My Macaroni & Cheese

Now that the weather is cooler, I feel more like making comfort food.  So I'm going to make a change, and start giving you savory recipes to go along with your sweets.  When the kids were growing up they ate plenty of Kraft dinner, that ubiquitous (and very cheap) faux food.  Really, I think it's mainly chemicals.  Now my grandkids get Annie's organic version.  I think the reason kids like it is that it's soft and fun to eat, and there aren't any sharp flavors.

About 15 years ago, there was a recipe in the New York Times magazine for mac-cheese, and over the years it has morphed into my go-to recipe.  It no longer resembles the original, of course, but it got me started and gave me success experiences to build on.  So hopefully this recipe can do that for you.

Ingredients:  One of the things that has greatly improved the overall quality of my mac-cheese is using high quality pasta.  I prefer penne, but sometimes I use oriechiette or gemelli.  It just needs to be something that has a surface that the cheese sauce can cling to.  For a while I could find Delverde locally, but once that disappeared, I started shopping for pasta on-line.  I still like Delverde, but I like Pasta di Gragnano even better.  You'll see their penne rigate in the photos below.  At the very least, buy whatever Italian imported pasta your grocery carries...it really does make a difference.

Cheese:  This is largely a matter of taste and using a cheese that melts well into a sauce.  I prefer Monterey Jack cheese as my primary cheese (probably 3/4 of the cheese in the recipe), because it melts so smoothly and you don't get a gritty texture in the sauce.  For the rest, I clean out whatever shredded cheese is living in the cheese drawer, usually some sharp cheddar and asiago, both of which give a needed sharpness to the sauce.

Breadcrumbs:  I prefer sourdough bread that has been cut up into 1/8" cubes, or sometimes panko if I don't have any sourdough.  Italian bread would work well, too.

Sauce bechamel:  White sauce is one of the four "mother sauces" that Julia Child made accessible in her landmark cookbooks in the 1960s.  Even though it is a classic French sauce, it is really, really easy if you follow the directions below exactly.

JUDY'S MACARONI & CHEESE

16 oz (1 lb) pasta
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
4 Tablespoons AP flour
4 cups milk, warmed (nuke it in the microwave for about 2 minutes)
4 cups shredded cheese (Monterey Jack, Cheddar, Asiago)
1 teaspoon hot sauce, such as Tabasco or Chipotle
salt
pepper
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs (sourdough or panko or some other firm bread)
1 cup shredded cheese (same mix as above)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter a 9"x13" casserole or pyrex dish.

Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil on the stove in a dutch oven, over high heat.  Add salt (about a Tablespoon or so), then add the pasta.  Once the water has returned to a boil, reduce the heat to medium high and cook it the minimum time on the package.  This is important, because if you cook it until it is all the way done, it will get mushy baking in the sauce, and the sauce won't adhere as well to it.  Drain in a colander.

Return the dutch oven to the stove, turn the heat to low and melt the butter until foamy.

[Note:  Steve had a real challenge photographing this, because I was whisking away like a madwoman.  You'll see a blur or a shadow...that's the whisk]

Whisk in the flour and cook 1 or 2 minutes until it just begins to take on some color, whisking constantly.  This is now a white roux.  This step is important to prevent having a raw flour taste to your sauce.

Gradually whisk in the warm milk

and bring to a simmer and let thicken.

It is important to warm the milk so that it gets quickly and completely incorporated into the sauce, otherwise you'll get those dreaded lumps.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Whisk in the cheeses

and stir until melted.

Add the hot sauce.  Then add the pasta

Stir to evenly distribute the sauce.

Turn it out into the pan.  Or as you can see here, dump it out, then scrape the rest out.

Even out the pasta in the pan.

Mix the bread crumbs with the 1 cup of mixed shredded cheese, then sprinkle it over the top of the pasta.

Sprinkle the top with pepper.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the topping is brown.

Note:  Macaroni and cheese is a great side dish, but you can add things to it to make it even better, and more satisfying as a main dish.  I recommend ham cubes (cut up a thick ham slice into about 3/4" cubes, and sauté in butter until they begin to caramelize), andouille sausage (cut into 3/4" pieces and sautéd until they caramelize), and even buffalo chicken tenders cut up.  I think of the mac-cheese as a good platform for adding something with a stronger flavor, if you like that.

Biscuits, Part 1

(That's chicken schnitzel with lemon-caper browned butter sitting next to the biscuit)

I think I'm finally ready to talk about biscuits.  For 40+ years I used a recipe from the Time-Life Books Foods of the World, Recipes:  American Cooking.  For a few years I subscribed to this series, which featured a different country each month, and had lovely photos of the different regions, and even some of the food.  It was sort of a travelogue for eaters.  My first forays into French cooking were from the French Provencial volume, and they were mostly successful.  What I now know is that these recipes had been dumbed down significantly.  It was sort of Julia Child meets Betty Crocker.  Now that I think of it, that probably characterizes the late 1960s and early 1970s when this series was popular.

So this biscuit recipe was very, very simple.  And while the biscuits were good, they were never great.  In the past few years I have tried any number of recipes, from magazines, cookbooks, the internet, even a video from the NY Times.  And as I mentioned at the very beginning of this blog, I was always looking for that certain texture and taste that I remembered from some very special biscuits made by a true Southern cook.  Now most of the more recent recipes that have been featured in publications are made with butter.  And the author will rhapsodize about how wonderful, light, and true they taste.  But when I make them, the butter would inevitably make the biscuits more dense than light.  As usual, there were the usual caveats about keeping the butter very cold, barely touching the dough, etc.  Where you can get away with that with scones, which can be shaped on a baking sheet and cut apart, it is much more difficult with biscuits which need to be rolled out and then cut with a biscuit cutter.

One option is to pat the biscuits rather than roll them, and again cut them on a baking sheet, which minimizes handling.  However, for a true, flaky biscuit, it is necessary to roll them and fold them several times, creating layers.  Maybe this is partly semantics.  If the biscuit is made very much like a scone, it can have the kind of flakiness found in pie crust.  But it won't have layers.  If it is rolled and folded, it will have layers that allow you to break it apart to spread butter on it.  Perhaps it's a matter of preference or maybe they're each good in their own way.  So begins the great biscuit experiment.

For Part 1, we'll start with the baking powder biscuits made with shortening.  The following discussion will be of most interest to those of you who care about the chemistry of baking.  There's a wonderful reference book I use, CookWise, by Shirley Corriher, that answers any science-y question you might have.  Feel free to skip ahead to the recipe if you don't require that level of detail, although the recipe is the end result of this particular science experiment.

The first important variable when making baking powder biscuits is the type of flour used:  White Lily, All-Purpose flour, or King Arthur Perfect Pastry Blend.  The main difference between them is the protein per gram ratio.  White Lily, which is a Southern flour, is moderately low protein (9 grams/cup), and King Arthur unbleached all-purpose, which is a Northern flour is relatively high in protein (13 grams/cup).  Perfect Pastry Blend is in the middle (10.3 grams/cup).  What you can deduce is that climate and growing season, along with soil, create variations in the protein content of the wheat.  And they are different, both in how they feel to work with and how they taste.

Next is leavening.  Baking soda and baking powder are chemical leaveners.  Baking soda alone breaks down to produce carbon dioxide gas and sodium carbonate, which has an unpleasant soapy taste and is moderately alkaline.  If it is combined with an acid (such as chocolate, honey, molasses, citrus juice, buttermilk, brown sugar, to name a few) the carbon dioxide gas comes off much faster and a small amount of a milder-tasting salt is left behind.  Baking powder contains both baking soda and the exact amount of acid to use up all the soda.  It also contains cornstarch to separate these two ingredients to keep both ingredients dry.  What we find in grocery stores is double-acting baking powder, which contains both a fast-dissolving and a slow-dissolving acidic ingredient to produce a small amount of gas during mixing, then a maximum amount in the hot oven.

