Dairy-free mac and cheese, Take 1

This cheese-free mixture combines with almond milk to make
the mac-sans-cheese sauce

My darling nearly 1-year-old daughter (Miss H) has an apparent dairy protein sensitivity.  It's not a true allergy, thankfully.  She can eat small amounts of "hidden" dairy products (like the amount of milk in a single pancake is OK), but yogurt, cheese, a cup of milk and we are in Digestive Distress Central.  Unfortunately that means that dishes are that are basic food groups at my house are off limits for her :(  Like mac and cheese.

So I am exploring the world of cheese-free mac and cheese.  As best I can tell, dairy-free mac and cheese recipes fall into 4 main categories...those that use processed faux cheese and plant-based milk for the sauce, those that use miso paste and plant-based milk, those that use some kind of nut puree and plant-based milk and those that use a product called nutritional yeast and plant-based milk.

I'm starting with the last one.

You might remember that I said I wasn't going to make a special trip to get nutritional yeast to make this recipe awhile back...I apparently shoulda gone ahead and done it.  So off to my local natural foods store I went.  $4.50 for half a pound and it looks like it might last forever.

I've also had to try plant-based milks...we've settled on almond milk mostly because she doesn't barf it back up and that's good enough for us.  I was surprised to see that most plant milks have added sweetener.  When I compared the nutritional information on these milks with cow's milk though, I realized that without the additional sugar, most of these milks (the ones made from protein sources like nuts anyway) are far lower in calories and natural sugar than cow's milk.  Great for adults who want to cut calories, not so great for growing babies.  There are flavored versions of most non-dairy milks, and those have LOTS more added sugar which we *will* be avoiding.  Just a tidbit for you.  Back to the recipe.

I tried this recipe from the Bad Mama Genny blog.  I liked that it was easy, fast and could sit on the shelf like the boxes of mac and cheese do.  Nice and easy for me or my Dear Husband to throw together for a quick kid-friendly meal.  And it absolutely was.  And Miss H LOVED her cheese-free mac.

Full disclosure...the boys did not like this.  They were 100% rock-solid prepared for Kraft and were disappointed.  I thought it needed a little acidity from, say, some white wine vinegar or tomato paste, but otherwise I'd absolutely eat it again.

Full disclosure...I'll probably make up a few small jars of this mix (as recommended here, though I prefer the sauce-to-pasta proportions of the above-linked version) and make it just for Miss H while continuing to keep the boxed stuff, the "real" stuff for the boys.  And I'll keep trying other recipes too.

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Fettucine with (vegan) White Pesto

Oh my, this is my 300th post!

One of my pet peeves about special diet (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, whatever) cooking is the convention of naming a recipe after a foodstuff that it kinda sorta resembles if you pinch your nose and squint real hard while you eat (e.g. Mock Sausage, Sugar-Free Caramel, Scrambled You-Won't-Believe-They-Aren't-Eggs, and all those plant-based "cheeze" sauces out there).

C'mon (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free, whatever) folks...you know these are tasty recipes that stand on their own without trying to stand on the shoulders of a "missing" ingredient.  The practice reeks of an inferiority complex and besides, you're inevitably setting your dining companions up for failed expectations if you tell them you will be serving something like is *almost* like sausage/cheese/eggs/etc. but isn't.

This is one such recipe.  It's from Christian Pirello of Christina Cooks and she calls it Vegan Fettucine Alfredo.  Actual alfredo sauce is buttered heavy cream, cooked down until it's super-thick and finished with fistfuls of parmesan cheese.  It's a heart attack in a pot.

This heart-healthier, plant-based "fettucine alfredo" is really NOTHING like real fettucine alfredo.  My husband made the snooty-face when he first tasted it because he was expecting something alfredo-y.

What it IS is awfully darn good once you get around that misnomer.  Once he got over his "this isn't alfredo" reaction, my husband loved it (ofc he did sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top of his, because pasta just isn't pasta until there's a flurry of parmesan on top in his world).

What the recipe IS is a white pesto...the only difference between this dish and a "true" white pesto is the relatively small amount of parmesan cheese which is understudied in the vegan production by miso paste.  No need to pretend like it's alfredo...it's pesto!

My one serious deviation from her recipe (aside from changing the name) is to omit sweetener.  I'm not quite sure why, but she feels the need to put brown rice syrup in everything.  This dish doesn't need it.

