Jalapeno Popper Mac & Cheese Stuffed Peppers

Hello once again, loyal readers!

So. This title. It's a doozy, isn't it? Well, before your question my sanity, let me explain.

In the past few months, I've really started to develop a love for spicy foods. Not super over-the-top why-God-why? spicy, but the the kind of spicy that just gives you a good kick as you eat it. As such, I've also come to love jalapeno poppers.

For those not in the know, a jalapeno popper is simply a hollowed out jalapeno stuffed with cream cheese. Often times the filling will contain chicken. Often times the entire thing will be wrapped in delicious, delicious bacon. Sometimes they're even deep-fried.

Yeah. They're tasty.

So I thought to myself: how could I add to that awesomeness? Well, I thought, they already have cheese inside, so what could go well with that? Simple: pasta! And spicy mac & cheese totally happens all the time down in the Caribbean, so there's all the precedent I needed.

But, the idea of trying to cram noodles into jalapenos (which are not exactly large) seemed questionable. So then I thought, what if I deconstructed the popper, mixed it into the macaroni, and then stuffed all of that into a different pepper? Hence this idea was born! Behold!!

WHAT I USED!!!
6 bell peppers, caps removed (and saved), inner cores and seeds removed
6 jalapenos, seeds similarly removed, and julienned (that's cut into strips)
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 package bacon, cooked and diced
4 tbs butter
4 tbs flour
1-2 cups milk
2 blocks cream cheese, cubed
2 cups (8oz) elbow macaroni
shredded cheddar cheese for topping the peppers

WHAT I DID!!!
First, cook your chicken. I did what I always do: a little olive oil, some salt and pepper, medium to medium high heat in my favorite skillet, cooked until all the pink is gone. It only takes a few minutes. Oh, and be sure to drain the chicken well when it cooks.

Next, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and jalapenos and saute until the veggies soften. Sprinkle the flour over the veggies and cook for two to three minutes to form a roux. Add enough milk to create a sauce. (I admit, I didn't measure this, but it was somewhere between one cup and two.) Once you have a base sauce, incorporate the two cream cheese blocks one at a time. Once it's all completely melted and formed into a cheesy saucy consistency, stir in the bacon and the chicken.

Meanwhile, boil your pasta to al dente, following the packages instructions. Once the noodles are done, drain them thoroughly and add them to the cheesy-bacony-chicken sauce.

Now, scoop the mixture into the hollowed-out peppers. You're going to have left over filling most likely. Arrange the peppers in an oven-safe dish so they will sit upright. Sprinkle the mixture with your shredded cheese, and replace the caps. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until the peppers have softened. Serve with the sides of your choice.

These came out quite well, I am very pleased to say. The mac & cheese filling had the perfect balance of heat from the jalapenos, savory saltiness from the meats, and sweet cheesiness from, well, the cheese. It tasted just like a jalapeno popper spliced with warm comforting mac & cheese, which was, after all, the entire point.

If I were to offer any criticism of the meal, it would be that the bell peppers seemed almost extraneous. The filling was definitely the star, which is good. But since the original idea was to add mac & cheese to a jalapeno popper, the bell peppers didn't seem to contribute much. Not that they weren't tasty, mind. They just didn't really add much to the dish.

I think next time I may go with my original idea of stuffing the mac & cheese inside the jalapeno. I may even deep-fry the suckers just for the hell of it! Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I'm willing to try it and see!

As always, thanks for reading. Comments, suggestions, thoughts, and especially new ideas are always welcome. Until next time, go forth and eat well!

Lasagna

Hey everyone,

Didn't get a chance to post anything last week, so I felt I'd make up for it with two posts for this one. So to start, I'm going to talk about the lasagna that I made over the weekend. It's my adaptation of a family recipe, so this time I'm going to lay out the whole process from start to finish, and y'all can tell me what you think.

