by Jessie
on February 9, 2015
I’m a little bit obsessed with this mac and cheese. I mean, what does it NOT have? There’s pasta (!) and roasted butternut squash (!!) and GOAT CHEESE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it is SO insanely rich and creamy that you’d never guess it’s made with 1% milk and missing the “traditional” cheddar overload that so often goes into cheese sauces. (Not that cheddar overload is a bad thing. Obvi). But this mac and cheese is incredibly simple and needs only a handful of ingredients to take it over the top.
I’ve also been really impressed with how well this mac and cheese reheats. Some cheese sauces taste great fresh, but pop ‘em in the microwave for meal #2 and suddenly they become a greasy, separated mess. I find with my mac and cheese recipes that adequately thickened milk and a robust enough roux (combined with loaddddds of cheese) generally counteracts that problem just fine. I was a little nervous with this one, though, because – since the butternut squash adds so much thickness and creaminess to the sauce – there really wasn’t all that much milk or cheese in it, and I wasn’t sure how the squash would hold up. Fortunately, even as I polish off the final bites four days later, the sauce retains its richness and creaminess despite all the fridge time and microwave zapping I’ve thrown at it. [read more…]
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by Jessie
on January 29, 2015
I am a firm believer that there are few (if any) things more awesome than mac and cheese.
Except maybe mac and cheese with beer in it. Which, ummmmmm, gotcha covered. [read more…]
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by Jessie
on January 23, 2015
I realized today that the only recipes I’ve shared this year have pretttttty much been pasta, pizza, or things with hollandaise. Have I ruined your New Year’s diet resolution? I’m sorry. But not THAT sorry, because when you eat this roasted red pepper baked ziti you’ll totally forgive me and we’ll all be friends again. (Also, there’s no cream in this recipe! See? HEALTH CONSCIOUS, BAM).
This is a great make-ahead dish: I divided a whole batch into a few individual baking dishes and stored them all in the fridge so I could have baked ziti on demand this week. Grad school classes started again on Wednesday (umm, yuck) and I’ve been in something of an Amazon.com black shopping hole this week picking out new things to help me organize my kitchen and get my cooking life back on track. I can’t wait to show you guys all the fun things I’ve found to help spruce up our teeny tiny apartment kitchen on a broke-grad-student budget! (If you’re interested, you can follow along with #StrawberryKitchenReno on Instagram). Maybe next I’ll “renovate” my closet, since right now my closet is basically a pile of clothes on the floor. BUT BACK TO THE POINT: having ready-made, easy-to-heat up meals has been great this week with all the chaos. [read more…]
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by Jessie
on January 16, 2015
ALFREDOOOOOOO. Is there anything better than pasta that’s drowning in butter and cream and cheese and more cheese? I think not. Is there anything worse for that New Year’s Diet Resolution you’re pretending to keep? Probably also not. But hey, I’ve got you (and our TOTALLY REAL, no-I-have-NOT-been-binge-eating-this-pizza 2015 diet) covered.
I lightened up this creamy, cheese-y sauce by nixing the cream altogether and instead using a roux with skim milk. Chicken and spinach add some protein (and other probably-important nutrients, blah, blah) and some color to the mix, and finally we thin the sauce out a bit by recycling some of our nice, starchy pasta water. Creamy? Check. Something green? Check. Hearty and filling? Check. Ready in less time than it takes to accidentally-on-purpose watch JUST ONE MORE EPISODE of Revenge? YOU BETCHA. Lightened-up, still-creamy, even-has-spinach-so-it’s-basically-health-food, 30 minute pasta Alfredo. [read more…]
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by Jessie
on January 8, 2015
UGHHHHHH THIS PASTA. I can’t stop eating it.
I genuinely do love all the recipes I share here (otherwise I wouldn’t share them with you, duh). But every one in awhile, a real, true, HUMDINGER of a recipe comes along that makes me seriously question how I made it this long in life without it. Like this pizza. Or THIS pizza. Or this soup! Or this other soup! Or, more to the point, this One Pot Spicy Tomato Pasta. That you can totally make in about 30 minutes. Because OMG. [read more…]
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