Lastly, the pesto (as with all pestos) can be made in advance and frozen. Just thaw it and add it to cooked pasta.

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Pepperoni Broccolini Pasta

Adapted from the most recent issue of Food and Wine (March 2013?).  The pepperoni/garlic mixture will freeze nicely and is easy enough to make in double or triple batches.  Once it's combined with breadcrumbs, I bet it would make an outstanding breading mix on chicken breasts, pork chops or eggplant slices too.

Topping pasta with breadcrumbs seems like carb overload and isn't generally how most folks think of the "right" way to serve pasta.  But the breadcrumb finish is common in a pasta dish that uses seafood (as parmesan and its ilk don't go so nicely with fish).  And if you think about the "traditional" mac and cheese baked casserole, there are breadcrumbs all over the top of that pasta!  So it's not as odd as it seems.

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Pumpkin Gnocchi

Gnocchi are sturdy little bite-size dumplings that are often made with mashed potatoes, but other veggies can form the basis for them too.  They usually have an egg as a binder, and I like that this recipe uses an alternate (therefore allergy-free and vegan) binder that takes advantage of leftovers, if you have leftover rice.  There original recipe comes from a PBS vegan cooking show called Christina Cooks.  I choose to serve mine with a non-vegan browned butter and sage sauce.

The tricky thing about this recipe is controlling for moisture content...you can't.  Your pumpkin may have more or less water than average, and even how soon you puree and use your cooked rice alters its moisture content.  I made rice special for this recipe and (as usual) made too much.  I pureed all the rice immediately (thinking I'd freeze some as "rice cereal" for the baby) and clouds of steam poured out of the food processor.  By the time I finished the gnocchi dough, the rice left in the processor was dry and sticky...I suspect that if I'd used the rice at that stage, I would have needed less semolina in my gnocchi dough.  I also suspect using leftover rice rather than freshly prepared hot rice would have had the same effect.  So the amount of semolina you use is very approximate...keep adding until it's the right consistency.

Which, by the way, is like a soft cookie dough.  You want the dough to hold together when you boil the dumplings but you don't want the dough so stiff that the dumplings are like concrete when you cook them.  So you want a dough that can be controlled with a light dusting of flour on your hands and work surface when you roll it out, but not as stiff as, say, a pie dough or cutout cookie dough.

And the semolina...I don't know if you could easily substitute regular wheat flour for the semolina flour.  They're both wheat products, but the semolina feels like cornmeal.  It's also a higher-gluten flour than regular all purpose flour.  You can't substitute cornmeal either because cornmeal doesn't form gluten bonds and therefore won't bind properly.  I didn't have a hard time at all finding semolina flour...it was on the baking aisle at my decidedly non-fancy grocery store with "specialty" flours.  Bob's Red Mill was the brand available.  For what it's worth, I've made other gnocchi-type dumplings before from different recipes that used regular flour and I thought they were heavier and chewier than the gnocchi I made with the semolina.

Lastly, this recipe calls for 1 cup pureed pumpkin.  I used canned pumpkin.  1 cup is about 1/2 a 15 oz. can.  I HATE having half-a-can of stuff leftover.  You could double up the recipe (especially since you can freeze the uncooked gnocchi!) or make pumpkin muffins, pumpkin seafood chowder, or pumpkin pancakes.  You can use homemade pureed pumpkin or I bet even other types of pureed squash though, again, these changes will affect the moisture content of the dough and change how much semolina you need.


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Spaghetti-Ohs

To fill any Chef Boyardee cravings...this is an astoundingly authentic copycat recipe that was great both as a prep-ahead and freezer meal.  Here's the original recipe which makes lots of dishes dirty.  Here is my version which only needed one pot.

Ingredient note: I used the canned tomato sauce that you find near the diced tomatoes and tomato paste, not spaghetti sauce or marinara sauce. 

For prepping ahead, I pre-boiled the pasta in the morning and mixed in the sauce ingredients.  By the time I put it on the stove to reheat that evening, the pasta had totally absorbed the sauce and only needed a few minutes on medium-low to get warm throughout (rather than the 20 minutes of extra cooking given in the OR). 

