The best macaroni and cheese

Before I start writing up this recipe, I'd just like to take a moment to tell you a bit about it. This is a macaroni and cheese recipe, obviously. That doesn't really convey its glory though. Let's put it this way instead: the recipe you're about to read contains 4 1/2 cups of cheese, has white pasta sauce poured over it, and has cornflakes crunched on top. You heard me, cornflakes.

I'm assuming that at this point you're sufficiently tantalized by the thought of this food that you would agree to give me, at minimum, a controlling ownership stake in your first two or three children to be able to taste it. Instead of that, however, you're about to get it for free on some internet page with a profanity-and-bean-based title. This is called the Miracle of User-Generated Content, and incredibly serious people devote military-grade brain cells to writing pompous essays about it.

In other words, this isn't just a macaroni and cheese recipe. It's a shining embodiment of a 21st century cultural phenomenon. Damn.

Macaroni and Cheese: The Right Way
Ingredients:

• ~3 cups of elbow macaroni (9-10 oz. dry, if you have a scale)
• 3 tbsp. grated onion
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 3/8 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 4.5 cups shredded cheese (I use a mix of mozzerella, swiss, and cheddar, with a little asiago thrown in for zest. You can mix it up if you want.)
• 3 cups thin white sauce (see below)
• 1.5 tbsp. butter

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Cook mac according to package. Drain.
3. Prepare thin white sauce according to directions below.
4. Mix the onions, salt, pepper, and cheese together into what will henceforth be referred to as the "cheese muck of deliciousness" (CMOD).
5. Place 1/2 the mac in an ungreased 3 qt. casserole dish.
6. Cover with 1/2 the cheese muck of deliciousness.
7. Add second half of the mac.
8. Cover with remaining half of the CMOD.
9. Pour the white sauce over the whole thing. Distribute somewhat evenly.
10. Dot with butter.
11. Crunch cornflakes on top. Realize that crushing a handful of cornflakes is possibly the most satisfying sensation there is, and that we could probably end war if we could somehow get every major world leader to do this when they wake up in the morning.
12. Cover (with the top of the dish if you have that, with aluminum foil otherwise). Bake for 30 min. covered, then uncover and bake for an additional 15 min.
13. Cool and serve. Swear undying vengeance against the false macaroni and cheese prophets who convinced America that orange goo in any way resembles the real item. Realize that these people are almost certainly the leading candidates for "what's wrong with America" and are almost solely responsible for the moral decline of our culture.*

Thin White Sauce"Like a white sauce, but thinner!" --Wm. Shakespeare

Makes 3 cups, the amount required above.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups milk
• 3 tbsp. butter
• ~2 tbsp. flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/8 tsp pepper

Steps:

1. Melt butter over low heat
2. Blend in dry ingredients
3. Cook until smooth
4. Stir in milk, turn up heat
5. Heat to boiling, stirring, boil and stir for 1 min.

There you have it--the best macaroni and cheese (I don't make this boast idly). There's nothing I can say that will top that, so I'll just leave you with a link to a cartoon of a bear who is not able to understand cheese as well as he might wish.

*"But Glenn Beck!" you exclaim. Do you think I hadn't thought of this, people? Don't you realize that there wouldn't be a Glenn Beck if we all ate this macaroni and cheese regularly?!

Split pea soup w/ sweet potatoes and extra veggies.

History's greatest minds have faltered, over and over again throughout time, when faced with one vital question. What if I want to make split pea soup, as frequently served with ham, but I don't have a pig? Or, even worse, what if I don't want to eat a pig at all? (This variation of the puzzle eliminates the "go find a pig" out used by Aristotle.)

Today, we at Motherf**cking Black Beans pronounce this puzzle solved through the power of vegetable stock, sweet potatoes, and parsnips. Beyond being a massive contribution to human intellectual advancement, the recipe below is perfect winter dinner food.

(The idea here is that you're replacing the juices from the ham with the veggie stock; sweet potatoes are the most satisfying meat replacement I could think of, but if you overdo it the soup gets too sweet, so I turned to the parsnips to make up the remainder of the additional chewy bits.)

