Teen Approved Mac and Cheese

It’s been 90 degrees by midmorning these last couple of days in New York—time for light and fresh and seasonal, right? Unless you have kids and, like me, (yes, even me) have pandered to their culinary whims most of their lives. So, you serve mac and cheese all year round. Yesterday my daughter, Lily, graduated from 8th grade. (My baby!) At a post-ceremony potluck we attended, there were two kinds of mac and cheese. Despite the high heat and the high, grown-up heels on the gang of girls my daughter rolls with, the pasta disappeared quicker than my platter of grilled vegetables or anything else for that matter. And why not? Mac and cheese is a universal favorite—the ultimate in comfort food—and done right it can be a healthy—well at least wholesome—dish.

In an attempt to once and for all quash my daughter’s preference for “normal” mac and cheese, (read: neon orange, comes out of a box, with processed cheese food glop that get squeezed out of a foil packet, enough sodium to rival the Dead Sea, and enough chemicals to start a home chemistry set. The kind that if you don’t eat it immediately, while it is hot, will turn into a solid mass suitable only for pothole repair), I set out, once again, to make the classic casserole from real ingredients and hope that it will convert her. I remember to keep it simple because past attempts with fancier cheeses, herb-y flavor profiles or crumbled pancetta have only elicited the dreaded “eeeewwwww!” response.

I, of course, cannot leave a simple ingredient list alone. Even this elegant and kid-friendly one adapted from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style.  Milk, butter, flour, breadcrumbs, cheese have to be tweeked to include the “O” word as much as possible. The last thing we need in this house is more hormones! So, use organic, hormone-free, anti-biotic free whenever possible…even if you aren’t afraid of teen PMS like my husband and I are. (You will be.) I don’t go so far as to use whole wheat pasta because I know that will not fly, but if you have younger, still malleable children, go for it! Expand their palates while they still think you are a God!

The gruyere was questionable. It was a big jump from processed cheese product to the tangy delicate flavor of this swiss cheese combined with the sharpness of cheddar. And I knew Lily would probably pick off the tomatoes, but I had to add them, even if just for the color and to indulge a vague hope she might eat them if they were dappled with buttery breadcrumbs. No such luck…with the tomatoes, that is.


But I was rewarded with an unsolicited “this is actually amazing” first-bite comment from my daughter…and a big cheesy smile. I live for those.

Lily’s Mac and Cheese
adapted from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Family Style.

Serves 4 as a meal, 6-8 as a side dish

Kosher salt
Vegatable oil
1 lb elbow macaroni or other small pasta (shells, cavatappi, etc.)
1 quart 2% milk (you can use whole, but believe me it was rich enough without it)
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (divided in two portions of 1 of 6 oz, 1 of 2 oz.)
1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
12 oz (4 cups) Gruyere cheese, grated
8 oz (2 cups) extra sharp Cheddar, grated
1/2 tsp. fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
4 small tomatoes, sliced thinly
1 1/2 cup fresh white (I like Vermont Bread Co. Organic White) bread crumbs (4 or so slices, crusts removed)

Note: For the mini casserole pictured above, that I made as a “test” run for Lily, I halved this recipe.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Drizzle oil into a large pot of boiling, salted water. Add the macaroni and cook according to the directions on the package, 6-8 minutes. Drain well.

Meanwhile, heat the milk in a saucepan, but don’t boil it. Melt 6 oz butter in a large pot, then add the flour. Cook this “roux” over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring with a whisk. Then, while whisking, add the hot milk and cook this for a minute or tow more, until thickened and smooth. (FYI…this is the basis for any “white” creamy sauce…a “Beschamel”). Take the pot off heat, add the grated cheeses, 1 tablespoon salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add the cooked macaroni and stir well. Taste to make sure it’s seasoned to your liking. This is the time to tweek it. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Arrange sliced tomatoes on top of the pasta. Melt the remaining butter (2 oz) in a small pan and combine them with the bread crumbs. Sprinkle these on top of the tomatoes. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the sauce is bubbly and the breadcrumbs are browned on top.

To make ahead, put the mac and cheese in the baking dish, cover, and refrigerate until ready to bake. Put the tomatoes and bread crumbs on top just before baking and then bake for 40 – 50 minutes.

summer seafood chowder

I don’t care if it’s going to be 80 degrees by noon, I’m making soup. That was my attitude Sunday morning, when I asked myself what I was going to make for lunch for my in-laws who would be arriving hungry in a few hours. Soup is the perfect food. Warm, satisfying, comforting, nutrition-packed. Elegant and refined, or rough and rustic—either way, making soup is a chance to develop beautiful layers of flavor and play with texture and color. Soup is a way to get kids to eat vegetables that they might not touch if they were just laying naked on a plate. The vegetables I mean, not the kids.

Soup Bonus #1: The long simmering soup would permeate the house with the kind of aromatic air freshener I wish I could bottle and sell (SoupBreeze?) because it goes a long way toward masking the odor of two dogs, two cats and sweaty mudroom sneakers, which hits you in the face the moment you walk into my kitchen through the back door. And everyone uses the back door.

Bonus #2: You can use up things languishing in the crisper drawer that still have a lot to offer a soup but have lost the first blush of youth. (Kind of like a second marriage.) Droopy celery, ashy carrots and tired corn on the cob are really grateful to be given a chance to be soup. They give their all!

In the tradition of “garde manger,” (the station in a restaurant that was meant to “guard the food” or more accurately “guard the waste” by turning leftovers or extra product into something “special” for the next day’s menu before it went bad), soup making is a great way to get value from what might otherwise end up in the trash. That’s not to say you can’t make soup from fresh and vibrant ingredients!  But making a weekly stock or soup can get you thinking about not throwing out those leek tops, or that half onion you didn’t use in another recipe or mushroom stems or bits of meat and bone you may have trimmed away. You can toss things like that in a zipper bag, keep them in the freezer to use for making your own stock, or for building a great soup like this one to wow visiting guests and disguise pet odor all in one fell swoop!

This soup was inspired by nearly a quart of quartered scallops I had in the freezer leftover from a dinner party a month back, (ok, so I over bought, but I can’t help this, it’s genetic), and another half quart container of chopped clams I always have around for a linguine with white clam sauce emergency jones which can happen at any time.

In deference to the 80 degree weather and the French Toast Grilled Cheese I was concocting in my head to go along with the soup, I decided to make the base of the soup a light, tomato-y Manhattan broth instead of the creamy, buttery New England version. Not one of my cookbooks published in the last 10 years had a recipe for good ol’ Manhattan Clam Chowder, so I had to pull out the well-worn 1989 edition of The New Basics to find Julie Rosso’s and Sheila Lukin’s “I’ll Take Manhattan Chowder” recipe. Twenty-one years later, it’s still a kickin’ soup, even when using frozen instead of fresh clams ( I buy these at Whole Foods). I used homemade chicken stock that I keep frozen, but by all means, used boxed broth…just make me happy and get the organic low or no sodium kind. I also added the kernels from two ears of corn and the scallops which gave the broth an extra surprise of sweetness that was really, really good. I had no green peppers so I used jarred red roasted peppers but only threw them in during the last 10 minutes of simmering.

I’ll Take Manhattan Chowder
adapted from The New Basics, Russo & Lukins

6 slices bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces*
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup small dice onions
1/2 cup small dice celery
1/2 cup small dice green peppers or jarred roasted red peppers
3/4 cup small dice carrots
3/4 cup sliced leeks (light green or white part)
2 cups chopped frozen clams and their liquid
or 24 fresh cherrystone clams shucked and reserved in their liquid
6 large scallops, quartered
1 large can plum tomatoes (32 oz), crushed
4 cups organic chicken stock
2-3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
3 sprigs of fresh thyme or 3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste, chopped parsely (optional as garnish)

1. In a large soup pot, over a low-medium flame cook the bacon so it gives up some of it’s fat but doesn’t brown. About 5 minutes.
2. Add the  butter. When it has melted, add the onions, celery, green pepper, carrots and leeks. Sweat these over a low hear until tender, about 10 minutes. Do not brown.
3. Drain the clams and scallops, reserving the liquid. Chop to desired size. Set aside.
4. Add the reserved clam and scallop liquid, plum tomatoes, chicken stock and ptotatoes to the pot. Cover and simmer 20 minutes until potatoes are cooked through.
5. Add the thyme, salt and pepper and fresh corn. Simmer gently, uncovered for 10 minutes. Then, add seafood and simmer for additional 2-3 minutes until clams and scallops are tender but not rubbery. Serve immediately with chopped parsley garnish (optional).

