Lobster Mac & Cheese
 

A comfort-food apotheosis, this one.

From Cal Hancock, of Hancock Gourmet Lobster Company.

Time: About one hour. Four quart Casserole dish.

You need 1 1/4 sticks butter for everything.

The Pasta:
1 lb shells, macaroni, small shaped pasta
8 TBSP salted butter, divided -- one quarter of butter
1 sm yellow onion, diced
1 clove garlic
5 TBSP allpurpose flour
2 C light cream
2 C gruyere cheese, shredded -- with
3 C cheddar cheese, also shredded
1/2 C grated Romano cheese
salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste
8 oz cooked lobster meat, cut bite size (about 2 1.5lb lobsters' worth)

The Topping:
2 TBSP salted butter
3/4 C panko
1 tsp chopped fresh parsley

Doing It:
1. Cook the Pasta per directions, cool in colander with cold water
2. Preheat oven 350 F.
3. In medium saucepan, melt 3 TBSP Butter over medium heat. Stir in Onion and Garlic, cooking until onion is translucent, about 5 min, transfer to sm dish
4. Melt remaining 5 TBSP Butter in that saucepan. Whisk in Flour, stir until mixture is light golden brown and glossy, 8-10 min. Gradually whisk in Cream into the mixture; increase heat to med-high, bring to a simmer. Reduce heat to med-low, continuing to stir until mixture is thick, creamy and smooth, about 10-15 min.
5. Add Onion-Garlic mixture back in, and add all three Cheeses, stirring until mixture is creamy smooth with the cheeses melted in. Season to taste w/Salt & Pepper. Gently stir in Lobster and reserved Pasta. Pour into 4qt casserole, smooth the top if needed.
6. The Topping: in sm saucepan over med heat melt the 2 TBSP Butter. Add Panko crumbs and Parsley, cook, stirring, until lightly toasted. Sprinkle over casserole. Bake in the preheated oven until sauce is bubbly and top is golden brown, about 10-12 min. 6 servings.

One of those very rich Mac & Cheeses. Probably just as good with canned crab, or varied with cubed ham in place of lobster.

That looks freaking delicious. Why are you trying to sabotage my nascent resolution to eat better?


Eta: my post was directed to orthodoc, imagine my surprise to see it appear following your mac and cheese devilrey. Fine. It applies equally to that one too. :drool:

Thanks, V. The peppermint cheesecake recipe is great during the holidays - you can always keep it until Dec. 2014. ;)

Broccoli salad
 

1 pkg broccoli slaw
1 cup sunflower seeds
2 pkg Mr. Noodle (chicken or vegetable) broken up
1/2 cup chopped green onions
3/4 cup sesame oil
1/2 cup vinegar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dried cranberries
seasoning from the soup

Best eaten the next day-mmmmm

For the BUMP.

BigV, you're right. It IS freaking delicious. We gnawed on it the entire four day visit and there wasn't a drop left.

Life is short.
 

You guys are my friends. You've done a lot for me. Now, I'm paying back *all* of it. Here ya go. You're welcome.

*******************

This is a recipe for ice cream. I love ice cream. I remember when I was a kid, I thought that one of the best parts of growing up was that someday, someday, I'd be able to have more than two scoops of ice cream if I wanted to. When you make this recipe, you're gonna realize my childhood dream.

Now for some notes. the 2/3 cup of sweetened condensed milk, just give up. Make a double batch, that's 396 grams of sweetened condensed milk. That's one whole can, super easy. Put an extra splash of heavy whipping cream in there to balance it (AFTER doubling the heavy whipping cream to 2 1/2 cups in proportion to the doubled sweetened condensed milk). I've made this recipe a few times now. By adding all the ingredients together and then whipping it, you get a product that is very, very creamy, with not a lot of air in it. It's much closer to gelato in texture. I've also whipped the heavy cream first then added the other ingredients, this produces a much airier product, still delicious, just lighter in texture. Also it requires much more space in the freezer.

As for the flavoring, go crazy. I've made coffee ice cream, my favorite so far, cookies with fudge swirl, toffee and chocolate. The ice cream base of the cream/milk lends itself to practically anything. When I made the coffee one (described in the attached copied recipe) I didn't have any espresso liquor to add, so I substituted vodka. It worked just fine. I boozed up other batches too, to the tune of four ounces of clear liquor to one double batch.

What makes this a great recipe? It's delicious. It's SUPER EASY. And it's fast. The hardest part of this recipe is waiting for it to freeze. Good luck with that. Like I said, Life is short--Dessert First.

So the only sugar is in the sweetened condensed milk.

Is it a sweet dessert? Or just a coffee flavor?

It is sweet like you expect ice cream to be. All of the sweetness comes from the sweetened condensed milk.