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 white turnip, peeled and chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped fine
• 1 package of split peas
• 1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
• 2 parsnips, chopped
• 2 cups veggie stock
• 6 cups water
• 2 bay leafs
• ~1 tsp. salt.
• Other spices. I think we went with some pepper and oregano, or something. Do what you feel is right.
  

Steps:

1. First chop everything up. Be creative with the veggie selection if you want--I think you want a mix of flavors--some sweeter, some more earthy--and a mix of chopped sizes. I'm thinking about throwing in some radishes next time.
2. Get a big pot. Cook all the veggies except the sweet potatoes in the oil over medium heat for about five minutes; stir a lot.
   
3. Add veggie stock, water, split peas, sweet potatoes, and bay leaves. Cook for 45-50 minutes, until desired degree of aggressive thickness is achieved. Do the spice thing as desired.
4. Eat. I recommend some cheesy bread to go with it, since that's a nice change of pace. As you can see from the photo at right, this is legitimate Company Food*, and will also bring you dangerously near to overdosing on seasonality. I intend to eat absolutely staggering amounts of this dish this winter.

As you may have noticed, I found my camera. (It was in a plastic crate of my belongings in Bennett's apartment for a year--who knew?) Be warned, John--if you want to contend for the sought-after distinction of having the most aesthetically pleasing posts on this blog, you're going to have to step up your game.

*Company Food (n): Food that can be served to guests without shaming your parents by giving the impression that you were raised in a dog kennel. Definition varies by occasion and setting, but experts generally agree that the term excludes leftovers, stale bread, and anything eaten directly out of a can.

New Motherf***ing Sandwich on the Block

I got this idea from this amazing sandwich I had at Trident Booksellers and I’m basically stealing their idea. I’m not sure that this is the exact recipe and I changed it so if you work at Trident and you’re pissed, f*** you because it’s not the same recipe and I don’t even care that you’re mad because I really like your bookstore and would probably like you so let’s just make up, ok?

So here’s the basic formula for the sandwich:

Goo + cheese = goocheese, or tasty f***ing sandwich filling.

Check out this goo:

1. some super-tasty mustard, like horseradish mustard or Dijon mustard. The kind of mustard where you can see the mustard seeds because that’s why they call it mustard. It’s because of the mustard seeds. So why does everybody eat that French’s bulls**t that doesn’t even taste like real mustard and actually tastes like someone is squirting spoiled vinegar down my throat!

2. Avocado. Squished. You may choose your preferred squishing method. Perhaps with a mortar and pestle (though this method is very messy and completely unnecessary but could be cool to try).

3. Hummus (see homemade hummus recipe below).

Alright, so now that you’ve got your goo, spread that sheezy on some bread. How much? As much as it takes for you to goo the bread up...duh

Now cover that breadgoo with some cheese. I like Havarti dill for this particular sandwich, but choose whatever kind of cheese you like. Could be cheddar for all I care. Actually, I really don’t give a f*** so I don’t know why I’m choosing to spend a whole paragraph on this bullsh**

Alright, not that you’ve covered the breadgoo with cheese, pop it into a toaster oven. Don’t have a toaster oven? Well, then you’re screwed because if you put this cheesy breadgoo vertical, you’ll have a hot mess on your hands…Actually mostly on your toaster.

So that’s it. Goo, bread, and cheese. But damn that’s some good cheesybreadgoo. Enjoy b**ches.

Best F***ing Sandwich You'll Ever Eat

I say this phrase almost every day:

"When it comes to sandwiches, I don't f***ing mess around, ok?"

Sometimes I say it loudly. You know, when I get excited or I feel like yelling. Sometimes I say it softer. Eyes down, in a kind of a menacing, barely perceptible whisper, until the "ok," when I lift my head and look straight into their soul...

People choose either to be offended or intrigued by this, but I don't let it faze me. I just continue to make f***ing amazing sandwiches, mostly to spite the people who believe that a sandwich is a creation solely for carnivores.

