gruyere, or Colby Jack with the same grater. I like to add some extra sharp cheddar, and then use spices to bring more flavors to the dish. I normally add about 1/2 tsp of paprika to my mac and cheese, along with about a 1/4 tsp of onion powder and garlic powder, and about 1/8 tsp of black pepper. This gives just enough of a flavor boost, and everyone in our home loves it.

If you are into it - or your kids are old enough to let you cook in peace - the method for making cheese sauce from scratch is not difficult. I do still do this often enough to mention, and it does leave room for greater customization. Start by melting one tbsp of butter in a small saucepan over medium low heat. When the butter is melted and starts to sizzle a little bit add one tbsp of all-purpose flour and use a whisk to mix everything together. This is known in cooking terminology as a roux and is used as a thickening agent in sauces. Add one cup of milk to your roux and stir to combine. This is where making the sauce from scratch gives you greater flexibility, as you are not limited by the canned cheese sauce and can use whatever cheese you want to make your sauce. Once the milk is warm add your desired cheeses and stir gently. After the cheese has fully melted into the sauce, mix it into your cooked pasta noodles and consume voraciously.

I know this is not the only "hack" that people use in the kitchen. What are some shortcuts you use in the kitchen? Share them with me in the comments below or on Facebook!

Kitchen Creativity

Last night I decided to make a dessert for a community meal that my family and I attend regularly. The community meal is the SUPPER tomorrow at the Church of St. Martin in the Fields in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia. The homemade meal is provided free and families are welcome. I can say from attending for several years now that this is a fabulous ministry for this church.

The desserts are always provided as well, and they are usually centered around a theme. The theme for this week is Chocolate, Cocoa and Mocha. I wanted to do something outside the ordinary, and as usual the idea came from my wife who suggested chocolate and chili fudge. I was not sure how I was going to accomplish this task, so I watched an episode of Iron Chef America with these two ingredients as the secret ingredient to try to get some inspiration.

After watching the show last night I woke up this morning with some fresh inspiration on methods and ingredients, so I set to work.

Bridge to the chili side

Step 1: Decide on a bridge. Chocolate and Chili are two ends of the taste spectrum - spicy hot and sweet. Often foods with both of these suffer from a "taste gap" between the two. The chocolate (sweet) hits you first, and then there is a delay in sensation, then the spicy hits. What food needs is something to fill the gap. I decided on coffee to fill the gap, but my problem is this: how do I get coffee flavor in the mix without adding too much liquid? I tackled the problem on two fronts.

Grinding the beans by hand

First I decided to infuse some coffee flavor into some evaporated milk. I coarsely ground some coffee beans with my mortar and pestle and put a 12-oz can of evaporated milk in a mason jar with the coarse beans and stuck it in the fridge for several hours. This created a creamy cold-brewed style coffee flavored evaporated milk without adding any additional liquid.

Coffee-infused evaporated milk

Second, I took some coffee and brewed it extra strong (twice as many grounds as I would normally use for the amount of liquid) and then double brewed it. This meaning that once the water had gone through the brewing process, I put the hot coffee back into the coffee maker and ran it through again. Then I took the resulting brew and put it into a small saucepan and let it simmer over a low flame for several hours, evaporating more of the water and concentrating the flavor down.

Reducing the extra-strong coffee

Then I used the evaporated milk and a little bit of the extra strong coffee to create a coffee-flavored sweetened condensed milk. I strained the evaporated milk into a clean saucepan and added 1 1/2 cups of white sugar. I made sure that the sugar was all dissolved and then brought the mixture just to a boil (without letting it boil over) and then turned the heat off under the pan and moved it off of the hot burner. I allowed this to cool completely before starting in on my next step. Fudge.

Mmmmmmm. Chocolate.

