The camera is down, so apologies... no pictures while it's being sent in for repairs.
Friday night was a little rainy, and Sam was a bit uncertain about what we should make for dinner. Of course, I decided to shout out one of my old stand-bys: Mac and Cheese. With a twist, of course. My goal was to not use ketchup on top (something I'm notorious for.)
Jess and Sam's Mac and Cheese with Chicken
What We Used
- 2 cups uncooked macaroni noodles
- 1 large head of broccoli
- 2 tbsp flour
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 1/2 cups milk
- 1 cup cheddar cheese, cubed
- black pepper to taste
- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
- breadcrumbs
- seasoning salt
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- asian chili sauce
Sam was kind enough to set the pasta to boiling and cut the broccoli into small bits and set to steaming while I made the sauce.
I generally start my cheese sauce with a blonde roux: In a saucepan over medium heat I melt the butter then add the flour and mix until it's a golden bubbly thing that doesn't look like it contains flour anymore. This thickens up the sauce later.
Slowly I added the milk... Normally I would only use 1 cup, but in the end it was thicker than I liked so I used more milk to thin it. So it's a good idea to reserve some of the milk for this purpose. Once the milk was happily simmering, I dropped in the cheese cubes and stirred until it was all melted. That's about it. I added a little black pepper as well.
You can tell this sauce is done when it can coat a spoon, but isn't so thick that it makes stretchy cheese strings.
We were kind of going for a not quite overwhelmingly spicy breaded chicken to eat with this stuff, but didn't want to do buffalo chicken (which seems to be the standard faire for eating with mac and cheese). Sam butterflied the chicken and rubbed it down with the asian chili sauce, then rolled it in a mix of the breadcrumbs, seasoning salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. We then fried the chicken in grapeseed oil.
When the pasta was done, we strained it, stirred the broccoli and cheese sauce in, and topped it with strips of the chicken and a little grated cheese.
Basically the verdict was 'homg.'
Anyway, sorry for the late post... I really recommend this dish to anyone wanting some good comfort food... and if you have any interesting variations on mac and cheese, let us know!
-Jess
In lieu of a bad day, I decided (for Sam) that we were going to do comfort food. This one may be of some intrest to Miss Carmen who requested we post the recipe to the cold day favorite 'Mush'. As for me, my preferred food when I'm feeling down is a cheeseburger (contrary to popular belief which would state that my favorite comfort foods are chocolate and potato chips)
So here we go!
Mush
(looks like sick and tastes like GLORY.)
Mush is one of those glorious foods that warm you up from the inside out. It's an easy to make stove-top casserole which makes it perfect for camping (provided you have a fire-proof pot or a camping stove). It's also extremely tasty, despite it looking like the name it owns: Mush.
What We Used:
- 1 lb Ground Beef
- 6 Potatoes, Mashed
- 1 can Corn Niblets
- 1/4 Onion*
- 2 cloves Garlic, minced
- 1 can Mushroom Soup
- Black Pepper and Salt (to taste)
Everyone knows how to make mashed potatoes, right? You peel the potatoes, put them in a pot with water and a little bit of salt, boil them until they're soft enough to cut with a fork, drain and let the mashing commence!
That's the first step of Mush. Mushing the potato.
Sam followed it up with chopping the onion and the garlic and throwing it in a pan with the ground beef. The beef was browned and seasoned with the pepper and salt, then the corn was tossed in when the beef was almost finished.
Back to the potatoes, we added the can of mushroom soup to the mash and then the ground beef and corn mixture. Mix until awesome.
Sam wants to note that this is where you add some milk if it gets too thick, but that's optional.
Bison Burger with Bacon on Bannok
Obviously, I needed a manly burger for dinner and I happened to have a couple pounds of ground bison sitting in the freezer. I mourn now for my ground bison... the idea of it always being there kept me happy on cold, lonely days.
Bison is leaner than beef, we find, and the taste is almost a bit... sweeter? It is also SO DENSE. I make meatloaf (buffaloaf?) from this stuff and I feel like I ate a brick when I'm done.
A delicious, delicious brick.
Anyway... Bannock, too! Bannock is awesome, and when toasted it makes a wicked bun for a burger. Especially one as epic as these.
What We Used
- 1 lb ground bison
- 1/4 Onion
- Bread Crumbs
- 1 egg
- seasoning salt
- garlic
- Worchestershire Sauce
- Monterey Jack Cheese
- Bacon
- Bannock
- Left over Spicy Chipotle Mayo
The first step was to drive over to the Kekuli Cafe and purchase bannock from a member of their fabulous staff. We could've made it, but we're still being lazy and theirs is fantastic.
Sam says: Tomorrow will be less lazy. Tomorrow there will be bread.
The bison, egg, onion (chopped), and garlic (minced) were deposited into a bowl. I seasoned liberally with seasoning salt and Worchestershire, then added bread crumbs until it had a drier consistancy (without the bread crumbs, it's a cold mess that can't hold a shape.)
Patties were formed and put on the grill. The Kitchen of Despair doesn't have a BBQ attachment, so we used Sam's George Foreman thing.
M-Jack was sliced, bacon was fried, and the Bannock was toasted (We find that it holds it's shape longer if it's toasted.) and spread with the spicy mayo.
This, of course, is the point where you can add vegetables (if you swing that way.) In this case, the vegetables didn't make it onto the burger... I just snacked on them while other things were going on.
Construct the burger and enjoy it. :D
What the n00b learned:
- *We have a lot of quarters of an onion lying around. The heck!?
-Jess