Allow me to explain:

Many feminists have decided to take back words like c**t or p****y or b****h (If you don't know what the *'s stand for, ask your older brother, or maybe it's time to leave your cave). I think in a society in which almost all institutions, societal and linguistic structures, and social norms have been crafted by white males, this is a legitimate undertaking in order to subvert some of these oppressive linguistic structures.

In the same way, I think the creators of the sandwich were most definitely carnivores, and as a vegetarian, goddamnit, sometimes I feel f***ing oppressed!

It's ok, I tell myself. Calm down. A sandwich is just a rubric...a structure within which you can place almost any f***ing thing you want. A sandwich is a man-made creation, not a historical imperative. Hah!

So why not take back the sandwich?

If you're someone who's demanding an alternative to meat that's almost surely come from animals who've been bathed in their own shit, been systematically tortured, and been shot up with antibiotics by transnational agribusiness corporations...the residual effects of which ultimately end up polluting our countrysides and waterways...then this sandwich is for you.

If you're someone who is tired of mediocre attempts at a vegetarian option at a sandwich shop (thing dry, flaky veggie burgers), then this sandwich is for you.

If you want to stop systematic racial, ethnic, and economic discrimination; if you want to stop industry from polluting our bodies and our earth; if you want to close the income gap, stop global warming, create healthy, supportive communities, and save the whales, THEN THIS F***ING SANDWICH IS FOR YOU!!!!

Ingredients:

Homemade pesto:
poo-load of basil (2 cups, chopped and packed)
1/2 c. parmesan
1/3 c. almonds (normally, pine nuts should go here, but pine nuts are way too expensive. Why are they so f***ing expensive? That makes pesto into this elistist yuppie, inaccessible spread, and that's unfair. So use almonds or even peanuts because you're an equitable human)
1/2 c. olive oil
poo-load of garlic (3 gloves, or 4 if you f***ing love garlic)
salt and pepper to taste

Bread (2 slices. duh, it's a f***ing sandwich!)
Cheese (brie or goat)
Sliced green pepper
Sliced tomato

A note about this recipe. Don't skimp on the ingredients. Get fresh basil for the pesto, and get fresh bread. For example, I have a bakery next to my house called Canto 6 that has the most amazing 7-grain bread of all-time. I also recommend "When Pigs Fly" Bakery's bread in Somerville. For those of you outside of Boston, I'm sure you have some awesome bakery close to you. Go there and buy the bread. This sandwich is worth it.

Ok, so here's what you do:

1. Make the pesto by putting everything in a blender and blending
2. Smear that shit all over two slices of your tasty bread
3. Put on the cheese and the sliced veggies
4. TOAST or put in a Panini press
5. Enjoy the best sandwich you'll ever eat
6. Enjoy even more the fact that you just made a sandwich that challenges the very fabric of the universe of sandwich-dom and you've just stuck it hard to our carnivorous sandwich-making forefathers who sought to undermine universal access and enjoyment of sandwiches by all people.

Apple-Butternut Squash Soup

Some days you wake up in the morning and want to rock the "it's fall in New England" thing so hard it hurts. On those days, you may want to eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ingredients:
1-2 butternut squash
2 apples
1 can veggie broth
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 tsp thyme
1 tsp salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup light cream

1. So the first thing, actually, is to figure out how much squash you have. The recipe I was working from called for about 3.5 lbs of squash, so I've been guesstimating their weight using a set of hand dumbells for comparison. I made a full recipe with a ~3 lb squash, and a 3/4 recipe with a slightly greater than 2 lb squash, and those were both good. When I made the smaller recipe, I still used the full can of veggie broth and decreased the water.

2. Cut onions (small), peel and cut apples (small slices), peel, cut, and de-seed squash (1/4 inch pieces). Butternut squash, incidentally, are Not Fucking Around as a vegetable--that's some seriously laborious chopping.

