culinary experiments and explorations

Back in the latter part of last year, I found myself craving macaroni and cheese -- or at least, something kind of like macaroni and cheese. I tinkered around some with various recipes I'd found out on the web, took what I wanted from them, and ended up producing ( Four-Cheese Cheddarwurst Noodles. )

Now, last night I didn't quite have all the ingredients I needed, but I did have most of them. (My fridge gather strange and arcane ingredients, and often seems to lack in the basics. *grin* ) I ended up adding half a pound of diced-up breakfast sausage to the onion to saute, substituted 6 ounces of cream cheese for the cottage cheese, used jalapeno cheddar cheese instead of pepperjack, and so forth. Overall, though it ended up quite tasty all the same. Not quite the same flavor, but definitely worth trying out for variation.

For the last month and a half -- call it work busy-ness, call it Thanksgiving burnout, call it flu season -- I've been singularly unmotivated to try out or post new recipes. Thankfully, I think that period of culinary blah has finally begun to move on.

So, I'll begin anew with ( Emeril's Spicy Meatloaf )

Overall, I was very favorably impressed by this recipe. The meatloaf is solid and flavorful, and the varied hot spices and veggies in it were enough to make my brow break out in sweat. Incredibly tasty, and with quite a few reasonably-sized servings -- I'll definitely be making this again. Overall prep time was about 30 - 45 minutes, and then the additional cook time of nearly an hour, means one needs a decent span of time to get everything together... but it's certainly worth it, in my opinion.

Last night after a mediocre day, I was in the mood for comfort food. I already had some tortilla chips, but was lacking salsa to go with it. Not wanting to spend more money at the grocery when I had plenty of ingredients here, I chose to make a recipe from my Emeril's Potluck cookbook (page 6) -- slightly modified, for a little extra zing.

( Simply Salsa )

This turned out pleasantly tasty, though perhaps not quite as immediately hot on the palate as I might have preferred. It had a nice afterburn on the tongue, but it required a lot of addition of various ground peppers to reach it. I'll have to tinker with the recipe (and remember to drain the canned whole tomatoes next time) and see whether it can be improved.

In wandering the grocery store recently in search of recipe ingredients, I came across the aisle with all the packets of premade spice mixes. You know -- instant beef stroganoff, chili mix, and (naturally) sloppy joe mix. I remembered how much I'd like the sloppy joes my mom made when I was a kid -- I haven't had any in years, I think -- and decided then and there to try and research a recipe for them.

It turns out there are more than just a few out there. But none of this "buy a spice packet" stuff for me. And nothing that starts out with the ingredient "2 cups ketchup". *shudder* No, I was determined to make it pretty much from scratch as much as I could. All things considered, it turned out pretty well, and surprisingly tasty.

( Sloppy Joes (with Picture) )

Tasty, messy, and sweet with just a touch of heat. Great comfort food, and easy to prepare.

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.

This morning, I was being tremendously lazy abed, as I too often am on Sundays. Then out of nowhere I started thinking of random food. (Seriously, this happens more often than you might think. My stomach has an imagination, I suspect.)

So I randomly thought: falafel. Which, to the best of my knowledge, I've never had -- all that I know of it is that it's a Middle Eastern dish referenced in a throwaway line in Batman Begins. ("C'mon, Flass, I have kids to feed!" "What, they don't like falafel?")

I started doing research. There's quite a few various recipes out there, and many of them have comments on them like "when I started frying it in the oil it wouldn't stick together!" Nonetheless I was not disheartened, and so went over to the grocery store to pick up some of the basics for the various falafel recipes I'd found.

The result, after a few cooking missteps, was the surprisingly tasty ( Falafel in Pita Bread. )

To my surprise, and with only a few stumbles (I didn't have enough flour in my batter the first time, so my first four test balls disintegrated in the hot oil), I discovered that falafel is really easy to make and astonishingly tasty. I'm definitely going to be making this again in the future.

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.

I originally stumbled across this in my search for a good lasagna recipe (which I'll eventually post as well), but the sauce is good enough that it serves nicely with pasta or cheesy garlic bread.

( Meaty Red Sauce. )

I'll update this post with pictures the next time I make the recipe.

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.