Yes - I used the good stuff. Three bars of 60% Dark Cacao (12 ounces total weight) of good quality chocolate. I gave it a rough chop and then put it in a double boiler to melt it. Once it started melting I added 14 oz (or 1 3/4 cup) of the sweetened condensed milk (equal to one can purchased) and stirred gently to combine everything. If you are not familiar with the term "double boiler" it is a metal mixing bowl placed in a small saucepan with a small amount of simmering or boiling water in it. The point of the double boiler is to gently melt the contents but not expose them to direct heat. The heat coming off of the water is more even and gentle than the direct heat in a pan, and is conducive to things like melting and tempering chocolate, emulsifying sauces (like a hollandaise sauce) and other similar culinary pursuits. 

Chopped chocolate in a double boiler

If I have learned one thing, it is that heat for heat's sake is wasted. Hot spicy foods need a surrounding cast to allow them to shine. The coffee is the bridge, but along with the chili powder and ground chipotle chili I also included a little cinnamon and coriander. Personally I prefer the smoky taste of the chipotle pepper to an uncooked (or smoked) pepper like cayenne, but that's just me. They provide a deeper depth of flavor than just making stuff hot. I probably used about 2 1/2 tsp of the chili powder, 1 1/2 tsp of the chipotle powder, 1 tsp of roasted coriander and 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. I didn't measure exactly so these are just guesses. I kept playing with it until it tasted right.

Some like it hot...

This mix went into a 8" x 8" pan lined with parchment paper, and then went into the fridge overnight. After it cooled some I took some milk, powdered sugar, a dash of vanilla extract, and some red food coloring together and put it into a bag and snipped off the corner. This gave me a kind of piping bag, and I made a fun design on the top. I used a large rubber band to hold the paper in place while the mixture set up. 

Finished and decorated and ready to set in the fridge

And to top it all off, my 6-year old came into the kitchen as I was celebrating getting the spice level just right and he wanted to know what the commotion was all about. I told him what I was working on, so I told him. He wanted to taste the chocolate, and didn't seem to mind that there would be some spicy associated with that, so I let him have a tiny taste. He loved it - and there was no one more surprised than me at this news. Not to be outdone, my nearly 2-year old also requested a taste, and he not only liked the tiny bit he had but he wanted more! So this dessert has the picky eater stamp of approval! 

If this made you hungry, feel free to come on out to the SUPPER on Wednesday June 8th at 6pm. Make sure to get in line for dessert early, because this fudge is not going to last long. Hope to see you all there!

Why DUDE?

So you may be reading this and figuring that DUDE just makes sense. I'm a guy, starting a blog, of course I'm going to refer to myself as a dude, right? Well there is more to it than just that. Yes, the term "dude" does bring a certain "cool" factor, but there is also the matter of my employment. I stay at home with my two boys - something that is becoming more and more common these days. They even have a term for these guys: "Stay At Home Dad", and this is often shortened to SAHD. The acronym, while fitting, is rather...well....sahd. No one wants to go around introducing themselves as a "SAHD". We stay-at-home Dads deserve a better acronym.

All of those Dads who are staying home with kids, managing schedules and changing diapers deserve a better acronym than SAHD. The people over at Fatherly.com did some thinking and came up with a list of better acronyms for those men who are also domestic fathers. For some of the options they came up with 15 you can read about here.  After reading these and deciding that none of them really fit me all that well, I went on ahead and developed my own.

Daddy

Under
Domestic
Employment

Now while it might be slightly misleading to think that I actually have some kind of job outside the duties and responsibilities of my Dad-dom, any person who has done this will tell you straight up that raising kids is a job. It just depends on your life situation as to whether that is your ONLY job or not. Based on my business card, my job duties currently include, but are not limited to:

• Chauffeur
• Nurse
• Dragon Rider
• Executive Chef
• Tech Support
• Sanitation Engineer
• Life Coach
• Handyman
• Batting Practice Pitcher
• Head Landscaper
• Chief Conflict Resolver
• Homework Tutor
• Entertainment Coordinatior
• Jedi Knight

Go ahead and read the article, and leave your thoughts in the comments section. What is the best acronym for those dads who take the primary role in keeping the house and raising their children? And if you're interested in my shirt - which was recently featured on Huffington Post and a number of other websites - it can be purchased in T-shirt (men's and women's sizes) and sweatshirt form, from the National At-Home Dad Network

Ratatouille

Those who are in the know, know. Pixar does a great job making movies. Not just movies for kids, but movies in general. They've taken us inside the secret lives of toys, under the sea, into the closet to where the monsters live, inside the head of a young girl, and into a world populated by automobiles. 