I froze leftovers in individual serving sizes and reheated them for lunch.  I recommend reheating in the microwave rather than the stovetop, but if you do reheat on the stove, add a splash of water to the frozen lump of pasta and heat with a cover on the pot to help keep things from sticking to the bottom too badly. 
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Shrimp Amatriciana

This is a Rachael Ray recipe originally.  She wraps the shrimp in pancetta for beautiful presentation.  I don't worry so much about that presentation crap.  My less-attractive-but-still-delicious way of prepping this dish ahead also lets you organize it as a freezer kit, which I don't feel comfortable doing with shrimp that you've had to thaw and handle as you'll do if you wrap it with pancetta.

I've made this dish with regular ol' American bacon instead of pancetta and it's quite tasty.  The difference between Italian pancetta and most conventional bacons is smoking...bacon is smoked, pancetta is not.  Bacon is also usually cut much thicker than pancetta is.  So if you want to use it to wrap the shrimp in, unless you have really big shrimp or really thin bacon, you'll need to halfway-cook the bacon first to keep from having overcooked shrimp with still-raw bacon wrappers.  Of course, if you skip the wrapping (like I do), you don't need to worry about this at all.

To make a freezer kit, dice up your bacon/pancetta and wrap well.  Dice the onion and put in a freezer container.  Combine white wine and basil (I have basil puree already frozen and just take a lump out of that stash) in a freezer container.  Package all together with shrimp and cooking instructions.  Make sure to have some whole canned tomatoes in the pantry along with your pasta (I label the boxes and cans that belong to a kit so I don't forget and use them for something else). 

Mise-en-place

If you're just prepping ahead for same day or next day cooking, you can use fresh tomatoes.  I'm using 1 pint cherry tomatoes and 3 medium normal tomatoes cuz that's just what I have on hand.  Chop/combine ingredients as suggested above and fridge.

Slap a note somewhere in your workspace when you start cooking that you'll need to grab 1/2 cup of pasta water before draining.  I *always* forget this part.

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Spaghetti octopuses (octopodes?)

I have suddenly seen pictures of these all over the interwebs, and I had to try.  I've seen a few variations and few notes about problems, and this is what I did.

First of all, I've heard people complain that the spaghetti gets mushy.  I cooked mine on slightly under a rolling boil and used regular thickness spaghetti.  I also broke the spaghetti strands in half before putting them in the sausage, so we didn't have crazy-long strands to deal with. 

I've seen complaints that the spaghetti didn't cook fully inside the sausage.  I used regular thickness spaghetti (nothing thicker) and used warm baked Italian sausages rather than chilled pre-cooked knockwurst or hot dogs.  I also prepped the octopuses ahead by several hours and gave the pasta a little headstart on softening. 

The delight of doing this?  More independent toddler/preschooler delivery of pasta to mouth...observe:

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Sweet potato ravioli

A great way to use up leftover sweet potatoes.  You can freeze the baked sweet potatoes (especially if they're leftovers), the made-up filling or the made-up ravioli.  I use wonton skins because I don't want to fool around with rolling pasta dough for ravioli, but you can make your own pasta if you want.  You can also choose to oven-fry these for a crunchy finish or boil them, if you feel more confident that your ravioli are sealed well. 

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Garlic Artichoke Pasta

I <heart> artichokes.  They're supposedly cancer-fighting and they're exotic and they're amazing with butter.  That's the first thing that made me want to try this recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Better Than Mom's Slow Cooker Recipes book.  The second thing was that this is a recipe that is made practically entirely from pantry goods without being one of those can-of-cream-of-death-soup type of recipes.  You can buy all the ingredients you need for this ahead and keep them on-hand as a pantry meal kit.  You can also prep the crockpot mixture ahead to fridge or freeze.

Until I had a toddler, we never had dairy beverages in the fridge routinely.  I had to buy milk or cream or half-and-half specifically for a recipe that called for it.  These days, I use whole milk for all recipes calling for cream or half-and-half because it is what we have in the fridge.  So use whatever you happen to  have here (or use canned evaporated milk, if you are like pre-toddler, dairy-drink-less me) if you throw this recipe together out of "ingredients on hand".  If you're planning to make a meal kit for this recipe, you can freeze an appropriate amount of milk or cream, rely on having some in the fridge on Dinner Day or buy canned evap milk for the "pantry kit". 

Comparatively, cream and half and half will be the highest in calories and fat, then evaporated milk and regular milk.  If you get non-fat evap milk, you'll get the best of both worlds...the lighter caloric/fat profile of milk with the rich mouthfeel of cream.

So a meal kit for this recipe will look like this: canned tomatoes, canned artichokes, box of pasta and can of evap milk (if using) labelled and stored in the pantry with garlic+dry herbs and milk/cream (if using) on hand or frozen in ziptop bags.  OR everything except milk mixed together and frozen with pasta/evap milk in the pantry.

The one gripe I have about this recipe is that it's a crockpot recipe that still requires significant cooking right before dinner.  The joy of the crockpot is that you don't have to cook at dinnertime, right?  Boiling pasta isn't hard, but getting the water up to a boil takes time...more time than I'm willing to spend to "finish" a crockpot meal. 

The solution is to cook the pasta almost fully in advance, toss it with a bit of oil or butter to keep it from sticking, fridge it and stir it into the crockpot at the end to warm up and finish cooking through.  Or you can boil the pasta at the last minute, whatever works with your schedule.  Just please don't rinse the pasta...rinsing washes away starch which will prevent the pasta from sticking to itself but then it also won't stick to the sauce.  Besides, the starch is where the flavor lives (yes, pasta does have a flavor of its own) so rinsing washes away flavor, too.

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Sage Ravioli

This hardly qualifies as a recipe, but again a reminder that good food can be fast and simple.  And I've never seen directions that I'm happy with regarding browning butter.

I'd love to say that I make homemade ravioli.  My boys' great-great-grandparents were from Italy and there's an antique family pasta roller somewhere at my in-laws' house.  I envision trooping over once a month with the kids, making tons of homemade pasta and drying it while we sit around and look at old photos, the boys learning about family history and cultural heritage as much as cooking skills (not to mention the fun of hand-cranking pasta)...but that's not what we do.  Maybe someday.

So I use store-bought ravioli (or another filled pasta).  Feel free to use homemade if you make it (brava! brava! if you do).  Using pre-frozen ravioli makes this an easy freezer kit...freeze the pasta and butter in a bag or container together and either make sure to have fresh sage when you cook or freeze a handful of sage sprigs wrapped in a paper towel.  Pat the thawed sage dry before cooking...it won't be quite as crispy as fresh would be, but it's still good.

I use the highly scientifically measured amount of a "big ol' fistful" of sage leaves.  It's about 1/2 ounce if you buy them, but really...if you've got a square foot of sunny space in your yard, plant a sage plant!  This isn't a gardening blog, so I won't go into great detail, but it's perennial, retains leaves in Zone 5 through the winter (for year-round use), and is way cheaper than buying fresh herbs at the store.  And no, you can't make this recipe with dry sage out of a tin pot. 

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Pasta mezzavera

Everyone knows pasta primavera...the heavily sauced pasta dish with tender early spring veggies.  This is pasta mezzavera, made with heartier mid-summer veggies, fresh herbs and a light lemon-infused olive oil.  I like using zucchini and broccoli, but any combination of fresh, seasonal produce will work.  For a slightly more rib-sticking meal, add a cup or two of cooked white beans.

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Aglio e olio

I think by the time one graduates high school, everyone should know how to cook 4 dishes:

1. your favorite meal (so that you don't have to rely on anyone else to make you happy)
2. an inexpensive and relaxed menu for having a few friends over
3. something impressive suitable for special occasions
4. something you can throw together quickly and with minimal effort at the end of a long day so that you don't spend your life eating crappy take-out

This is my #4.  All the ingredients are pantry or freezer staples (freeze whole peeled garlic cloves), except the fresh herbs which can be left out if none are available. 
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BBQ Chili Mac

Chili mac is an awfully versatile recipe that has gotten a bad rap from the versions found in product recipe books and fundraiser cookbooks.  It does not have to be high in fat or salt or low in vegetables and nutritional value.  It also does not have to be boring.  Please take a look at the recipe below.

I use up odds and ends of pasta for chili mac.  You can use any shape or combination of shapes, but I tend to break up the 2 or 3 lasagne noodles that are almost always left in the box into large "rags" of pasta.

You can do this recipe in 30 minutes, start to finish, without any prior prepwork, if you can devote 30 minutes to attending without distraction to chopping, sauteing and so on. 

You can chop the veggies and measure the liquid/sauce ingredients the morning of or night before Dinner Day.  Then it will still take 30 minutes to cook, but you can be more distracted during that time.

You can chop the veggies, measure other ingredients, and freeze them in a freezer kit.  Saves you night-before or morning-of prep time. 

OR you can cook the chili mac ahead of time, freeze it along with pre-measured cheese, then bring just reheat (from the frozen state, even, no thawing required) on the stovetop or in the microwave, and throw the cheese on at the end.

Choices, choices...

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Pantry Puttanesca

This is one for which you can have all the ingredients lounging in your pantry/freezer any time, or at least until the canned goods expire.  The only need-to-shop-now, fresh additions might be a handful of chopped fresh herbs or a couple cups of leftover roasted/grilled/sauteed veggies.  I wouldn't go out of my way to cook anything special for this recipe, but if you've got some leftover zucchini or eggplant, this is a great way to use it up.

A traditional puttanesca sauce uses anchovies, black olives, capers and tomatoes for its base.  If you think you don't like anchovies, think again.  Anchovies are the major flavor ingredient in Worcestershire sauce, giving it the full, rich, salty, umami quality that Worcestershire sauce brings to your favorite marinade (which makes Worcestershire sauce not vegetarian, for anyone who cooks for vegetarian types). 

I choose to use sardines here because I'm currently hot for them, dietarily speaking, for the reasons outlined here.  You can use tuna or the traditional anchovies, if you prefer.  If using tuna or sardines, you can choose to leave them quite chunky (so as to be easily picked around) or flake them up quite a bit before adding to the sauce so they become more of a flavorful ghost in the machine rather than an upfront protein.

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Gasp! I didn't prep ahead for dinner tonight!

Here's how my dinner prep went tonight (recipe adapted from Bon Appetit)...


Stella de Oro daylilies


5:38pm Get back inside after dividing and transplanting gifted daylilies (Stella de Oro, for those who were interested)
5:39pm Scrub fingernails
5:41pm Draw water for pasta and start it boiling
5:43pm Head upstairs to change out of dirt-covered clothes
5:49pm Return downstairs; water not boiling yet 5:50pm Zest orange, put half of zest into citrus zest freezer bag
5:52pm Slice bologna
5:54pm Realize we have no cream or half-and-half, only milk and sour cream
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Blue Cheese Artichoke Pasta

This is a fairly strong tasting pasta sauce, thanks to the blue cheese.  If blue isn't your thing, you can use less or sub in something you do like...feta, parmesan, shredded asiago, manchego, whatever floats your boat.  You must leave in the artichokes though...they are one of the top 5 cancer-fighting foods on the planet.  I heard it on Dr. Oz, so it must be true ;-)  

When it comes to browning mushrooms, I've found that a little benign neglect is the way to go.  Get your pan hot and your butter melted, put the mushrooms in and WALK AWAY for a few a minutes.  I mean, don't leave the house or anything, but go clean the cutting board.  You more you fiddle with them, the less they brown.

Blue Cheese and Artichoke Pasta

Makes 6 servings

2 tbsp butter

4 oz. mushrooms, sliced

2 tbsp butter

3 tbsp flour

3 cups milk

salt and pepper to taste

4 oz. crumbled blue cheese

1 15-oz can artichokes, cut up

1 13-16 oz. box pasta, any shape

(If prepping ahead for same-day or next-day cooking, measure and chop all ingredients.  Combine 2 tbsp butter and 3 tbsp flour in a container, keep remaining ingredients separate.)

Saute the mushrooms in 2 tbsp butter over medium-high heat, if you like them browned, or over medium heat if you just like them soft (about 5-7 minutes).

Lower heat to medium.  Add the additional 2 tbsp butter to the pan.  When melted, whisk in flour.  Cook 1 minute.  Whisk in the milk 1 cup at a time.  When all the milk is added, turn the heat up to medium-high until the sauce is simmering.  Return heat to medium and allow to simmer for 5 minutes, until slightly thickened.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

If preparing a freezer kit, freeze the sauce now and label the pasta and can of artichokes for pantry storage.  When ready to cook, thaw and reheat the sauce.  You may have to add a little milk to get the consistency you like.  Add chopped artichokes.  Boil the pasta according to the package directions.  Toss drained pasta with sauce.

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