Food Fridays: Potato beer-cheese soup

So I had this post slated for Dec. 13th, but I got a teensy bit distracted by the whole omg-i'm-getting-engaged thing ;) And then it was pre-holiday craziness on the 20th, and December clothes budget posting on the 27th, and here we are. But I guess that's okay, because it is freaking COLD outside throughout most of the U.S. (and Canada, I can only assume). So you should probably make this to warm yoself up, like, now. When you do make this recipe, you will understand my need to deeply and profusely apologize for the delay. I'm not even kidding. This is one of the best--and easiest--soups I've made, probably ever.


I honestly just started drooling.
With a lot of potato-based soups, you have to puree the potatoes after you cook them to create a smooth, starchy base. Not so with this one; it's chunky and delicious. Which is good because my blender is crap, I don't have an immersion blender, and my food processor is most definitely not liquid-tight. Why yes, I have splattered my walls during an ambitious attempt at another potato-based soup.

Now normally, I adapt recipes a bit and post the adapted version in full here. But with this dish, I pretty much followed it to a T. I think I omitted the carrot and celery, because we didn't have any, and sprinkled a little dried celery seed over the potatoes as they cooked.

The one thing I didn't really like about the recipe linked above is that it just called for any "light-colored ale." Now, I'm not a big beer drinker and was about to just use good ol' Budweiser or something. But guess what. That's a lager. And apparently, that makes a difference. So I sent Matt out to find something, and he came back with the beauty pictured above: an Agave Wheat ale from Breckenridge Brewery. Wheat beers are one of the few styles I enjoy, so I had one with dinner and it was delicious. If you can't find this exact brew, any non-flavored wheat beer (i.e., no fruit flavors) or even a more bitter IPA would do just fine.

Oh, and one last tip: Make sure you get a good, crusty bread or baguette to go with this. I am not exaggerating when I say you will want to soak up every last drop from the bottom of your bowl! Matt and I literally collapsed onto the couch after dinner; it took several minutes to muster up the energy to clean up afterwards. Food coma for the win!

Food Friday: Mac and cheese soup

It's no secret that I have a long-standing and intense love affair with mac and cheese. Baked, creamy, from-a-box or made from scratch...as long as it has noodles and cheese, I'm in. So when I saw this recipe for mac and cheese soup in Cuisine at Home magazine, I knew I had to put my own spin on it. Blue cheese and some other unusual flavorings give this soup an unexpected kick, so it's far from your average bowl of mac.


Ingredients:
- 1 /12 cups dry macaroni (for this, I used some spiral-shaped cavatappi instead)
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/2 cup dry white wine or cooking sherry
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
- 2 cups milk
- 4 cups shredded Cheddar
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- salt
- 1/4 cup crumbled bleu cheese
- 2 tbsp minced fresh chives

Start by cooking your tubular pasta of choice in a pot of salted water according to package directions. When it's ready, drain and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan, then stir in flour and cook (stirring constantly) for about one minute to make a roux. Pour in the wine/sherry to deglaze and simmer until the wine is nearly evaporated.

Stir in the chicken broth, nutmeg and cayenne. Simmer until it thickens a little (about five minutes or so), then whisk in the milk and let it slowly warm up. Whatever you do, don't let it boil. It gets grainy and gross, and no one wants that.

Stir in the cheddar cheese, about a cup at a time, letting it melt completely before adding the next batch. Then stir in the lemon juice, a dash of salt (taste it to make sure it's enough) and the pasta.

Remove your saucepan from heat and top with bleu cheese and chives. YUM. Matt and I both loved this soup, but next time I think I'm gonna try making some homemade pretzels (from a recipe on Pinterest, no doubt) to go with it. DOUBLE YUM.

Food Fridays: Baked mac & cheese

This is, without a doubt, one of my absolute favorite recipes. It's easy, it's DELICIOUS, and it's something of a family recipe. Since there's no real secret, and I've added my own personal touches to the original recipe, I've decided to share it in all its cheesy, bacony, mouthwatering goodness.


Ingredients:
- about half a box of elbow macaroni (rotini, rigatoni or bowtie pasta would probably work well too)
- a bread-bowl-sized roll of sourdough bread
- 4-5 strips of bacon
- about 1/2 to 2/3 cup cottage cheese
- about 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1 egg
- 16-oz package of shredded cheese...I like to use a three-cheddar blend

As with most of my recipes, nothing about this is an exact science. That's what makes it fun! So let's get started.

First, bring water to a boil in a large pot and preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a separate pan, start cooking the bacon. When the water is boiling, add a good dash of salt and the noodles of your choice and cook until just past al dente. (You want them to be pretty soft, since they're going in the oven.) When they're cooked, drain and return to the pot, off-heat.



Meanwhile, cook the bacon to a nice crisp that will be easy to crumble into pieces. Also meanwhile, rip the sourdough bread into small chunks and throw, a few pieces at a time, into a food processor. Pulse until you have very fine breadcrumbs. You'll have WAY more than you need, but that's okay because you can freeze them and use them for other recipes later. Way to plan ahead!



Okay, so the noodles are already cooked and drained. You now want to do the same with the bacon—lay 'em on a few layers of paper towel, cover with another paper towel and press gently to remove the extra grease. Let cool.



While the bacon is cooling, use a wooden or plastic spoon to mix the sour cream, cottage cheese and egg into the noodles. Make sure the egg yolk gets broken and thoroughly mixed in. Then, mix in about half of the bag of shredded cheese.



