Antipasto Mac n Cheese

This is very loosely based on a pasta bake recipe from Taste.com.au. I've made this before, as the original incarnation - learning from this experience, this time I used regular pasta, and just doubled the amount I'd use to feed my family. (Which is a full pack per meal!) This recipe will make 2 pasta bakes, or one pasta bake, and 4 1/2 bowls of pasta. (I couldn't be bothered with the bake bit tonight lol)

Antipasto Mac n Cheese
1kg pasta
120g butter
1/2 cup plain flour
4 cups milk
3 cups grated cheddar cheese
250g rindless bacon, diced
250g fire roasted capsicum
1 stick celery, sliced thinly
150g semi dried tomato strips, drained
100g baby spinach
3 tsp mustard

Preheat oven to 180°C. Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water, following packet directions until tender.

Meanwhile, fry bacon and celery in a saucepan, until golden. Add the capsicum and tomato strips and stir for a few more minutes. Put into a covered bowl and set aside.

Melt butter in the same saucepan over medium heat. When foaming, add flour. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Remove from heat. Add half the milk SLOWLY while whisking until smooth. Add remaining milk and whisk to combine. Return pan to high heat. Cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 3 minutes or until sauce comes to the boil and thickens. (it's probably longer because there is more sauce) Remove from heat.

Stir in 2 cups cheese and mustard. Season with salt and pepper. Tip in bacon mixture. If mixture has liquid pooling in the bottom of the bowl, strain that off first. Mix gently through the sauce, then fold in spinach. The heat will wilt down the spinach, so just be patient with it.

Drain pasta and return to pot. Add sauce. Stir to combine. Spoon into 2 7-cup capacity baking dishes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden. Serve.

Uncooked (or cooked) pasta bakes can be frozen in a baking dish if covered. Allow to defrost thoroughly before cooking as directed.

Mt kids are such foodies. Here is Master One picking out his semi dried tomatoes, so he can eat them first!

Mac & Cheese

Yeah I cheated. It's just Coles brand packet mix. But I did stuff to it! I melted the butter in the pan first, and used that to sautee about 2 tsp of chopped garlic until barely golden brown. Then I added the milk and hot water, plus a Tbsp of cream cheese (the type in a jar for sandwiches, not Philly!) and a good squeeze of top quality mustard. (As top quality that comes in a squeezy tube at any rate).

I let it all cook as directed, completely forgot that when you cook three packs at once you need to cut back on the water, and added two beaten eggs, right at the end of cooking, after the pot was off the stove. Temper the eggs first with small amounts of the hot cheese sauce, or the eggs will scramble.

Was pretty tasty, as good as the brand name ones, but in a different way.

Chicken Kiev with Cheesy Vegtable Macaroni

Not much to say really. Mac & Cheese from a box, plus vegies, and a oven baked chicken kiev that came from the fresh meat fridge at coles. It was very tasty, but not really recipe worthy.

So here's a Big Bad Voodoo Daddy cover of one of the catchiest tunes to ever come out of a Rankin and Bass movie set to the original footage:
Mr Heatmiser, from 'The Year Without a Santa Claus'

Jazzing Up Mac Cheese, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Packet Mixes.

Macaroni Carbonara
410g pkt Kraft Macaroni Cheese
175g rindless short cut bacon
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
2 eggs
1 head broccoli, chopped

Boil a large pot of water and cook macaroni as directed, adding the broccoli in the last few minutes of cooking. Chop the bacon, and fry over low heat until crisp.
Add the milk and butter, and while the mixture is still cold, add the eggs quickly, stirring vigorously to avoid the eggs firming up. Add in the cheese powder, and stir to remove all the lumps. Turn off the heat, and drain the pasta, then add to the sauce. Add a light sprinkling of freshly ground pepper and salt to taste.

Great for nights when you can't be bothered with "real" cooking, but don't want to feed the kids something completely devoid of nutrients or protein. Tastes pretty good too!

Cauliflower & Bacon Macaroni Cheese

This is fairly close to the recipe in the August 08 issue of Australian Good Taste, but I'll give you what I actually did, and not what it says. ;)

350g penne
1/2 cauliflower, broken into small florets
2 tbsp olive oil spread (or marg, or butter)
175g bacon, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
250g cream cheese (that's one "brick")
2 1/2 cups milk
1 tbsp Dijon mustard (but I used a big squeeze of dijonnaise)
160g grated tasty cheese

Cook pasta in salted water until not quite done. (8 minutes, or whenever you have finished chopping cauliflower). Add the cauliflower to the pot, and cook until desired done-ness of pasta (in this house that means almost soggy, definitely past 'al dente').
Melt butter/marg/spread in a saucepan, and cook the bacon, onion and garlic until the onions are soft. Whisk in the cream cheese, milk and mustard.
Place pasta and the grated cheese in a baking dish, retaining about 1/2 cup of cheese to sprinkle on top just before baking. Mix through, then add the bacon sauce, mixing that through as well. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.
Either place under a grill for 5 minutes, or if your grill is too small, like mine, place in a 180°C oven for around 10 minutes, or until the cheese melts.

Feeding the family

Both kids emptied their plates. Miss Two had seconds. I had enough for the freezer to feed both kids on a night when dinner doesn't happen for whatever reason. And everyone was happy. We like our veggie dishes in this house. Now I just need to go and wash all those cheese dishes :(

Weekend Eats

If you need me to tell you how to assemble a burger or make mac and cheese, I think you're at the wrong blog. I won't teach you how to boil water either. ;) Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying those meals aren't post worthy, it's just that this time I bought premade burger patties from the butcher, and used packet mix mac and cheese. What? Don't give me that look, it was the weekend. Besides, for lunch yesterday we had Rabbit Mornay with steamed veg and fried potato slices. Both the children even ate a *shudder* steamed Brussel Sprout each. I didn't cook that though - we went to Mum's for lunch. So they plenty of 'real' food enough to be able to justify Pasta with Orange chemical sauce for dinner.

But since it's habit now to take a photo of every meal I cook, and the burgers looked so great, I thought I'd share our last two meals with you anyway.

I thought these burgers looked just like ones on tv


With very 'rustic' oven baked wedges


Mac & Cheese - my camera doesn't like the new tablecloth

Cheesy ham and macaroni bake

Recipe here.
The recipe called for 2 1/2 cups of macaroni, making it 5 cups, since I was making a double batch. But unfortunately 500g only equals just under 4 cups. This might have been a little more filling with that little bit more pasta. Serves 8, my well padded posterior! But we discussed this over dinner, and since the recipe was for cold pasta slice for lunches, we allowed that lunch serves can be smaller since they come with fruit and a juice box, and that eating it hot might serve 4 adults. When feeding 3 adults and two toddlers, you'll need dessert.

Despite an initial refusal to eat from Master Three because it "smells yuck" (smelled fine to the rest of us) I had to act quick to get a close up, since I forgot before dishing up. Again. I think I need a post-it note or sign on my crockery cupboard reminding me to take a photo before dishing up. As you can see, you almost missed out. ;)

The second batch (which I actually cooked first, earlier this afternoon) is sitting in the freezer, and will make a nice light meal with dessert, perhaps fruit salad or something else not too greasy, to counteract all the cheese, or a rather hearty meal for us, on a night when the housemate is not home.