Insta-dinner

I hate cooking dinner after a prolonged grocery store visit. I rarely do it. Usually I claim wifely privilege, saying, "I just did all the shopping. I'll be doing all the cooking, all week. But not tonight." And so we get a pizza or something. This time, however, I noticed that we had all the makings of a fondue in the grocery bags, and I thought even exhausted I could handle some rough chopping and a little grating.

I steamed some baby potatoes (I didn't cut them or peel them, cuz, hey, this was supposed to be easy) in the same pot as a head of broccoli, ripped into florets. I tore up a chunk of sourdough baguette, chunked up a few apples, wiped off some button mushrooms, and I was ready.

The fondue came together so quickly! I boiled a bottle's worth of Guiness, threw in some whole-grain mustard, minced garlic, and English mustard powder, then added handfuls of grated sharp Cheddar (tossed with a tablespoon of cornstarch to prevent clumping). I whisked after each addition until smooth and kept going until my pound of cheese was all smooth and bubbly and delicious.

Poured into my fancy-pants All-Clad fondue pot, this did a great job of pretending to be a classy, time-consuming meal. We ate like pigs, and not for the first time (well beyond, in fact, the four thousandth time), I thanked the universe for not making me lactose intolerant.

Choose Your Own (squash) Adventure!

In the past week, I made butternut mac and cheese TWICE. This is unprecedented, as I repeat meals less frequently than Victoria Beckham repeats outfits. I don't even eat leftovers. This fact alone should help convince you that both of these recipes were very, very good. [Food blogger fail: I have pictures of neither dish. Sorry.]

They are also extremely different. Both are easy and delicious. Only one has any nutritional value to speak of, and one is decidedly grown-up food. So, I'll let you choose.

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M-N-C #1
Last weekend, my family joined forces with another awesome family and rented a cabin near Unicoi State Park in north Georgia. On the first full day of the trip, we took the kiddoes to Burt's Pumpkin Farm for hayrides and...well...pumpkins. There were about 30 different varies of squash and pumpkin, laid out in the sun and bunched together in wooden trays under a rustic lean-to, and every one of them called out to my root-vegetable-loving heart and demanded that I Cook Them That Very Night.

Enter the first squash success: butternut mac-n-cheese. Quick, kid-friendly, delicious, and surprisingly good for you. Since we're all friends here, I'll admit that, if I had read the recipe carefully and realized how healthful it was, I probably wouldn't have made it. Because anything calling itself mac-n-cheese that has so little cheese it in would just piss me off on principle. But hear me out, because it really was delicious. Just, maybe, don't think of it as mac-n-cheese--more like a butternut pasta casserole or something.

Saint's Butternut Mac-n-Cheese
--Cut 1 large butternut squash into 1 1/2" cubes.
--Boil squash in mixture of mostly water w/ some stock and a little 2% milk (enough liquid to just cover squash), 15-20 min.
--Puree or mash squash w/ liquid; add pinch dry mustard, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
--Mix squash with 1/2 C part-skim ricotta and 4T grated Parmesan.
--Taste and adjust seasoning.
--Combine squash with 1 lb cooked penne pasta. Mix well.
--Coat lasagna pan w/ cooking spray; add pasta.
--Sprinkle with panko crumbs (mixed with 2T Parmesan and 1t of butter or oil).
--Bake at 375 for 10-15 min, or until brown.


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M-N-C #2
In the middle of the week, I needed an emergency dinner idea. I was really hungry, and I actually had some time to prepare a decent meal (as opposed to the twenty minutes in which I normally have to cram prep, cooking, and eating). I had a butternut squash in my fridge (don't you? at all times? just in case?) and a large block of Cheddar, so I thought, what the hell?, and I went for my second m-n-c of the week.

Browsing around Tasteologie always gets my creative juices flowing, and it has pretty enough photos to convince Dorian to try almost anything, so I relied on those fine contributors for my recipe. This one is adapted from A Good Appetite. They have buckets of yummy recipes, so go check them out! At any rate, it was far easier than I'd anticipated, what with the whole roast-the-squash-then-make-a-cream-sauce thing. By the time the pasta was cooked, the squash was roasted and the sauce simmered patiently on the stove.

Sinner's Jalapeno Butternut Mac-n-Cheese
--Roast cubed butternut squash w/ olive oil, salt, and pepper until browned.
--Cook 1 lb penne pasta (I used whole wheat to great effect here).
--Melt a little butter in a saucepan, and saute 1/2 minced onion and 2 chopped jalapenos.
--Add 2 T flour and cook, stirring, for 1 min.
--Whisk in 1/2 C heavy cream and about 1 C milk; stir for 2 min. until thick.
--Stir in 10 oz grated sharp Cheddar and 1 T dry mustard.
--Season with salt and pepper.
--Combine pasta and squash in saucepan.
--Pour mixture into buttered/sprayed lasagna pan.
--Sprinkle with panko (tossed with Parmesan and olive oil); bake at 425 for 10 min.

If I had planned this meal instead of throwing it together at the last minute, I would have also made a fresh pico de gallo with tomatillos. Nothing makes cheese more delicious than tomatillos and onions and chiles. Seriously. Try it.

I also put some broccoli on the plate for this, as an alibi.

