SkinnyCook

Yeah baybeee!! You know you love a big steaming bowl of macaroni and cheese. I have a secret for you… There are four ingredients in it. Nix the box crap. This how I roll with it at my house. There’s no recipe this time because you don’t measure anything. I’ll give approximate amounts.

Step 1: Buttttaaahhh

It’s like this. You melt 4 tbsp. (half a stick) of butter in the pan over medium high heat. Start your pasta boiling with a big dose of salt.

Step 2: Flour

Put an equal amount of flour, 4 tbsp. into the melted butter and whisk. Stir it around occasionally for a few minutes. In French terms, you’re making a “roux.” In the South, we generally refer to this technique as “cookin’.”

Step 3: Milk

Quickly whisk as you add about 1/4 cup milk. At first, it will make a goofy, lumpy paste. Continue to whisk until smooth, then add more milk. Repeat this until you get a sauce a bit thinner than you want the final product to be.

Step 4: Cheese

Here’s the magic! mmmmm cheese! Use whatever cheese you like that melts well. If you have not already discovered this, not all cheese melts. Weird, I know. I recommend American, cheddar, fontina, colby, or monterey jack.

Step 5: Salt

So now you have a beautiful cheese sauce. I can’t understate the importance of salt. Pasta needs way more salt than you would think. Salt. Taste. Salt. Taste again. Err on the side of a bit too salty, since you’ll be adding the pasta later.

Step 6: Mix

The only thing left to do is mix it all together. Add your beautiful sauce to 1 lb. of cooked pasta. I added broccoli at this point for extra credit. Plus, it a bit healthier. Cheers!

Here’s a magical 10 minute wonder. If you have enough cooking skills to make a sandwich, you can make this light meal in no time. I recently discovered this wonderful thing called fromage fort at New Seasons. It’s a blend of cow, sheep, and goat milk cheeses with wine and herbs. How could this be less than unbelievable? I predict that this will never be missing from my refrigerator. A bowl of soup, perhaps a nice premade squash soup from Imagine Foods, would turn this into a more substantial dinner.

Components

fromage fort
good bread - French or whatever you like
perfectly ripe pear, sliced
extra bonus points
salad greens w/ dressing of oil and vinegar
** balsamic or sherry wine would be perfect
walnuts
white wine - pinot grigio or prosecco

Vietnamese Avocado Smoothie

You either think this sounds like the weirdest thing you’ve ever heard of or you’re saying to yourself, “mmm!” I hope to make you all in the second category by the end of this post. This avocado smoothie is such a calorie bomb, you can have it as a breakfast or light meal all by itself. I think I could live on these things alone!

In Vietnamese cooking, avocados and evaporated condensed milk are a very common flavor combination. I know we don’t usually think of it in that context, but the condensed milk accentuates the avocado’s lovely green flavor without covering it up with sweetness. Enough with waxing poetic… on to business.

Recipe

1 perfectly ripe avocado
1/2 can evaporated condensed milk, a.k.a. Eagle Brand milk
tiny pinch of salt
approx. 3/4 cup of milk (soy, rice, cow, goat… whatever does it for ya’)

Whir everything up together in a blender or food processor. Use enough milk to make it pourable. Drink. Oooh and aaaahh. This will make 1 to 1 1/2 tall glasses, depending on the size of the avocado. It will keep, covered, in the fridge for at least two days.

Traditional Japanese Rice and Fish

I have a burgeoning interest in tradtional Japanese cooking, so today’s post is about my lunch of rice and poached fish. Sexy, no? It’s actually ridiculously fast (if you already have some leftover rice chillin’ out in the fridge) healthy, tasty, and utterly easy.

Poached Fish

1 or 2 filets of fish - Again, use whatever you like. I used dover sole, but it could be anything. Mild white fish will poach well. Salmon or tuna would work, but they will be more delicious broiled or grilled because of their high fattiness.
1/2 cup stock, bullion or white wine - We need something with a bit of flavor for poaching the fish. Vegetable, fish, or chicken stock will do fine, just don’t use beef stock.
cooked rice - Any sort will do fine. I like jasmine for this.

Heat a large skillet with the cooking liquid of your choice. Rinse the fish. When the liquid comes to a boil, add the fish. Let cook, undisturbed for 3-4 minutes. Flip it over for an additional 3-4 minutes. That’s it! Put that over hot rice and you’re golden. It’s pretty plain just like that, so I suggest some soy sauce. A traditional Japanese meal wouldn’t be complete without their weird pickles and condiments. I know you’ve been dying to buy a jar of them from your local specialty grocery, so now’s your excuse. I’d suggest salted plums, gomiaso or my new fave, seaweed salad.

Seaweed Salad

1/2 cup arame or wakame seaweed
1/2 cup hijiki seaweed
*Seaweed is available dried in PDX at Peoples and Food Front in the bulk bins. Otherwise, all Asian grocers (Fubonn)  will carry more types of seaweed than you knew existed.
1 tbl. lemon juice or rice wine vinegar
1 tbl. olive oil
3 tbl. apple cider or 2 tbl. mirin
1 tbl. sesame oil
1 tbl. soy sauce

Soak the dried seaweed in enough water to cover for one hour. Rinse and drain. Saute in a smallish skillet for 15 minutes with the olive oil. Add remaining ingredients and cook for about 5 minutes more until the liquid is absorbed. This will make enough for several meals and is good with all types of grains or on top of some lettuce for a super-healthy salad.

Day After Xmas: Eggnog French Toast

Yesterday was the enormous feast for Christmas Day with friends. Here in Portland, we were celebrating with the help of a 40-year snow, so many were stuck without a way to get back to family gatherings in far-flung locations. Being a loyal tweep, I invited any and all to come to my place. I was honored to welcome seven friends, both new and old, into my home. Nothing could’ve made me happier than having a houseful of happy faces.

But I digress… this post is about breakfast. What do you do with half container of leftover eggnog? Why, you make French toast, silly. It’s what God intended us to do with the stale bread accidentally left out on the counter all night because we were too lazy/hungover/despondent to actually clean up the mess from Christmas Day dinner.

Secrets of your success

• Use really good (stale) bread
  This could be any kind of bread. Think any Italian, French, sourdough. Get fancy with cranberry walnut, double chocolate, cinnamon, etc… go crazy. The only thing maple syrup and eggy-goodness won’t help would be some savory thing like olive bread.
• Soak it in the egg mix for at least five minutes
• Fry it up in butter
• Top with real maple syrup

Recipe

Serves 1-2

2 eggs
1/2 cup eggnog or milk
2-3 large slices of bread
1/2 tbl. butter

Whisk together egg and eggnog. Dunk the bread in it. Put the heat on medium-high for the skillet to get nice and hot. Wait five minutes. Perhaps have a mimosa. Fry. Pour on hot maple syrup. Eat.

Here’s the first post of my first *personal* blog. I’ve been blogging a bit for my employer at StepChange Group on Social Media nonsense. Here, I’ll talk about what really matters. Namely, feeding yourself in some kind of sane fashion. My mantra is to use as few ingredients, pots, pans, and utensils as possible. The vast majority of these meals will be weeknight wonders, taking between ten and twenty minutes. I subscribe to Organics to You’s box ‘o wonderfulness. If you also subscribe, we’ll likely have the same stuff in our fridges to work with.