Thursday, June 11, 2015

Macaroni Cheese

This recipe is the BOMB. If you need some winter comfort food, look no further than this creamy, cheesy, carby bad boy. For my birthday I was given two cookbooks, one of which was The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Having a flick through, I came across this recipe for macaroni cheese. This is something I've never actually made before and hadn't eaten in ages, so I thought I'd give it a try. This recipe is by Laurent Loudeac of Hippopotamus,one of the fanciest restaurants in Wellington. It made 5-6 portions for us, although the recipe says 4 but it's definitely quite rich - there's a lot of cheese in there - so smaller portions were fine for us on this particular evening.

250g macaroni
100g butter
100g plain flour
500ml milk
100g blue cheese, crumbled
100g ham, chopped - this is optional and you could easily leave it out and make it vegetarian. I used chorizo sausage, as I had some handy.
50-100g spinach
1/4 cauliflower - this wasn't in the recipe, but I had some leftover from the veggie curry
75g cheese (cheddar or Gruyere), grated - the recipe actually says 200g but I found 75g was just fine.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Cook the macaroni in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente - usually about 6 minutes. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a small pot and add the flour, stirring until you get a paste (roux). Add the milk slowly, whisking as you go to break up any lumps. Cook until you have a nice thick white sauce (bechamel). This took me a little while and a lot of stirring to get the sauce to thicken, but without it sticking to the bottom of the pot. Season to taste and then add the blue cheese, ham - or in this case, chorizo - and spinach. I also added the cauliflower at this point. I love to add extra veggies to dishes where I can, and spinach is a good one, so I always use extra. It adds a nice bit of colour to this dish too. Drain the pasta and pour the sauce over it, in the large pot. Stir well to combine and poor into either a large oven proof dish, or small individual dishes. Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top and bake for 25-30 minutes or until it's golden and crispy on top - I put the grill on for the last few minutes of cooking, just to get a really nice crust. Serve with a salad on the side - which I didn't this time, but I'd recommend it just to cut through the richness of all that cheese. Yum!


Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Veggie Curry with Chickpeas

I have recently rediscovered the library and I had a brainwave when I was there recently - I can get cook books out from the library! My first selection was Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals. I've made a few recipes from here before - some of them are conveniently found on the internet - and this one is probably my favourite. I've made it heaps of times over the last few years - it's easy, has loads of veggies and you can actually make it in 30 minutes...without all the other accompaniments that go with this recipe in the book, that is. It's actually called Curry Rogan Josh in the book, but you can make it any kind of curry, just choose whichever kind of paste you like.

I also made the Piri Piri Chicken and the Kind Of Sausage Cassoulet while I had this book out from the library. I didn't rate the sausage cassoulet - it was too oniony for my taste - but the piri piri chicken was really delicious, as were the lemony potatoes with feta, chilli and coriander that went with it. I forgot to take any photos when I made it however, so no blog about it....this time. Anyway, back to the curry. I usually make some adjustments to the amounts of some things in the recipe, so this is my slightly altered version, which should do two meals and two lunches the next day.

1 onion
1/2 medium butternut squash
1/2 small cauliflower
1 fresh red chilli (optional)
2 cloves of garlic (3 if they're small)
a bunch of coriander
1/4 of a 283g jar of Patak's curry paste. I usually go for korma, but this time they only had 'mild curry paste' at the supermarket
1 x 400g can of chickpeas
100g prewashed baby spinach
1 cup (ish) natural yoghurt
oil for cooking

Peel and slice the onion and put into a large pan or pot with some oil and a splash of water, on a medium heat. Use the neck half of the butternut squash, so you don't have to de-seed it. Chop it up into 1cm pieces, skin and all, and add it to the pan. The skin becomes really tender so you won't even notice it, and it saves having to chop the skin off which is really fiddly. Chop up the cauliflower into bite-sized pieces and add to the pan, along with the sliced fresh chilli. I really like cauliflower in curries as it's such a great texture with excellent absorption qualities - so add a bit more if you fancy it. Crush in the garlic and chop up about half the bunch of coriander, including the stalks, and add to the pan. Add in a couple of splashes of water, the curry paste and the can of chickpeas, including the juices. Season, stir well, put the lid on and turn the heat up to medium-high. Basically, just cook this (hard and fast, as Jamie says) for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, and adding more water if it starts to look a bit dry. Add the spinach about 5 minutes before the end and stir through. Cook the rice while the curry is cooking (see below). When it's all done, divide the rice and curry between plates and add about 1/4 cup of yoghurt onto the top of each, with some chopped coriander leaves.


As as little aside, I am rubbish at cooking rice, however I learnt the best and most simple way from this recipe. Fill a mug with rice, put it into a pot and then add two mugs of boiling water with a little olive oil, a pinch of salt and a few cloves if you have them. Put the lid on and cook on a medium heat for 7 minutes. Then take the pot off the heat and leave it, with the lid on, for another 7 minutes - this gets you nice and fluffy rice and (almost) never fails!