THE INGREDIENTS!
tomato sauce (see recipe below)
1 lb lasagna noodles
1 16oz tub of ricotta cheese
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided (1 cup + 1 cup)
1 package mozzarella (in natural ball form), sliced
Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, to taste/cover
10oz frozen spinach, thawed, drained, squeezed (need to ditch as much water as you can)
1 egg
2 lbs ground meat, browned (I used mild Italian sausage, but beef works too)

This is actually pretty straightforward. Warm up the sauce in a pot or saucepan, then stir in the cooked meat. Meanwhile, combine the ricotta, the spinach, 1 cup of mozza, the egg and the Parmesan (1/2 to 1 cup approx) together in a separate bowl. Boil the pasta according to the box's instructions, then drain.

In the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan, spread a little of the sauce, then add your first layer of pasta, Follow this with a layer of the cheese mixture, then more noodles. Next comes a proper layer of the sauce, and throw some of that sliced mozzarella cheese on as well. Repeat the pattern until you're done, but try to end with sauce on top. Spread the remaining shredded mozza on top, along with more Parm. Bake in a 350 degree oven for an hour, or until the cheese is bubbly and slightly browned.

For the sauce:
1 yellow onion, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, finely chopped (a few spoonfuls of the pre-chopped stuff works fine)
a good splash of olive oil (maybe a quarter cup)
1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste (8oz I think)
white wine
balsamic vinegar to taste
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Italian seasoning blend to taste

In a medium bot or sauce pan, saute the onion and garlic in olive oil with a pinch of salt until the onion takes on a golden color. Add a good splash of wine to deglaze the pan (you're trying to get all the brown bits off the bottom to mix back in) then add the tomatoes in their crushed and paste forms.



Stir to combine, then add a splash of wine, balsamic vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce to taste, along with some black pepper and a generous pinch of Italian seasoning. Honestly, you just add the bits in until it tastes like how you want it too. No, really, it's just a matter of experimentation!

So have fun!

Mac and Cheese

Ok, first real post:

Tonight I made a baked macaroni and cheese casserole, following the Alton Brown recipe, found here. It's pretty simple and straightforward really, but you still need to be careful.

In the end though, it turned out pretty well:

Kinda yells, "Comfort food is here! Consume!" don't you think? Or maybe I'm the only one who carries on whole conversations with the food I'm preparing....

Let's back up a bit for a moment.

It's always a good idea to follow a recipe as written the first time through, just to get a feel for it. You need that baseline for comparison. Otherwise, if something goes better or worse than you thought, you won't know if it was something you did, or else something wrong with the initial procedure. I've made this a few times before, so I normally like to play with it a little. But I wanted to refresh my knowledge of the dish, so I decided to follow along a little more closely. Oh, except I doubled it, because I live with two other guys, and we're hungry, dammit!

It all starts with the initial ingredients:

That's the milk, noodles, eggs and shredded sharp cheddar in the back row, with the chopped onion up front and the mixture of flour, paprika, dry mustard and bay leaves in the small bowl in the middle.

OK, wait, so I lied a little: I didn't follow the recipe exactly as written. But I didn't add any bacon or anything this time so it still counts, right? (No, I have not taken leave of my senses in omitting the bacon; I'll do it next time, I promise.) I was short on dry mustard, so I upped the paprika and added some honey dijon from the fridge. I also like to sweat the onions with the butter before adding the dry goods. I think it works better.

Speaking of better, I think the recipe definitely needs more than just sharp cheddar. In the past, I've used a combination of cheeses, and I think it gave it a more complex, cheesy flavor. (I think I used some Gouda last time.) Now I just need to find the best combination and report back on it.

The only real mishap? I managed to scald the milk a little bit, which is a pain to clean up after. I had to let the pot soak, and my roommate scrubbed the hell out of it about three hours later. Other than that though, I think it all came together fairly well. Check out the "before" shot:

Something else to point out: I did not double the topping. I tried doing that once, and it really didn't brown very well. And GBD (Golden, Brown, and Delicious... it's a technical term, honest) is the goal. And I think I hit it pretty well: