Buffalo Mac and Cheese

I used to live near a bar that used to offer this as an appetizer and it was so delicious I had to replicate it at home.  The recipe is for one box of pasta which feeds two hungry people for dinner with leftovers for lunch the next day.

Ingredients:

• Pasta (elbows, shells, twirlies are all good)
• Cheddar (for one box of pasta I used 2 cups shredded)
• Blue Cheese (you can buy the crumbles or a wedge, however much you want)
• Milk (you will only need a bit so if you're not a milk drinker or coffee-er just buy the smallest amount.  Any percent is fine, I use skim because it's what I drink and there isn't a noticeable difference)
• Cooked Chicken* (2 breasts)
• Frank's RedHot sauce (I just dump and taste but I'm going to guess 1/3 cup)

Directions:

1. If you bought your cheese in blocks, shred it now
2. Put a pot of water in to boil.  Dump some salt in.
3. When it boils, add the pasta.
4. When the pasta is done* drain it and dump it back in the pot.  Do NOT run it under cold water.  Then turn the burner to the lowest setting
5. Dump in the cheddar and some blue cheese (I only put a bit in at this point) and mix until evenly coated.  If the cheese looks stringy, don't worry.
6. Dump in one "glug" of milk and mix until thoroughly combined.  If it still looks stringy, put a bit more milk.  You are going for a creamy or gooey sauce texture.  You shouldn't need more than two glugs of milk for this.
7. Dump in the Frank's and mix until combined***.
8. Scoop a bowlful and top with additional blue cheese crumbles for a fancy dinner!

It is tasty without chicken too but not as filling.

Make sure to add the Frank's last.  If you add it before the cheese, the cheese doesn't melt right and it ends up as these little bitty globs instead of a nice creamy sauce.  The flavor is the same but the texture is not as good.

If you are ambitious and want to screw around in the kitchen you can try making the cheese sauce separately by starting with a roux.  This has been quite finicky in my experience and is more trouble than it's really worth.

*I most recently made this with chicken I made in the crockpot.  To make the crockpot chicken, simply place the chicken in the crockpot and turn it on low for 6-7 hours.  Then shred.  If you want to make this right now, pan frying the chicken works as well.  Simply dice your chicken, then dump it into a skillet with a bit of oil until it is cooked through.
**You can do what the box says or you can stand around stirring it every couple minutes and then taking one pasta out, running it under cold water, and eating it to see if it's un-crunchy yet.
***If you aren't sure how much to put, dump a little less than you think, mix, and taste.  It is not an exact science.  Not enough Frank's? Add a bit more?  Too much?  Add more cheese!  Wayyyy too much? Better luck next time :/

Vegan "Shepherdess" Pie

I'm vegan for lent this year (as I have done before) and this is so far my favorite vegan dish of all time.  So good in fact that you can serve it to your non-vegan friends.  Brian even said it was "really good".  If you're not vegan and not feeding vegans you can substitute the soy products with their dairy equivalents.

Ingredients:

• Mushrooms (I used 1 to 1.5 of the 10 oz cartons of both "white button" and "cremini")
• Onion (I used a med-large yellow onion)
• Garlic (3 cloves?  depends on how much you like garlic)
• Carrots (I used 2-4 handfuls of baby carrots because that's what I had.  Full size is fine too)
• Peas (frozen is fine, I used between 1/2 and 1.5 cups)
• Potatoes (a potful of any mashable sort)
• Soymilk (PLAIN!)
• Vegan butter substitute (I used Earth Balance which tastes just like butter)
• Mustard
• Red wine or vermouth (I used sweet (red) vermouth because I didn't have any wine open)
• Rosemary and maybe Thyme
• Salt/Pepper

Directions:

1. Set a pot of water on the stove and peel your potatoes.  If you're smart you'll do this part first.
2. Add your potatoes to the pot of water and turn it on to high.
3. Cut up your mushrooms, onion, and garlic.  I cut my mushrooms to pretty small dice to kind of mimic ground meat and I cut the onion to about pea-sized bits.  Do the garlic however you want, some people are smashers and some people are mincers and some people use a garlic press.  Whatever.
4. Add all that stuff to a pan with some olive (or other) oil.  I did this in my cast iron skillet and it was lovely.  A regular frying pan should do just fine though.  You will most likely need to do this in parts, allowing the mushrooms to cook down a bit.  I just added them as I chopped but if you're slow at chopping you might want to get a head start.
5. This is probably a good time to preheat the oven.  350 or 375 is good I guess.  I'm not very good at this.
6. Cut up the carrots while all that is cooking down.  I cut my baby carrots into 4-5 cylindrical pieces each)
7. Make a well in the center of the pan and add the carrots.  Put some of the mushroom/onion mixture on top.
8. Check on your potatoes and see if they are done yet
9. Mix the vegetables up again and make another well in the center for the peas.  
10. Add the peas.
11. Add a generous sprinkle of rosemary (thyme would probably be good too but I'm out). Add some brownish kind of mustard.  I made some circles and called it art.
12. Mix it up.
13. If your potatoes still aren't done, just put your veggies on the lowest setting and stir periodically until the potatoes finish.
14. Drain your potatoes and mash them up with your soymilk and fake butter (I promise these are very convincing mashed potatoes)
15. If you used a cast iron skillet you can just plop your mashed potatoes on top of your veggies, if you used a pan that isn't oven safe, put your veggies in a casserole dish and put your potatoes on top.
16. Put the whole ensemble into the oven for 20 minutes or so
17. Eat.

Paprika Chicken

When I'm less lazy, I'll type this up to be more readable, but I'm just going to put this scan up for Kathryn until I get around to that.

Also, feel free to add more chicken and/or onions than the recipe calls for because the proportions as written make a shit-ton of extra sauce. This works great over rice or with bread for dipping.

Brian's Favorite Risotto

I decided I ought to know how to make a risotto since they show up on Iron Chef practically every other episode and this year was the year that I finally got around to it. This recipe is so good I can't stop eating it, so be careful.

Ingredients:

• 1.5 c arborio rice (yes it must be arborio, they usually sell it in plastic jars)
• 4-6 hot Italian sausages
• 4-6 cups chicken broth
• 1/4 c white wine or vermouth
• 4-6 cloves garlic (I like more)
• 1 medium onion
• other vegetables (I usually pick two of the following: sliced fresh mushrooms, spinach, bell pepper, eggplant, but that's just what I've used so far)
• 1/3 c parmesean cheese

Directions:

1. Put the broth in a pot, turn the heat on low. Continue on to step 2 but when it boils, reduce it to a simmer.
2. Chop the garlic and vegetables and toss them into a large frying pan with a little bit of olive oil over high heat.
3. Once the veggies start to cook, add the sausage (this is the fun part) If you bought bulk sausage, break it up into little bits. If you bought sausage-y sausages, squeeze the meat out of the casing and break into little bits. I put the casing in because I like eating them, but most people don't like them so you may wish to keep track of them and separate them out.
4. When the sausage is cooked on the outside, add the rice and stir.
5. Add the wine/vermouth and stir.
6. Add 1/2 cup of (hot!) chicken broth.
7. Stir.
8. When the broth evaporates, add another half cup.
9. Stir.
10. Repeat the last few steps until the rice is tender.
11. Remove from heat, add cheese, and stir.

I've forgotten cheese on this a couple of times. It's easy to do. Without cheese it tastes really good. With the cheese it's really really hard to stop eating.

This recipe makes a large frying pan full, which ought to be enough for at least 5 people in theory but can easily be consumed by two.