It may seem redundant to use both baking powder and baking soda in these biscuits, but there are good reasons to do so.  While baking powder is very reliable since it has just the right amount of acid for the amount of soda, when you use buttermilk, adding a little soda will neutralize the extra acidity.  And buttermilk is useful in baked goods because its acidity makes it an excellent tenderizer of the proteins in the wheat.

Also a word to the wise.  Although the right amount of baking powder will cause your baked goods to rise, too much will actually cause them to fall because the bubbles get big, float to the top, and pop!  Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.  So it's all about proportions.

And finally, there's the fat.  I have a sneaking hunch that the biscuits I loved so much in college were made with lard.  Crisco, which is vegetable shortening, is the next closest thing.  Biscuits 2 will compare fats in making biscuits.

Baking Powder Biscuits

3 cups flour (12.75 oz All-purpose flour, 12 oz. Perfect Pastry Blend, or 12 oz. White Lily)
3 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
2 Tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Be sure to give the oven plenty of time to get good and hot.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Note on the photos:  I made SO MANY batches of biscuits this week for comparison purposes, that I only made a half a recipe each time.  A half batch makes 6 or 7 biscuits, and a whole batch will make 12-14.

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large mixing bowl.  Add the shortening,

and with a pastry cutter, cut the shortening into the flour mixture until it is well combined and resembles coarse meal.

Make a well in the center, and pour in the buttermilk.

Mix together with a fork only long enough to form a soft dough.

Using a bowl scraper, gather all of the ingredients together,

And scrape it out onto a floured board.  By the way, you always flour the board with AP flour, regardless of which type you are using for the biscuits or pastry.

Flatten it out, then fold it about five or six times, like this:

Now roll it into out to about 3/4-inch thick.  I use a heavy cylindrical pin because I'm aiming for an even thickness and shape doesn't matter.

Cut the dough into 2 1/2"-inch rounds with a cookie cutter.  Be sure to cut cleanly down and do not twist the cookie cutter or it will prevent the layers from separating and rising fully.  You can see that there are visible layers in the dough.

Gather together any remaining scraps of dough, roll out again and cut into more rounds.

Arrange biscuits on the baking sheet, leaving about an inch between them.  I can never resist gathering up the last of the scraps and making a rather sad and misshapened one at the end.

Bake in the middle of the oven for 10 minutes.

Brush melted butter on the tops and return to the oven for 8 minutes or until the biscuits are a delicate golden brown.  Serve hot.

Note on the experiment:  My original recipe called for 2 Tablespoons of baking powder, and I always made them that way.  After reading CookWise I realized that for 3 cups of flour, it should be no more than 3 3/4 teaspoons.  So I adjusted the recipe, and voila, they suddenly rose much more!

Below you can see the difference between AP flour on the left and Pastry flour on the right.  The softer pastry flour allows the leaveners to work somewhat better, so the biscuit is taller, and definitely lighter.  There was no difference in height between the Perfect Pastry Blend and White Lily, but I preferred the taste of the Perfect Pastry Blend.  I guess I'm a northerner after all.

Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Frosting

Matt and Jenna and Sam visited us last weekend (Matt and Steve went to the PSU game...which Penn State surprised everyone by winning).  Matt and Jenna requested "Orange Danish" during their visit (and to take home afterwards).

When the kids were growing up and I was still popping things out of Pillsbury cans, they loved Orange Danish.  The recipe that follows is a version of the cinnamon rolls we learned to make at Zingerman's with an orange frosting adapted from a vintage Betty Crocker cookbook.  You may be seeing a trend here.  Many of my recipes have evolved from the original, and sometimes I will paste together recipes from two different sources.  Usually it happens either because the original recipe didn't taste quite how I imagined it would or I'm trying to recapture the taste of something I've eaten in the past.  Or I will apply techniques I've acquired along the way to improve on a recipe.  I'm not really an intuitive cook so much as an intellectual one, I guess.  I want to understand why things taste the way they do, and I want to be able to get consistent, excellent results.

