Homemade cheesy mac

Another modified recipe from Martha Stewart - Macaroni and Cheese.

All of the ingredients set out mise en place.


After the pasta was boiled and drained, I started working on the cheese sauce. First we cooked some onions in butter. FI was a little unsure about including onions in a mac and cheese, but they added so much flavor to the dish, that he became a big fan.


Next we added the milk and flour and the spices (salt, pepper, cayenne) to make the bechamel sauce. I also threw in a pinch of nutmeg because I've always read in other recipes to add some to cheese sauces.


Then I stirred in the shredded cheddar cheese. Buying packages of shredded cheese made the recipe a lot easier. After the cheese was melted, we poured in the pasta. Notice we didn't use elbow macaroni, but the penne with the tubes and ridges collected the mac and cheese just fine. Martha's recipe also called for ham to be chopped up and stirred in, but we figured this was going to be rich enough and didn't need extra salt or calories.


Then we poured everything into a baking dish and sprinkled bread crumbs over the top. Again, buying pre-made bread crumbs made this a lot easier. We also didn't bother sprinkling more cheese on top as we already had a lot of cheese in the sauce.


The finished product! It was delicious! Since we had cut out the ham and didn't put so much cheese, it wasn't super salty at all. But the onions, cayenne, and nutmeg all added some nice flavor nuances to the dish.


We ate our mac and cheese with stir-fried broccoli we made as well. There was plenty left and I got to eat it for the next two days' lunches. I also finished off a serving after coming home late from a night out with work friends. Yummy greasy cheesy food is the best after a night of drinking!

Creating our own spaghetti sauce

We had a lot of vegetables left over from a few cooking adventures and were trying to figure out what we should make for dinner. FI was in the mood for Italian, so we set out to create a spaghetti sauce.

I had a ton of carrots left over from making carrot cupcakes, so those got peeled, cut up, and put on the stove to cook.


We also cleaned up some broccoli and chopped them up to add to the pot.


Then we sauteed some chopped up onions.


And added ground turkey to brown.


Then the carrots and broccoli (drained) were added to the turkey and onion and a can of tomatoes was tossed in as well. As the sauce simmered, we added some salt and pepper to taste and some oregano.


Our own homemade spaghetti sauce, ready to eat!


This was a super easy dish to throw together. Since we put it all together ourselves, we could control how much salt and oil were added to make the sauce. Plus have fresh veggies cooked as part of the sauce made it really healthy too.

Slurping up noodles...

At the end of last year, FI and I headed out for date night at Ippudo, a delicious ramen restaurant in the East Village. This was one of the five that Chef Morimoto had rated and we wanted to try out all five of them. This was our 3rd one (after Momofuku and Rai Rai Ken).

There was a pretty long wait for a table, so we hung out at the bar. We got there right at 8pm at the end of happy hour. The bartender was nice and still gave us the happy hour priced beers. "You're my last two!" he told us.

The bar is decorated with packs of dried ramen!


The backdrop of the bar are decorative ramen bowls!


We decided on a fried chicken appetizer. There were 2 sauces, one sweet & sour and the other kind of spicy. I alternated the sauces and that was a good way to mix the flavors. The chicken was nice and crispy but super moist inside and not greasy at all. The lemon juice was a nice acidic touch to the chicken as well.


Then we split 2 kinds of ramen soup. One was the original flavor with a white broth. This noodle soup was delicious. It wasn't super salty but still really flavorful. The noodles were chewy yet soft. The weather was super cold so it was nice to eat a hot bowl of noodles. I tried to get a bite of pork, noodle, and soup in every spoonful.


The other kind of ramen we had was a more salty broth with the pork with a crispy skin. This was delicious as well.

Halfway through our bowls of soup, we switched so we could taste both ramens. We both ended up liking the original better. And as we've learned from other eating establishments (Beard Papa and Pinkberry), the original is always the best.