Nermo

I know, I know! It’s all I’ve posted about lately, but I promise to stop talking about Mac and Cheese soon. SF Food Wars just uploaded these pics, among others, to their Flickr page, and I wanted to post them here for nostalgia, and for anyone else who wants to see them.

Here are the pics of Team ¢#€€$€ (because my mac is money) and “The Crusty Vermonter”.

I always knew my mac was money, but it was nice to get an affirming 2nd place medal at the SF Food Wars Competition last week!

Here is the recipe. You may want to scale it back.

The Crusty Vermonter

Makes approx. 800 bites (you had to be there)

• 5 pounds elbow pasta
• 2 sticks salted butter
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, plus more for pans
• 12 cups panko flakes
• 2-pound bag shredded Mexican cheese blend
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons black pepper
• 8 pinches (1/3 teaspoon?) red pepper flakes
• 3 quarts whole milk
• 1 quart heavy cream
• 4 pounds Velveta
• 3 pounds Flagship Cheddar
• 1 pound Beehive Seahive Cheddar
• 1 pound Beehive Promontory
• 1/2 pound asiago
• 1 pound fontina
• 1/4 cup dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons sriracha (more or less to taste)
• 3 pounds chorizo, cooked (recipe here)
• 2 pounds prosciutto, finely chopped
• 5 granny smith apples

1. Preheat oven to 400, and cook the pasta in salted water (the only salt used in this recipe, so don’t forget). Butter four 12×20-inch aluminum pans and grate cheese while pasta cooks. Drain the pasta, reserving 3 cups pasta water.
2. Working in 4 batches, combine 3 cups panko and 1/2 pound Mexican cheese blend in large ziptop bags, shaking to combine. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt 4 tablespoons salted butter and integrate one batch panko-cheese blend, melting to integrate. Remove from pan and set aside, rebagging when cool. Repeat with 3 remaining batches.
3. In a large pot over medium heat, melt the unsalted butter and add flour, red pepper flakes and black pepper, stirring constantly for 3 minutes.
4. Whisk in milk, bring the sauce to a boil, whisking constantly and simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Add cream, cheese, mustard, sriracha and pasta water, and turn off the burner. Stir until sauce is smooth.
6. Incorporate the cooked pasta and chorizo, and pour into the buttered pans.
7. Top each pan with 1/2 pound prosciutto and bake 10 minutes.
8. Spread panko mixture across the top and bake another 10 minutes.
9. Julienne apple over the top and serve with a side of spicy slaw or homemade pickles.

When I mentioned to my friend Christopher that I was putting chorizo in my mac and cheese, he mentioned that his father makes a mean chorizo and offered me the recipe.  I hadn’t considered making it myself, and although I didn’t follow his dad’s recipe to the letter, it was a great jumping-off point.  Here is the recipe I created:

Photo above by Tavallai

Chorizo Recipe

• 1 tablespoons white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon dried tarragon
• 1 tablespoon rendered bacon fat
• 1 pound of Jimmy Dean All-Natural Pork Sausage
• 1 tablespoon rubbed sage
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin (if your chili powder is light on cumin)
• 1/ teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper

1. Combine tarragon and vinegar and let sit out overnight.
2. Add vinegar and bacon fat to sausage and knead until uniformly loose.
3. Combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl and knead into the sausage until evenly distributed.
4. Refrigerated overnight in a zip-top bag.
5. Over a hot, dry skillet, snip off a bottom corner of the bag to create a 3/4-inch hole. Squeeze the chorizo onto the pan until the resulting sausage snake covers approximately half the pan.
6. Working with a wooden spoon, break apart and flatten the sausage, turning as needed, until the sausage has browned and separated into small pieces.
7. Remove to a bowl and repeat until all of the sausage is cooked.

This is kind of cool!  the SF Weekly Foodie Blog posted a feature on the SF Food Wars mac and cheese battle, and there is a whole paragraph about my mac! My only issue was that it was prosciutto and homemade chorizo, not bacon.  Bacon is soooooo 2009!

“The Crusty Vermonter,” submitted by the ¢#€€$€ team, was another standout. Sweet apples, sharp cheddar, and salty bacon mixed it up in a balance both hearty and subtle. It was served with little sides of pickles (unnecessary) and mild slaw (good for texture and crunch). This one got the People’s Choice Honorable Mention. A gasp rippled through the crowd after the chef’s big reveal: The cheese sauce was 40 percent Velveeta.

The SF Food Wars “Return of the Mac…Battle Royale w/ Cheese” was a great experience, and I came in a close second in votes. I daresay, that if the guy who won hadn’t brought so many friends (mine weren’t fast enough to get tickets) I think I may have won. 

Regardless, the gent from “SF Delicious Catering” who bested me owns a catering company and spent several years working in restaurant kitchens, so I feel pretty good about placing second behind him, especially when so many of the other 15 competitors were professional cooks, chefs and caterers as well, and I have never worked in a kitchen or had formal training.

All said and done, it feels like a Braveheart kind of victory.  I’m sure William Wallace would have defeated the Brits if their generals hadn’t brought so many of their troops, and hadn’t been able to cook in a commercial kitchen while the Scots had to make 50 pounds of mac and cheese on my tiny little apartment stove.

I know I said I would post the recipe, but it was really sunny yesterday and I have a lot of conversions to do in order to scale down the recipe to something reasonable in size, so I will try to get it up here soon.

Thanks to everyone at SF Food Wars and all who came to the event.   I had a blast! Also thanks to my gorgeous sous chef Tamar (pictured below) and to Irwin, who posted some great advice on how to win this battle.

If you follow the link at the top of the page, we were team #13 “¢#€€$€ (because my mac is money)” and my dish was called “The Crusty Vermonter”.

On Saturday , February 12, I am competing in SF Food Wars’

Mac and Cheese “Return of the Mac…Battle Royale w/ Cheese

There are only 16 competitors and only 200 hundred tickets, and my mac and cheese is a beast! Plus it is a fund-raiser for the SF Food Bank.

Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Thursday, Jan. 20) at 12PM noon, AND WILL LIKELY SELL OUT AT 12:05.

Bonus incentive: I smuggled some great, hard to find bourbon from KY last week and will have a “friends and family” bottle stashed behind my table.

I would love to see you there!

In an attempt to attain sympathy leftovers, I went to McDonald’s and ordered a McRib meal on Thanksgiving.  I tried eating that infamous, ephemeral sandwich and it was absolutely horrid, but the fries were great as always.

The vanilla shake is exceptional with a Thanksgiving upgrade: a 2-ounce shot of Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit.

Alright, I am whiter than white, but my earliest cooking lessons were from a Korean gal who taught me to make amazing dumplings, which have since evolved into my own potsticker recipe and which led to my fascination with Asian cooking, creating new recipes from Far East standards, getting a federal grant to study Japanese food with a nutritional anthropologist, throwing ridiculous Lunar New Year dinner parties, and so on.

A friend who was at that last dinner party recently commented on my penchant for Asian cuisine and I realized that I have been making mostly American comfort food for at least the last year, as evidenced by the roasted chicken,  meatballs, brisket, Brussels sprouts and mac & cheese on this site of late.

So, it’s time to get back to where I’ve never been. I’m scouring cookbooks for Asian classics to adapt and I am thinking that my next will be Japanese-style croquettes that came to mind while reading a short story by Haruki Murakami last night, and perhaps while I am back east for the holidays, I can put on a whole (or partial) kaiseki ryōri for family and friends in Vermont.

What else should I make?

I love Brussels sprouts, but I was getting a little bored with the usual preparations.  Here’s the alternative.

Brussels Sprouts

1/2 pound bacon

1 pound brussels sprouts

2 large shallots

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons maple syrup

salt and pepper

1 pomegranate (optional)

1. In a large saute pan, cook the bacon until crispy, remove to a cutting board (don’t drain) and dice.
2. Pour off the bacon fat and wipe out the pan with a paper towel, but don’t wash.
3. Cut off the stem end of the brussels sprouts and place any loose leaves into a large mixing bowl.
4. Slice the brussels sprouts thin with a knife or with mandolin, peel shallots and slice into the thinnest rings possible and add both to the bowl.
5. Drizzle olive oil and maple syrup into the bowl and toss everything to coat evenly.
6. Return pan to  high heat until almost smoking.
7. Working in small batches, fry sprouts, seasoning with salt and pepper.
8. Plate sprouts in a mound and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.

I realize my mac and cheese recipe is a beast, so I am fine tuning it for people who don’t want a 30-pound batch (fools). This one (barely) fits in a standard 8×8 Pyrex baking dish. With the proper cheddar, it is probably the best mac and cheese in the entire world.

Macaroni and Cheese

3/4 pound elbow pasta
4 tablespoons unsalted butter plus more for the dish
1.5 cup panko flakes
1 pound extra sharp cheddar
4 ounces Monterrey Jack
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1.5 cups whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 rounded teaspoon dijon mustard
1 teaspoon sriracha (or other hot sauce)
Optional: 1/2 cup cooked mushrooms, chorizo, or cubed ham; a handfull of fried shallots or crumbled bacon.

• Note 1: the only salt used is in the pasta water, so season the water before adding noodles.
• Note 2: In place of a baking dish, you can use several ramekins for individual portions. These can also be frozen before baking.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees, butter a square Pyrex baking dish and grate cheese while pasta cooks.
2. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/4 cup pasta water.
3. In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter and integrate the panko and one cup of cheese. Remove from pan and set aside.
4. Return the pan to the stove and melt the remaining butter.
5. Add flour and pepper and stir constantly over medium heat for three minutes.
6. Whisk in milk, bring the sauce to a boil, whisking constantly and simmer for 3-5 minutes to thicken.
7. Add cream, cheese, mustard, sriracha and pasta water, and turn off the burner. Stir until sauce is smooth.
8. Incorporate the cooked pasta and pour into the buttered baking dish.
9. Spread panko mixture across the top and bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown on top and bubbly.