* A culinary school habit: look down the list of items needed for a recipe and haul them all out before you even start cooking anything. Then get everything ready. Chop your vegetables, measure out the spices and set them out, so they are ready to be added at the precise time they are needed, NOT in a panic as the other ingredients are burning. I bought a dozen or so little inexpensive Pyrex bowls at the supermarket just for this reason. Getting everything ready before you start cooking is called “mise en place.” This simple rule of putting ingredients in place makes executing a recipe a lot less stressful, will save you from any unexpected turns of event in the recipe (oops, I’m supposed to marinate this for a week and my guests will be here in an hour) and make you feel like a cooking show pro (minus the prep staff).

grilled chicken for breakfast

By 7 am this morning I was on the patio grilling the chicken I’d marinated overnight. You see, there are no Fruit Loops in my pantry. Or CoCo Puffs. Or even Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies or Grape Nuts. No Pop Tarts. In my freezer there are no toaster waffles, frozen cinnamon buns or pre-made-egg-product-and-mystery-meat sandwiches. Given this dearth of conventional and much-desired-by-most-kids breakfast fare, I face the daily mission impossible of getting my 14-year-old daughter, Lily, to eat something substantive for breakfast. And it must be accomplished in the four minutes between her mega-grooming for another day on the battlefield that is 8th grade, including shower, blow-dry, flat iron, eyeliner, mascara, lip gloss, and countless outfits that have to be tried on, but not including any lifting of discarded items off the bedroom floor, and her dash for the bus that picks her up at the end of the culde-sac. So, I’m pressed for time. Still, I stop and smell the pop-up roses in my yard as the chicken is charring.

My Breakfast of Champions has to include these components: 1. some kind of protein 2. something live that grows from the ground and hasn’t been processed into a form unrecognizable by the body. 3. A glass of water. 4. A multiple vitamin.

The protein because she leaves the house at 7:20 and she hasn’t had a mid-morning snack time in school since 3rd grade. So, whatever she eats before she leaves the house has to sustain her focus and energy until her 11:20 lunch slot. That’s 4 hours. If you add the previous 8 hours of sleep, and maybe a couple of hours before that since her dinner the night before, we are talking about fifteen hours or so without any food or water if I don’t get her to eat something in the morning. Fifteen hours! So, even though she has said every single morning since she could talk, “I’m not hungry” first thing in the morning, I find a way to make it happen. I know Lily will need the slowest burning fuel possible because she will be trying to absorb information, solve problems, (i.e., algebra and how to get that geeky guy from the 7th grade to stop texting her between classes), sit still in her seat, keep her jeans and tank top adjusted so that she remains in compliance with the school dress code at all times and navigate the deep and dangerous crevasses between the social cliques.

I want her to eat something that grows live from the ground because any fruit, vegetable or whole grain is going to give her the slow-burning carbohydrate or energy component she needs WITHOUT the sugar rush and crash by 9 am that would follow any of the typical breakfast fare mentioned above that most American kids eat.

I will say it here and say it loud. Most store-bought cereal is not real food. It’s tasty. It’s sweet. It’s familiar. It has friendly cartoon characters, bucolic farm scenes and heroic sports figures associated with it. But, it’s basically candy. Even the “healthy” ones are high in sugars, processed grains, sometimes enriched with synthetic vitamins to make up for the total lack of nutrition, and are a poor choice to start the day. They are dessert, at best, and who wants it for that? If I’m going to eat empty calories that are really fattening, I’m not wasting it on cereal. And I’m not giving it to my baby girl!

That’s why I give Lily chicken. And brown rice. For breakfast. Sometimes her favorite mashed sweet potatoes substitute for the rice. I keep a ready quantity of these items (along with steamed veggies and salad greens) in the fridge so that at any time of the day, including breakfast, a satisfying, balanced, nutritious meal or salad can be thrown together by anyone (without my help, thank you very much!) I change up the marinade on the chicken depending on my mood, but nothing fancy, as you’ll see. Salt, pepper, garlic, some acid of some sort, some good olive oil and I grill them the way my family likes them: charred. I heat slices of the chicken up in a nonstick pan with a little butter or olive oil, less than a minute, then the same with the rice… and voila…the perfect brain food to send a kid off to school with.

It hasn’t always been easy to get my kids to eat well. They have had their share of tantrums in the cereal isle over the years. Off at college, or out at sleepovers I don’t want to think about what they are eating. My daughter has declared Velveeta as one of her favorite foods. (Hence the multiple vitamin to make up for the many meals she has with little or no nutritional value.) Yet, this morning as she ate the buttery, toothsome rice and freshly grilled chicken (in the car, at the bus stop, while texting…please, I know!) she made a little “mmm” sound. I heard it. It was very faint. If I gave her a choice, at 14, between that plate and a brimming bowl of fruity neon o’s saturated with sugar floating in milk that’s turning purple because of the dye in them, I don’t know if she would choose the dinner-for-breakfast option. I can only hope. But then…that’s why I don’t give her a choice.

Lemony Herby Grilled Chicken

6 boneless chicken breasts (anti-biotic and hormone free whenever possible!)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup white wine
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar/white wine vinegar/apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice or juice of one small lemon
1 teaspoon of lemon zest
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
1 tablespoon dried tarragon (or fresh, chopped)
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves (or fresh, chopped)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (or fresh, chopped)
2 teaspoons Kosher salt (or 1 teaspoon table salt)
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

It depends on the size of the chicken breasts, but I usually opt to butterfly them. It makes for more even cooking, makes smaller more manageable portions, and more of them. To butterfly without slicing your hand open: lay the breast flat on your cutting board and flatten one palm over the top of the breast. With your other hand, run your sharpest knife through the middle or the breast, horizontally, starting at the thickest point of the breast (picture cutting a kaiser roll or a bagel in half). Keep the fingers of your stabilizing hand straight and out of the way! Place the breast pieces in a large zipper bag or other container that can be stored airtight in the fridge.

Mix all the other ingredients, except the oil, together in a small bowl. Let it sit for a few minutes to infuse the liquids with the flavor of the herbs and garlic. Slowly incorporate the oil into the wine/vinegar/lemon mixture with a small whisk or fork. Pour the marinade over the chicken breasts and mix to coat them thoroughly. If in a zip bag, remove as much of the air as possible and zip shut. Refrigerate, but bring to room temp if you have time before grilling.  I like to marinate for a minimum of 30 minutes, but I’ve left them marinating for up to 24 hours if I can’t get to them. If I plan to leave them that long in the marinade I might hold off on the salt until the last minute to keep the chicken from releasing too much moisture while marinating.

Variations:
You can play with any combination of herbs that you like or have on hand. Switch up dried herbs with fresh, just remember dried herbs will have more concentrated flavor so use more than the indicated amounts if you are using fresh herbs…and chop or crush the fresh herbs in a mortar to release their flavor. Play with types of acid: vinegars, citrus juices, wine. Play with types of pepper from black to red hot. For a tex mex variation add cumin, chili powder, onion powder or chopped onions in the marinade. For a Moroccan feel use Ras Al Hanout or Harrissa.  If you want it to get more breakfasty you could use cinnamon, cloves, allspice, apple juice, apple cider vinegar and a little honey in the marinade and go for an “apple pie” grilled chicken. I could go on, but will stop here. Blog posts are not supposed to take all day!

Warning: Once a guest who was so enthusiastic about the chicken marinade I was preparing in front of him, dipped his finger in to taste it AFTER I had mixed it in with the raw chicken. I yelped at him and told him to spit it out and wash out his mouth and he, manly man that he was, scoffed. He was duly down for the count with the runs and pukes within twelve hours and it lasted for the following 48. Avoid bacterial contamination by keeping your hands clean of raw meats and their juices, and properly cleaning and separating utensils, cutting boards, etc. exposed to raw meats. Elderly folks and young kids are especially at risk for serious consequences with this kind of contamination. Above all…do not taste the marinade after it is mixed in with the raw chicken. Use clean utensils and a clean plate to gather the cooked chicken from the grill.

Grill Skill: I always start grilling by wiping down the grate with a paper towel drenched with some vegetable/canola oil. It cleans any black residue off the grate and serves to grease it a bit to keep your items from sticking. Heat your grill to super hot before placing the chicken on. This way you’ll get a good sear and the meat is less likely to stick. If you’ve butterflied these breasts they will cook fast. You only need a few minutes on each side before they become firm and done. Use a metal spatula to turn the chicken, gently sliding under the meat to loosen it from the grill. Skewering it with fork to flip it will puncture the meat and you lose juices…using tongs can tear the meat and do the same.

Check for doneness: I use the “poke” test for meats on the grill or when pan frying, something I learned in culinary school. Make a loose fist with your left hand. With your right index finger, poke the fleshy part of the fist directly to the left of the base of the thumb. If your fist is loose, this muscle is soft. This is what meat on the grill feels like when it is rare. Now, try tightening up the fist a bit…and poke. This is how meat feels at “medium”. Tighten the fist all the way and this is the feel of meat when it is cooked through. With chicken you are going for this feel. With beef or other meats that your prefer rare to medium, you can go for a softer feel to indicate it’s done.