Recipe: Southern Style Mac 'n' Cheese

We LOVE macaroni and cheese - and really, who doesn’t? The way we see it there are two styles of creamy, pasta-y goodness. There's the French style with a thick, mellow bechamel base and a mix of velvety cheeses and then there's the classic Southern style - bright and sharp, made with cheddar and traditional elbows. Generally we refuse to take sides, but the other night we were really looking for some down home cookin'. 

 

A few years ago we visited Nashville and, predictably, spent most of our time in "meat and 3" spots (in which mac 'n' cheese basically counts as a vegetable) where we had a bit of a culinary revelation. What really set apart their version of the dish was how deeply tangy it was, a result of finely grated onion and sour cream. To replicate it, we turned to one of our favorite Southern cookbooks, The Gift of Southern Cooking, bought some sharp cheddar from Beecher’s, macaroni from Eataly, and one of every dairy product Ronnybrook produces. To go with the mac we cooked up some Flying Pigs pork chops and put together a salad - to add some color and "reduce" our risk of heart attack.

Southern Style Mac 'n' Cheese

Adapted from The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

+ 8 oz. macaroni

+ 12 oz sharp cheddar (6 oz cubes, 6 oz grated)

+ 2 tbsp, plus 1 tsp flour

+ 2/3 cup sour cream

+ 2 eggs, lightly beaten

+ 1/3 cup grated onion

+ 1 1/2 cups half and half

+ 1 1/2 cups heavy cream

+ 1 ½ tsp salt

+ 1 ½ tsp dry mustard

+ ¼ tsp pepper

+ a pinch cayenne

+ ¼ tsp of freshly grated nutmeg

+ 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1. Cook the macaroni in large a pot until just tender (a minute or two before the box says). Drain well and transfer to a buttered 9 x 13 baking dish.

2. Mix in the cubed cheddar and preheat oven to 350.

3. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Add sour-cream and the eggs, whisk until well blended.

4. Whisk in onion, cream, half and half, and Worcestershire until blended.

5. Pour mix over the macaroni and sprinkle top with grated cheese.

6. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until the custard sets but still jiggles. Finish under broiler for a minute to brown the top. Let cool for ten minutes.

Serves 6 (with leftovers!)

Great Plates: Rush Creek Reserve Farmstead Cheese

This past Monday night we headed out to Crown Heights for an amazing meal created by Sweet Deliverance and the Underground Food Collective. A few years ago, Jake went to a couple life-changing dinners by the Wisconsin-based Underground Food Collective with his friend Cecily Upton, co-founder of FoodCorps. They were his first real exposure to that kind of local, community-oriented food culture and he was blown away! The food was amazing, the stories were beautiful, and the people were energetic and engaging. Needless to say, we were pretty pumped when we heard there'd be another.

After stepping into a simply decorated and incredibly warm space, with seating for around 75 and an open kitchen of busy chefs, we were handed a fantastic Concord Grape Rye Punch and small plates for house-cured charcuterie and pickles. We claimed a couple seats, caught up with some friends and sat down to a perfectly balanced and beautiful meal. The seemingly endless courses (7 to be exact) were made up of of lots of offal, goat, some black silky chicken, and lots of wonderful salads and slaws. The meal wound down with a rare soft raw-milk cheese from Uplands Cheese in Wisconsin. IT WAS INSANE. We couldn't help but buy a wheel, and we're trying very hard to save it for a special occasion. But we'll see about that...

Thank you, Underground Food and Sweet Deliverance, for an amazing, inspiring and delicious evening!

Field Trip: Rawson Brook Farm

Long before Jake was aware of concepts like “local food,” “small family farms” and “farm-to-fork.” he was eating Monterey Chevre. It could almost always be found in his family's fridge, both classic plain and garlic & chive varieties. When Jake recounts his journey to butcher and local food advocate, he remembers fondly influential visits to see Monterey Chevre made at family friend Susan Sellew's goat farm, Rawson Brook Farm. Jake, his brothers and Susan's cousin, their "other mother" Scottie Mills, would often stop by to watch the cheese making process and play with the kids - goat kids, that is! - and bring home a few tubs.

So, of course, we couldn't wait to write a field trip post about Rawson Brook Farm, Monterey Chevre, and Susan. We visited on a typical Berkshire autumn day- crisp air, sharp light, heavy gray clouds, exploding orange red and yellow foliage- aligning our arrival with the 5 o'clock milking shift. When we walked in to the milking room, which also houses the farm store, one of Susan's 6 employees, Craig, was starting to milk the farm's 40 goats. Her young nieces were running around, helping for the afternoon - a treat after finishing their homework.

As Susan said to us “One of the things about the Slow Food Movement is that (in my opinion) it doesn't speak at all to the life of the dairy farmer....or maybe any farmer who has to seek out a living, pay for health insurance and college. There is absolutely nothing slow about my life... it's 12-14 hrs a day, 7 days a week with not a whole lot of time for preparing food if you don't happen to have a homemaker in the mix...” The goats get milked twice a day, a process that takes about three hours. Every other day they make chevre with the collected pasteurized goats' milk, rennet, and any flavorings added for that batch. From 1000 pounds of milk, Susan can get about 150 pounds of cheese. 

Susan has been making her chevre for 28 years now, and while she says goats' milk cheese was a tough sell at first, Monterey Chevre has become a staple of the South County food scene. So much so, in fact, that Susan was featured in the New York Times last August, headlining for the historic local food culture in the Berkshires.  

While it's sold and served all over South County, Rawson Brook Farm chevre is difficult to get outside of the Berkshires- a result of Susan's (awesome) policy to never saying no to a local customer, which often wipes her out. But if you can get your hands on it, stock up (you can find it at Zabars or at the Park Slope Co-Op)! It goes great with bread or crackers, makes a wonderful cheese souffle, and is perfect for take-em-out-put-em-back-in potatoes. 

Recipe: Carbonara with Fettucine

Carbonara is the best meal because it's cheap, easy, and filling. It's one of those things we make when we don't feel like going shopping but want a nice home-cooked meal, which is- let's face it- often. The basic ingredients are eggs, cheese, bacon, and pasta, all things we always have laying around. We generally try to make our own pasta, but this night we were pressed for time so we ran over to Eataly (another place we're lucky to live by) for some fresh Fettuccine. We're not going to lie- fresh pasta makes it SO much better. But this dish is fantastic with boxed pasta too. 

Because the recipe is so simple, we had fun improvising with the ingredients. We had some bacon ends in the freezer (the not-so-pretty-but-cheaper-and-just-as-tasty part of bacon) so we chopped it up into nice chunks of lardon, which added great texture. We also wanted to use a local cheese, so we tried an aged cows milks cheese from Cato Corner Farm called Bloomsday. It was deliciously nutty and a lovely substitute for the traditional Italian cheese. If you're unsure, it's always a good idea to ask the cheese monger- they know what they're talkin' about, and more often than not they'll hand over a few samples!

All in all this meal took about 10 minutes, from start to finish. We'd say: 10 minutes well spent!  

Carbonara with Fettuccine

Adapted from Saveur.com

+ 4 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 

+ 4 oz. bacon ends - we got ours from Flying Pigs Farm at the Union Square Greenmarket
+ 2 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper, plus more
   to taste
+ 1 3⁄4 cups finely grated Parmesan, or similar - we used "Bloomsday" cheese from Cato Corner Farm
+ 1 egg plus 3 yolks - because they will be eaten raw-ish, it's best to get farm fresh eggs

+ salt, to taste
+ 1 lb fresh fettuccine

1. Boil water for the pasta while you prepare the rest of the recipe.
2. Cut the bacon ends up to whatever size you like. We like them on the thicker side- 1 inch strips and ¼ thick. Fry the bacon to your desired crispiness and in the last two minutes throw in 2 tsp of black pepper and a dash of red chili flakes. 

3. Remove the bacon from the pan, along with a little bit of fat, and put it in the dish you'll be serving the pasta in. (You can pour the remainder of the bacon fat into a small Pyrex container or old coffee tin and keep it in the fridge for the next time you need to fry something up.) 

4. In a separate bowl whisk one egg with the three egg yolks and stir in the grated cheese. Pour that mixture into the serving bowl with the bacon.
5. Cook the pasta, making sure to pay special attention to the directions on the package. (Fresh pasta only takes 3 minutes or so, while boxed pasta takes around 8 depending on the shape.) 
6. Drain the pasta when it's ready, reserving a little water. Mix the pasta into the serving bowl and toss with the rest of the ingredients. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Feel free to add a little of the reserved pasta water if you feel the sauce needs thinning out. 

Serves 4-ish.

Field Trip: Cuba Cheese

On our last trip to Western New York we decided to take an afternoon food tour. Silka grew up in an area that has active dairy scene- the two biggest claims to dairy fame being Cuba Cheese and Friendship Dairy- so one of our priorities was a stop at the famous Cuba Cheese Shoppe. 

While we've always thought of Wisconsin as the home of American cheese (not that gross "cheese stuff"- we're talking real Cheddar here), Cuba was actually the heart of the industry until the mid-twentieth century. Fun fact: from the late 1800’s till the mid-1900’s the price for the world's cheddar was established in a weekly meeting here. 

At the Cuba Cheese Shoppe we found a variety of wax-coated aged Cheddars plus a bunch of flavored cheeses and cheese spreads (not our style, but we get it). The store also features regional treats like salt-rising bread (our favorite thing ever), Amish canned vegetables and a ton of maple sugar treats. 

After many a taste test, we still love the classic cheese curds the most. A byproduct of making cheddar, the curds have a salty taste and chewy texture that is a perfect snack... one that almost never lasts us the car ride home.