For many years I was terrified of yeast in any form, feeling like a bad mother because I couldn't keep the little organisms alive.  I even tried measuring the temperature of the water used to proof the yeast with a thermometer to be sure it was exactly right.  Still, without fail, the yeast underperformed if it performed at all.  Little flat, brick-like loaves were all I seemed able to produce.  Then, a few years ago, I discovered SAF Red Instant Yeast at King Arthur Flour

and everything changed.  This is a yeast that doesn't need to be proofed, but is added in with the dry ingredients.  And while it comes in a 1 lb bag, it is good for a year in an airtight container in the freezer.  Here's an interesting history about instant yeast.  Manufacturers had brought out instant yeast years ago, but had also required adding rather hot water (130 degrees F) to the dough.  Bread bakers were creatures of habit, though, so they would try to proof it anyway, and when they went ahead and tried to proof it with 110 degrees F water (which had been standard for proofing forever), they got poor results.  Consequently earlier versions of instant yeast  failed and no one would buy it.  But in Europe, and in bakeries, instant yeast has been used successfully for years.

So now I have this excellent instant yeast, but most recipes still call for proofing, which requires some mental gymnastics to get around when you use this yeast.  You have to add the proofing liquid in with the rest of the wet ingredients, then add the yeast along with the first half of the flour.  It took me a while to work this out, but for any recipes I provide for you here, it will be perfectly clear and easy.

Another ingredient note on sugars.  At Zingerman's, they use Muscovado sugar as their standard light brown sugar.  Typical brown sugars (such as Domino's in the East or C&H in the West), are really just refined sugar with molasses added to it, a little for light brown sugar, and a lot for dark brown.  Muscovado is unrefined cane sugar, which is less sweet.  The best brand, should you decide to try it, is Billington's.  They also make a dark brown, which is unrefined sugar with molasses added.  As a side note, I did a side-by-side comparison when Jennifer and Briana were here, making two batches of blondies.  In that recipe, we all agreed that the ones made with Muscovado were good, but the ones with regular brown sugar were GREAT.  In these cinnamon rolls, I always use the Muscovado, because I think it helps them not be cloyingly sweet.  Oh, and by the way, if you don't already have some, buy brown sugar bears for your brown sugars:

He's made out of unglazed pottery.  You just soak him in water for 30 minutes, dry him off, and bury him in the sugar.  Every three or four months, bring him out and re-wet him, and your brown sugar will be soft and lump-free.

SWEET DOUGH

Poolish:  Traditional bakers used a variety of methods to get dough to rise, usually involving wild yeasts (such as are in the air around us) and time.  A poolish combines commercial instant yeast with a little bit of time, and it creates a dough that inflates easily, resulting in a light, fluffy baked good.  And it's easy!

Poolish Ingredients:

1 cup (8 oz) milk
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 1/4 cups (11 7/8 oz) bread flour (I use King Arthur's Organic Bread Flour)

In the mixer bowl, combine the milk, yeast and bread flour.

Mix with the paddle attachment until the mixture forms a dough.  This is a firm poolish.

Scrape down the sides so it sits in the bottom of the bowl, then cover with plastic wrap.  Ferment at room temperature for 1 hour.  [Room temperature is between 68-72 degrees F for poolish or bread dough]

[You may have noticed that I have a special paddle attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer.  It has a rubber blade attached so that I don't have to stop the mixer and scrape down the sides.  Optional, but extremely handy.]

Dough:

Poolish
1 cup (8 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup (4 oz) sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, room temperature
2 1/4 cups (11 7/8 oz) bread flour

On low speed, cream the butter, sugar, and salt until combined.  Increase the speed to medium and beat until creamy.

Add eggs one at a time.  Scrape down the bowl as necessary.

It will look sort of curdled when you have all the eggs in it.

With the mixer on low speed, break up poolish into small pieces and add to the creamed mixture.

Once all the poolish is added, increase to medium speed and beat until the mixture is light and creamy.

On low speed, add the flour and mix for 3 minutes.  Scrape down the bowl if necessary.

Here's what it should look like when you're done mixing:

Remove the bowl, double-wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, or overnight, before rolling.