But by far my favorite movie from Pixar studios is Ratatouille. 

If you're not familiar, it's the story of a rat who figures out how to cook and ends up puppeting a human being. Of course, since rats are not allowed in kitchens, hilarity ensues along with a happy ending for everyone - because it's Disney and it's a kid movie. But the climax of the movie is centered around one final dish, prepared for the primary nemesis - a food critic. That dish is a take on the peasant stew ratatouille, arrayed in a shallow baking dish and cooked en papillote - or under parchment paper.

Recently, I found a recipe for this dish and began making it. It is like bringing a bit of the movie back into real life. The recipe can be found HERE on Allrecipes.com. I do mine in a oval pan, mostly because I like how it looks better.

Ratatouille before cooking

The easy way to keep all of the ingredients in the same order is to use separate tupperware bowls for each of the veggies. Once you have sliced your summer squash, zucchini, eggplant, and red peppers put them in the order you want to have them in the dish, and go from one end to the other. Here is mine in process.

Ratatouille in process

Once you have the dish cooked, I highly recommend serving with some fresh soft bread (this is my homemade oatmeal bread) and some mascarpone cheese. The cheese melts and gives the overall dish some lovely creaminess. It is also fantastic spread directly onto bread. Like butter, it will melt into the bread and add a level of fatty creaminess that pairs wonderfully with a fresh loaf of bread.

Mascarpone on bread

Of course - as difficult as it can be to cook a dish in a professional kitchen, It can be doubly difficult when your kitchen looks like this:

My kitchen "helper" tonight...

Regardless of my "helper", I did manage to end up with a very nice looking plate, once everything came together.

Ratatouille topped with mascarpone quenelle with a slice of fresh bread

If you're not familiar with the term quenelle, its a fancy term for a three sided shape of anything that it soft or moldable, like mascarpone cheese or ice cream. I had my 6-year old act as a cameraman so that you can see just how easy it is to make these fancy-looking toppers. 

And just when it couldn't get any better - it does. 

What do you think my two boys ate tonight - this fabulous meal with soft fresh bread and creamy mascarpone cheese, or something completely different? 

If you went with option two, you'd be correct. 

Liam's Plate

Ezra's Plate

Oh well - can't win them all. One day they will be old enough to appreciate the cooking they get. Until then, I just keep cooking like I do and their tastes will catch up sooner or later. Right?

About Me

My name is Nathan Hill. I started cooking when I first moved out of my parents' house, and at the time I could barely make boxed macaroni and cheese without screwing it up somehow. At the time I didn't have much of a choice, so I started to teach myself to cook. I watched The Food Network CONSTANTLY, and kept trying new things. Slowly, eventually, I developed into a decent cook. Then I became a really good one - at least according to my friends and family. I find that I really enjoy making things from scratch whenever I can, as it often saves money and increases the quality of the food by quite a bit.

I get joy from cooking something new, and from having my friends and family enjoy my cooking. I like seeing their faces when I get a dish just right. For me cooking is an artistic outlet, as much as the finished product as in the process. I use spices like an artist uses splashes of color, not by any recipe but in bits and guesses. No two dishes are ever exactly the same with me, even when I use the same recipe. I am constantly testing and trying new things, and finding ways to create food from scratch. 

A lot of the "from scratch" cooking started when I left my corporate job and began staying at home with my two boys, who are 6 and 1. My wife loves coming home from her day of work to find dinner cooking, and she is constantly coming up with new ideas for me to try. She is often the inspiration behind many of my new dishes, mostly because she will say "How about you make this," or "How could you combine this and that. She is my first taste-tester and quality control, and throughout our 11 years of marriage I have been the primary cook in the household. 

One of my #lifegoals is to go back to school and take some culinary classes. Not necessarily to work in food service, but just to expand my knowledge and skills. I want to be able to more expertly apply food science and different cooking techniques to my own kitchen and my own meals.