Spray a baking pan (I think mine is appx. 9"x13"?) with cooking spray, then spread about half of the noodle mixture into the pan. Sprinkle with a little layer of shredded cheese. Spread the rest of the noodles over that. Crumble the bacon into little pieces over that, then cover the whole thing with the remaining shredded cheese. Remember, there is no such thing as too much cheese.

Bake, covered with foil, for about 15 minutes or until the cheese on top is melted. Then uncover, sprinkle with the breadcrumbs (betcha forgot about those delicious morsels) and bake uncovered for about another 15 minutes, or until the crumbs are all nice and toasty. Try not to eat the entire pan in one sitting...because this also makes a great next-day leftovers meal!



Oh man. I die.

Food Fridays: Beef Quesadilla

First of all, don't worry; Fiscal Fridays isn't going anywhere. The series is more popular than I ever anticipated, so I'm keeping it around. But I don't always have a financial topic to talk about, and I love alliteration, so I decided to introduce Food Fridays as another Friday series. Hooray for variety!

Second, a big huge thanks to everyone who gave some feedback on whether to post financial advice or a recipe today. I love knowing what you guys want to see! So yeah, feedback is sweet :)

So. Quesadillas. They're easy and delicious and one of my go-tos on nights that I don't really feel like cooking. Sometimes I make them with just cheese (and dip them in Italian dressing, haha, I'm a strange one), but for this recipe, I added some leftover beef we had in the freezer. Because I was feeding Matt, too, and he's a hungry dude who simply cannot survive on cheese alone ;) Unfortunately, this is one of the recipes where I just kind of winged it. It turned out wonderfully, but I didn't write anything down because I thought I'd remember it. Now here it is, three weeks later, and I'm kind of guessing what I did. But I'm a pretty good guesser, so I'm going to say with some confidence that the recipe below is pretty close to what I actually made :)

You will need:
- about 1/3 pound stew beef, chopped into small pieces
- tomato juice
- Jameson or another decent whiskey
- spices (I'm pretty sure I used ancho chili powder, cumin and regular chili powder)
- hot sauce (optional)
- salt and pepper
- tortilla shells
- cheese (I used a mix of cheddar, mozzarella and Colby Jack)
- cilantro (optional)

Start by pouring about a cup (give or take, this isn't an exact science here) of tomato juice into a medium-sized skillet. Heat until simmering, then add a healthy splash (no more than 1/8 cup) of the whiskey and a good dash of your spices, as well as the hot sauce if using.

Increase the heat to a strong simmer and cook until the alcohol evaporates, about five minutes. If you sniff the pan and still get a strong whiff of alcohol fumes, let it keep simmering. Once the alcohol's mostly burned off, taste the mixture, adding salt and pepper to taste.

Add in the chopped-up beef, then cover and let simmer. Stir occasionally until all the meat is cooked through. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes, depending on how small you chopped it. Reduce heat to low to keep it warm.



While the beef is cooking, heat up another skillet large enough to hold a tortilla. (Griddles work really well for this too, if you have one.) Lay the tortilla flat on the skillet and let it toast a bit.



Flip the tortilla over and add cheese to half of it. (This helps the cheese melt faster and more fully!) Sprinkle with cilantro, if using.



Add the beef on top and fold the tortilla in half. Flip when the underside gets a little brown and crispy. Cook on the other side to the same level of doneness.





And there you have it! A toasty, crunchy tortilla shell wrapped around cheesy and tomato-y beef goodness. Yum. Serve with salsa and sour cream, or just be a lame-o like me and eat it as is ;)

Cheesy Tuna N Noodles

You guys. When I opened my cupboards to start dinner last night, they were bare. Well, not really...there were plenty of pantry staples and miscellaneous cans of soup and baked beans, but nothing I could make a meal of. Or so I thought.

Then I noticed I had some basic ingredients to make a dish my mom used to make a lot. She told me once that she loves casseroles because you just mix them together, throw them in the oven and move on to another task while it cooks. Can you say perfect? I'm swamped right now, so I decided to riff on her recipe to save myself some time.

I wasn't going to blog this, but I took my first bite and decided I probably should (hence the missing chunk of cheesy goodness that I tried so artfully to hide).


Ingredients:
- 1/2 box macaroni noodles (or something similar; macaroni was what I happened to have)
- 1 can tuna
- 1 can cream of chicken or cream of mushroom soup (mushrooms...ew)
- Parmesan cheese
- shredded Colby-jack or cheddar cheese (I used the former, my fave!)

This is seriously the easiest meal ever. Other than Ramen, I suppose, but I hardly count that as a meal. More of a snack, really. Anyway, this is the first dish I've made in ages--maybe ever--that didn't have any leftovers. None. That's how good this is.

Start by cooking your macaroni according to package directions. Making sure to salt the water liberally after it starts boiling, before you add the noodles. I like to overcook them a bit, because the baking tends to dry them out.

When that's done, drain and return to the pot. Drain the tuna and throw it in, along with the can of cream of chicken soup. Mix it all together. Pour in a liberal amount of Parmesan cheese. I never measure these things, but let's say about a quarter of a cup. Mix well and spread into a nonstick or greased casserole pan. Top with as much shredded cheese as your little cheesy heart desires.

Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes, or if you want more time to do whatever miscellaneous tasks, cover with foil and bake at 350 for about 30-40 minutes. Voila! Told you it was easy. Serve with more Parm. Because you can never have enough Parm.