I will warn you, in advance, that the first m-n-c gets a little dry when you reheat it, so add a little stock or water or cream. The second m-n-c gets a little oily when you reheat it, as the cream and cheese begin to separate into their components. Still tastes awesome, though. And maybe it's a good thing--you can pour some of the grease out and then you don't ingest it.

Tomorrow, our trash will REEK.

I live on a peninsula--actually, a peninsula of a peninsula (and on the very bottom of it, too). I can reach open water by driving ten minutes in nearly any direction--or by walking, if I travel south. We have beaches galore, palm trees to spare, and even our weeds look like tropical flowers. These are some of the blessings of living in Florida.

On the other thand, we also have alligators, bugs that can swallow a small dog, the highest number of batshit crazy people per capita of any state in the US (1), and zero fucking ability to grow produce with any flavor. The water, though, is teeming with delicious life-forms: mahi, snapper, hogfish (3),bonefish, cobia, mullet, pompano, amberjack, sheepshead, swordfish, and, of course, grouper (which should just be polite already and swim around with a good roll and a slice of provolone wrapped around it).

I offer all this by way of noting how incredibly difficult it is to find simply cooked seafood in Florida restaurants. Everyone has a grouper or mahi sandwich and some sort of Cajun-spiced blah-fish (tilapia, mostly), but the fresh fillets described on menus are reliably salmon or tuna--neither of which thrive in warm Florida waters. Why are we flying or trucking in fish, especially frozen fish, when we could step out our front doors and rustle up some fantastic grub? Don't want to offer "sheepshead," ye timid restaurants? Call it something else: if Bonefish Grill can re-brand tilapia as "California longfin," you can christen a weird-sounding or pedestrian fish however you like. Just go local, for god's sake!

No doubt tired of my constant bitching about the lack of decent seafood at area restaurants, Dorian disappeared to the grocery store last night and came home laden with clams, mussels, lobster tails, and snow crab legs. (8) We went with the classically French technique (4) of cramming it all into a pot with some other stuff and boiling it. I picked everything out, piled it into a bowl, doused it in garlic butter, patiently waited for Dorian to photograph it (5), and then dug in.

--Scrub some small red potatoes; pile into giant pot.
--Roughly chop a sweet onion; add to pot with some fresh thyme.
--Throw a coupla cloves of garlic in there, too--and some lemons.
--Fill with a few quarts of water; cover; boil 10 min.
--Meanwhile, clean a shitload of shellfish. (6)
--Cram the shellfish into the pot; break 2 corn cobs in half; add.
--Cover; boil 5-7 min.

Side project:
--In small shallow saucepan, melt 1 stick butter.
--Add at least 1 T minced garlic, juice of 1/2 lemon, some white wine.
--Add pinch of red pepper flake, sprig of thyme, a little salt.
--Melt together over low-ish heat while seafood boils. (7)

Seriously, this took like 20 minutes and about $30. We ate like kings: gluttonous, greasy, crab-splattered kings. Seafood restaurants have NO EXCUSE for not offering something this cheap, easy, and fucking fantastic. Get on the ball, Conch Republic! Do you hear me, the Hurricane? What's up Backfin Blue? Even you, Keegan's--step it up!

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(1) Carl Hiaasen once said that only Floridians understand that his novels are non-fiction. (2)

(2) Still skeptical? I discovered this morning that the "balloon boy" family recently relocated here. We didn't even notice.

(3) Hogfish are an excellent exemplar of the Ugly Fish Taste Especially Delicious rule. If you've never had it, you need to hightail it down to the Keys and git yerself some. It makes grouper taste like canned tuna.

(4) Not. This was an American-style seafood boil, all the way.

(5) Yeah, right. I was HUNGRY. You know I whined and wheedled and sighed loudly the entire time.

(6) No, I'm not listing them again. Did you not read up there? I already told you what we had. You could also throw in shrimp or some firm fish chunks, like cod.

(7) This is when I had my Genius Moment for the night. Rather than throwing the clams and mussels in the steamer pot with the other seafood, I poached them in the garlic butter, covered, for about 6 minutes. OH-EMM-GEE this was a good idea. The shellfish were buttery, tender, and garlicky, while the butter melded with their brine--which payed off hugely when I tipped the butter over the giant bowl of potatoes, onions, corn, crabs, and lobster.

(8) Yes, I realize that none of these things qualify as "local seafood," but my point here is that seafood restaurants never just serve steamed or grilled seafood--if you can even find a shrimp, it's fried. Crab? Forget it. At Hooter's, maybe.

And so it begins.

It’s Saturday, and I’m hungry. This is the day when, exhausted from a week of working, cooking, parenting, and studying, my family eats out for four straight meals—breakfast today through a late breakfast tomorrow. Then the guilt (and poverty) sets in, and I spend Sunday planning the week’s meals and going grocery shopping.

I’m starting this blog—late to the game as I am—because I love writing and reading about food, but also because I need to light a fire under my lazy ass every week, to force me to cook for my family in a way that is healthy, delicious, fast, cheap, and as easy to clean up as possible. This is no small demand that I place on myself, but it must be so.

My plan: review a local restaurant from our weekend exploits on Saturday; divulge my shopping list, meal plans, and final tally on Sunday; blog my culinary successes and failures 2 or 3 nights a week; and somehow find time within all of that to write a dissertation, raise a 5-year-old, be a good wife and homeowner, and nurture the hell out of my sixth-grade students. Oh, and at some point this year I want to start exercising. Cuz I have all this extra time and energy. Not.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.