I hope you try it. If you like ice cream, you'll love this recipe. It's delicious, very rich.

Must try soon. Certainly does sound yummy, although very high in calorie. But low-fat ice cream just doesn't sound very tasty. :p:

It's gonna be 80 degrees here today, emergency dessert conditions. I might resort to some of these recipes in an emergency, but I'd have to be pretty hot and pretty hungry. I haven't made any of these, so, if you do, please report your results here.

10 Wacky and Wonderful Ice Cream Flavors

Westernized Chinese Food.

Ham Fried Rice.

Pork Dumplings.

Orange Beef.

Sriracha Chicken.

Spare Ribs.

Shrimp Chow Mein.

Beijing Beef.

Beef Broccoli.

Orange Teriyaki Chicken.

I've only now discovered what is apparently an old standby in the faux-BBQ sauce arena:

Mix ketchup and Coca-Cola (or pretty much any cola drink - I read Sprite and/or 7Up, also, but with a much different result than the BBQ-ish sauce), 50/50 for how much you need. I added a dash of Tabasco. I use this for a marinade (works great on pork chops).

I also just read about using plain yellow mustard and water, 50/50, to dredge your fish (this recipe used redfish) in before dredging it in flour to fry fish. Haven't tried this yet.

Anyone used either of these methods before?

Used it last night to grill a 12lb turkey I de-boned. My neighbor told me to try it... I had never used it before and I must admit, it was fantastic.

Oop -- Misnamed; it's Kaimak
 

Memory fail -- this is called Kaymak.

That sounds very much like a lassi.

I love them in the heat, and prefer the salted ones. The most common pre-packaged lassis over here tend to be too sweet for me (and usually mango)

I posted this over on FB because my phone makes that super easy. But I wanted to share it with my good friends here in the Cellar too.

The kids were off last week at my parents' house in Maine, and my wife and I grabbed some Thai takeout one of those evenings. For an appetizer, we always get these fresh Thai spring rolls that come with a sweet hot pepper dipping sauce, and they are absolutely delicious. As I was eating mine, I focused on the stuff inside. There was nothing terribly exotic in there. Lettuce, cilantro, cucumbers, carrots, bean sprouts, and shrimp. I commented that I bet we could make these ourselves pretty easily, and that if we had a bunch of them, it would make a nice meal instead of just our usual appetizer.

So on Sunday, we drove a mile up the road to the Eden Center. This is a shopping area that is famous in the Asian community on the East Coast. Any Asian stuff you want can be had there. Mostly Vietnamese, but really any country. Going into the large supermarket there is very much like going to a different country. Alphabets I don't recognize, most of the produce I don't recognize, meats I don't recognize. We were able to pick up all the ingredients, including the rice paper wrappers, which are the key ingredient. The sauce is also key, but we had a bottle at home already to go with the lettuce wraps we sometimes make. So if you want to make this, get the rice paper that has Tapioca as a main ingredient. It works well, and is apparently the best kind of rice paper for these. And get some hot pepper sweet sauce.

We shredded the lettuce, and julienned the carrots and cucumbers. I cleaned and steamed the shrimp and sliced them in half lengthwise.

Then I found this video, which starting at the 3:40 mark shows how to put all the ingredients in the rice paper and roll it up.


You just put a neat pile of lettuce down on the wet rice paper. Then a few sprigs of cilantro on top of that, a small spear of cucumber, a bit of carrot, and some bean sprouts. Then carefully lay the shrimp halves down next to that pile, with the pink side facing down, so it will show in the final product. By now, the hard crispy rice paper you dunked into the warm bowl of water will have become soft and sticky, and stretchy. You peel up the edge and start wrapping it all up. The rice paper sticks to itself and rolls up beautifully. You can tuck the sides in, or not. We tucked them in, but the restaurant we go to leaves them open.

We made 22 of them for 4 of us to share, and were not able to finish them. We had bought a pound of shrimp, and were running out of rice paper and other ingredients, so I started really loading the shrimp on at the end.

Pour a little of the sauce into tiny bowls and put crumbled peanuts on top of the sauce.

They were super yummy, and I gorged myself.
Attachment 52500

Nice work!

That is my favorite favorite favorite Asian meal (though I prefer a meat other than shrimp). When traveling for work, I'll get two orders of them as a meal, since it fills you up without weighing you down, which is unusual for restaurant food.

After a recent conversation with classicman, I produced a batch of limoncello. It's fucking delicious. I loved it so much, I've made a second batch, and true to my standard MO, it's a double batch. Here's the recipe.

