homemade freezer burritos

Inspired by a comical NYT post, I made the following: Season up refried beans with taco seasoning or whatever you like, but definitely including garlic, paprika, salt. Wrap large dollops of this, plus lots of grated jack cheese, in flour tortillas, to make small, plain bean-and-cheese burritos, like what you might get in the frozen-food section of the supermarket or at a gas station. Fry the wrapped burritos hot in a tiny bit of oil on both sides to seal them shut as you make them. Keep warm in the oven if you are making lots. Serve with blender salsa and sour cream and guacamole.

creamy macaroni and cheese

Quite a few years ago I published a brutal recipe for mac and cheese, which sustained us for many years. This week I am under doctor's orders to eat nothing but soft food and nothing acid (don't ask). So I decided to fire up a super-soft mac and cheese.

While a one-pound (dry weight) boxful of macaroni is boiling in the pot, make a roux by cooking a few tbsp of flour in a few tbsp of butter until it just starts to change color. Add milk slowly, whisking to keep the roux from forming clumps. Then add about a pound (maybe less) of grated cheese. The milk-to-cheese ratio sets the texture of the dish; use your judgement. And you can use any cheeses you like here; I sometimes even use this recipe to clear the fridge of remainders of cheeses (as I did today). Heat the roux-milk-cheese sauce and add in the macaroni, preferably slightly before the pasta is truly done, with lots of pepper and salt to taste. Either eat it immediately (as I did today), or else top it with more cheese (and maybe breadcrumbs?) and put it in a 400 F (200 C) oven to finish the top.

Interesting fact though: When you bake it, it becomes far less creamy! I think it's probably because the macaroni absorbs some of the milk. So if you want it super-creamy, either don't bake it, or else go with way more milk than you think is sensible.

French-ish Onion Soup

Chop a bag of onions, toss with melted butter and leave, covered, in a 300 F (150 C) oven overnight to quasi-caramelize them. The next evening, mix these with a few cups of porcini mushroom broth (I used this because it was on hand and much better made from cubes than any beef broth that is cube-based). Add salt and pepper to taste, let it simmer for a little while. Top with a crouton, grated cheese (I used a partially aged gouda) and broil until brown on top. Serves a few. Way fast and easy!

Possible enhancements: The onions only get quasi-caramelized, not fully caramelized, because the closed pot doesn't let them dry out as much as they should; PMC suggests lowering the heat but leaving them in uncovered. Worth a shot! Alan Mooney suggests adding sherry to the broth. Duh!

cabbage and bacon

Cabbage burned (or browned) in butter (or any fat) is just downright delicious, especially in the winter! In what follows I use bacon but you can use butter or olive oil if you are vegetarian or vegan and it works well.

Try out 1/4 pound (or less) bacon, cut into tiny bits. Remove the crispy bacon to a bowl, but leave in the fat. Throw in a chopped onion and cook until soft. Add a half a cabbage, cut into small pieces. Stir it all up with lots of pepper and some salt and leave it there on medium heat until it starts to burn in the fat. Don't stir until it starts to really burn! Turn it once and let it start to burn again.

Now you have options: You can add cooked, drained pasta, a bit of cream, some grated parmesan cheese, and the bacon bits to make "cavolo pasta". You can add all of the above except the pasta to make a cabbage-as-pasta non-pasta dish. You can just mix in the bacon and serve it as a side with anything (like latkes or sausages). Another improvisation that worked well was apples, sautéed with the cabbage.

lasagne

I have repeatedly found, checked (by experiment), stopped believing, and then re-checked (by more experiments) the obvious and yet completely unknown fact that you don't have to pre-boil lasagne noodles before making a lasagne in the oven! Here's my dumb recipe, which sure ain't rocket science:

Fill an oven-proof pan with various layers. For this one, I did a bottom layer of chopped onions and carrots, olive oil and a tiny bit of crushed tomatoes, then a layer of raw, rigid noodles, then a layer of crushed tomato with some cheese, then noodles, then an enormous layer of raw baby spinach with some hard cheese, then noodles, then a layer of tomato and cheese, then a layer of noodles, and then a top layer of tomato, mozzarella, and hard cheese. It was mounded up in the pan like this:

After one hour in a 400 F (200 C) oven, it looked like this:

All noodles cooked. Adjustments for next time: Put more cheese in the layers; add garlic to the bottom layer; salt and pepper each layer. Remember: Pre-boiling is for suckers. And no, I didn't use the "pre-boiled" or "oven-ready" noodles either (those are fine though, I hate to admit).

macaroni and cheese

I took PMC's statement that it was impossible to make macaroni and cheese without pre-boiling the noodles as a challenge, and produced the following. I love it, but it won't satisfy those who identify the dish with creaminess. Cheesiness, more like it!

Put 8 oz macaroni in a lot of hot tap water for 30 min while the oven pre-heats to 400 F (200 C). Cut cubes of swiss and cheddar cheese until you have two or three cups. Drain the macaroni and mix with the cubes of cheese. Butter a cast-iron pan with as much butter as you can stand to use, pour in the macaroni and cheese, fill with milk until more-than-covered, and generously salt and pepper. Bake for 45 min.

Serves four. Double the recipe, make it in a big oven dish, and serve eight.

lasagne

I was very pleased to discover this month that lasange does not require pre-cooking of the noodles (which, if you count water-boiling time, almost doubles the preparation time). I just soaked the lasagne noodles in tap water while I heated up some pasta sauce (which I made earlier in the week by frying onions and cut-up sausage in a whole lot of butter and then simmering with a large can of crushed tomatoes and a lot of salt). I layered the noodles and sauce with soft and hard cheese and raw spinach. I reserved a lot of cheese for the top. I put it in a 350 F oven for an hour, let stand for 20 min, and then ate it! Warning: A big pan requires a double order of sauce.

It is clear that if you are in a real hurry, you could just layer unsoaked, uncooked noodles with raw spinach, unheated crushed tomatoes, cheese, salt, and pepper, and cook it for a bit longer and it would work just fine; I have yet to try this, though.

It is also clear that it will be possible to make macaroni and cheese with no pre-oven preparation: That's tonight's experiment!