Rolling and Filling:

Look how much the dough has risen and strengthened overnight in the refrigerator:

Next, make the cinnamon-sugar filling:

Cinnamon Sugar Filling:

1/2 cup (4 oz) light brown sugar or Muscavado
2 Tablespoons cinnamon (I use Penzey's Vietnamese or Chinese Cassia)
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well.  Set aside until needed to fill the rolls.


Before you begin, assemble everything you will need to roll out the rolls:  flour, rolling pin, bench scraper, pastry brush, sharp knife, ruler, half sheet pan lined with parchment paper.

This is important, because once you start, you'll have messy, flour-covered hands.

Now, remove the sweet dough from the refrigerator, unwrap the dough and place it on a lightly floured surface.  Lightly flour the top of the dough.

Begin by tapping the dough until it is approximately 8x10", with the long side facing you.  This softens the dough slightly, making it less likely to have fissures as you roll it out, although it will inevitably have some.  Check to see that the dough is not sticking to the surface (flour lightly if necessary).

Now, it's ready to roll out.  I use a tapered rolling pin because it gives more control over the shape you are trying to achieve.  There is only about a 4" area of contact with the dough.  In order to create a rectangular shape, you start in the center and roll towards the corners like this:

I use a ruler, both to check to see when I have reached 14x18", and to square up the edges to neaten them as I'm doing here:

Once you have reached the desired size, brush away the flour underneath the dough.  I learned this the hard way, when the extra flour ended up inside the rolls.

When you are done, it should look about like this.  Notice that there are imperfections around the edges.  This dough, just like people, does not need to be perfect.

Butter:  

Melt 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter, and brush over the surface of the dough, making sure to go all the way to the edges (it's the only glue you have to help it stay together).

Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture evenly over the butter, except for 1/2-inch along the top and bottom edge.

Using the sharp knife, cut the dough in half in the middle, creating two pieces that are 7"x18".

Starting with the middle, begin rolling the dough, from one side to the other, keeping the rolling as snug as possible.

Continue rolling the dough up and pinch the seam together.

Roll the seam to the bottom and cut the roll in half.

Cut each half in half again.  Then cut each quarter piece into 3 even pieces.

The pieces will be approximately 1 1/2-inches wide.

Repeat with the other half of the dough.

Place the rolls on the half-sheet, four across and six rows down.  I like to scoop up any left over brown sugar-cinnamon mixture and sprinkle it over the top...why waste it?

With the palm of your hand, press the rolls down until they are 3/4" thick.

Cover the rolls with plastic wrap and let proof at room temperature for 2 hours.

After 1 and a half hours, preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Remove plastic wrap.  They'll have risen nicely and look like this:

Place in pre-heated oven.  Bake 15-18 minutes, or until the cinnamon rolls are a golden brown.  Check the bottom of the rolls to see if they have taken on color.  They will continue to puff up in the oven

While the rolls are baking, make the icing.

Orange Icing:

4 Tablespoons (2 oz) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups (8 oz ) powdered sugar
Zest of 1 orange
2 1/2 Tablespoons orange juice
1/2 teaspoon orange oil
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Whisk ingredients together to form a smooth paste (the butter will melt as you spread it, so don't make it too thin).  Spread icing over cinnamon rolls immediately after they come out of the oven.

These are delicious right out of the oven, but almost as good frozen and reheated.  To freeze:  once they have cooled, use a spatula to separate them, and place in a good quality freezer bag.  When you're ready to eat them, place a single roll on a plate, and microwave for exactly 24 seconds.

It does take some time management to make these rolls.  What I have done is to make the dough the night before and put it in the refrigerator overnight.   As soon as I get up in the morning, I roll it out, and 2 hours later they're ready to go in the oven.  If you're up at 7:00, they're ready to go in the oven at 9:30.  Alternately, you could make the dough in the middle of the day, let it rise for 4 hours, roll out the rolls, and put them in the refrigerator overnight covered in plastic wrap (twice wrapped to be safe).  They should sit at room temperature for an hour before going into the oven.