10 pounds of lemons
1.75 liter bottle of 195 proof Everclear
simple syrup to taste
water

******

I zested the lemons using a microplane. I put the file shaped microplane in a large steel bowl and carefully scraped the zest only, no pith (white material between yellow skin and juicy flesh of lemon) into the bowl. I love this microplane, it is absolutely sharp as fuck and will zest your fingerprints and knuckles with effortless ease. USE EXTREME CARE when dragging the fruit along the blade surface. We're not dealing with blood oranges here. After zesting all the lemons, it produced about 400 gm of zest. Reserve the now pale matte finish lemons for later juicing. I divided the zest into two equal portions and spooned each portion into a one liter wide mouth nalgene water bottle. I then topped off each bottle with the Everclear. It made two full nalgene bottles, meaning 875 mls of booze and 225 ish mls (by volume) of zest. Cap them tightly, put them on the shelf and walk away for a couple weeks. Actually, I shake the bottles when I think about them as I walk by in the kitchen, but really, you're just trying lemonize the booze.

I then halved all the lemons and juiced them using my electric juicer. What a labor-saver. My first batch I just squeezed the juice by hand, no more. This batch produced about 1.75 liters of well sieved juice, which is stored in the refrigerator for later combination with the lemonized booze. I strained the juice six or seven times. My first batch I tried running it through a coffee filter--bad idea, do not attempt. Just the fine mesh sieve is ok, scraping with the spoon as it drips into the funnel and into the bottle.

Now it is waiting time.

When it comes together, I'll prepare a liter or two or more of simple syrup. That's easy, take a saucepan, boil some water and stir in spoonsful of sugar until no more sugar can be dissolved. Let it cool, store in a capped bottle in the refrigerator. After a couple weeks, if my patience holds out that long, I'll strain the zest out of the booze. The booze will be water clear and bright yellow, like ... well like a clear bright yellow liquid that is appetizing. I'll add the lemon juice to it and it won't be clear anymore, but it will still be quite yellow, like the yolk of a hard boiled egg.

Now is the taste testing phase. It's only got 195 proof booze cut with almost half a gallon of straight lemon juice. That will pickle your pucker for sure. I'll add sugar until the tartness is drinkable, albeit STRONG LEMON. Not to mention still quite high proof. Add water until the strength is acceptable. I like to keep mine very strong because I like to have it on the rocks. The melting ice naturally dilutes the whole drink, so starting strong is good.

I expect I'll wind up with 4 to 5 liters of product.

Here are some pictures of the first batch. The second batch was all business, no camera time, sorry.

Attachment 52759
Only two three pound bags of lemons this batch. And a very fine grater by microplane.


Attachment 52760
Close up of the fineness of the zest.


Attachment 52761
How much zest six pounds of lemons produces.


Attachment 52762
What the shorn lemons look like. They remind me of newly-shorn sheep.

Attachment 52763
the lemons and their zest.


Attachment 52764
the pickling (only 151 proof this time)

Mostaccioli
 

This is about the yummiest thing I have ever had... (My mom started making this in the 80s (Recipe adjusted so it tastes the same as it did then))


Ingredients:


1/2 chopped green pepper (1/2 of a pepper chopped up)
1/2 chopped onion (1/2 of an onion chopped up)
1/2 lb ground beef
1 lb can tomatoes
6 oz can tomato paste
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 lb mostaccioli noodles
3 or 4 packets of VELVETTA CHEESE from Shells and cheese original dinner (http://t0.gstatic.com/?q=tbn:ANd9GcS...rlB7Yw6RCQfNXE)
bay leaf
1 Jar of Speghetti Sauce (The "Flavored with Meat" Kind) (32oz Jar) from aldis



Prep:

In oil,saute onion & pepper until tender. Add meat & cook until brown. Stir in tomatoes,tomato paste,water,salt,pepper,bay leaf. Add Speghetti Sauce, Simmer.

Cook Mostaccioli noodles as directed. Pour velvetta packets in.. (In a 2qt casserolo,arrange alternate layers of noodles,sauce and cheese.)

Bake @ 350 for 30 mins



The Result:

The Best tasting dish you'll ever have!!!!!!!!!

I hope many will enjoy this as much as I do...............

Well, I continue to get raves with my Lemon Meringue Pie -- ended up scattering about half a dozen copies of the recipe in the thread among Mom's neighbors about half a year after she died, to remember her by.

Experience yields a few new details. I now like to sprinkle sugar on top of the meringue and not to beat very much sugar in -- if any. On the quick baking to set the meringue the sprinkled sugar makes a bit of a crust, making it easier to slice the meringue, which can cling to the pie server and slide off the pie filling if it hasn't a bit of stiffness up there. I've taken to reserving a couple teaspoons' worth of the lime zest to beat into the meringue -- pretty.

Graham cracker packages have been reducing their content. Once it was ten crackers, now it's eight or nine -- it seems to vary with Honey-Maid. It's not critical, a cracker or two more or less. I often make up the volume difference with some Metamucil if I want to use a thick crust -- and yay, fiber.