3. In the bottom of a 4 qt saucepan, sautee onions in vegetable oil for 10 mins.

4. Add everything else. Cook for 30+ minutes.

5. If you have a blender, you could pull out some of the mix and blend it, but who has a blender really? I used a strainer and a fork to mash up some of the bigger squash bits. It will be pretty textury soup, but that feels right to me.

6. Eat. Serves 8 if you made a full recipe. I recommend eating it with other summery tropical dishes like potatoes and brussel sprouts.

I've realized that I write recipes tailored to people who have the exact same stuff in their kitchen that I do (strainer but no blender, hand dumbells but no scale). (Technically the hand dumbells aren't usually in the kitchen.) I'm okay with this.

Apple-Cinnamon Pancakes with ZUCCHINI!?: Are you f***ing crazy!?

The subtitle for this post ("Are you f***ing crazy!?") is geared towards people like my roommate, who, this morning awoke to the sweet, sweet smell of fall (cinnamon, nutmeg, apples) creeping into his room. He entered the kitchen, leaned over the pan where I was flipping my flapjacks, and remarked about how incredibly delicious my f***ing pancakes looked. He then inquired as to the ingredients of said flapjacks.

When I told him that zucchini was one of the main flavors of the dish, he wrinkled his nose and exclaimed boldly (I thought, since I was cooking him breakfast, goddammit!) that the pancakes were ruined and that I shouldn't have ruined good pancakes with zucchini and that I was an idiot and possibly a jerk.

Despite the rudeness (I excused him because he looked tired and maybe a bit disoriented), I served him four of these pancakes, and I'm proud to say that he f***ing loved them. Maybe because I'm a really f***ing good cook, and he should thank his lucky stars that he has such a cool roommate who spends an hour making him brunch and then doesn't bat an eye when he openly insults his painstaking efforts to deliver nutritious, scrumptious food every Sunday almost precisely at noon, which is obviously the best f***ing time to eat brunch.

Anyway, here's to zucchini, and here's the recipe. Enjoy, and don't let the naysayers bring you down!

Apple-Zucchini Pancakes

Wet ingredients:

1 c. milk
1 egg
2 tbsp maple syrup

Dry Ingredients:

1 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 zucchini, grated
2 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl, then fold in wet ingredients. Mix until smooth, but as a general rule, pancakes are better if not overmixed. Let mixture sit until you see bubbles on the top. This means that the baking powder is doing its thing and the pancakes will be fluffier.

Heat up a skillet or griddle and coat with vegetable oil. Get it good and hot, then add 1/4 c. of the mixture for each pancake. As per usual with pancakes, the first couple will be shittier than the last. This mix should make about 12 solid-sized pancakes.

One thing to note about this recipe is that it's CHUNKY and MOIST, which is great but can pose some difficulties for the novice pancake maker. I would just follow the rule of waiting until the edges of the pancakes start getting hard and testing the bottom of the pancake with your spatula to make sure they're fully-cooked before flipping.

Serve with maple syrup and butter, or just straight-up. They're incredibly delicious either way...

P.S. (Do you have to P.S. in a blog post, or can you just keep typing?), my friend Joost from the Netherlands told me an interesting story last night about nutmeg. Nutmeg is indigenous to Indonesia, which used to be a Dutch colony. Thus, old Dutch people put nutmeg on f***ing everything! Another interesting tidbit is that, if used in excessive quantities, nutmeg can be a powerful hallucinogen, lasting up to 72 hours...If used in even more excessive quantities, nutmeg can be downright DEADLY.

Anywho, recently, an old Dutch couple accidentally spilled an entire jar of nutmeg onto their mashed potatoes. Nutmeg is a standard way to spice up mashed potatoes in the Netherlands, apparently. Instead of scooping out the excess spice, or scrapping the entire dish, as most people would do, according to Joost, "because they were old," they decided to go ahead and chow down.

And, you guessed it, they croaked.

If you're as interested in nutmeg as I became after this story, read on.

Cornbread: The Shot Glass Way

How many times have you said to yourself, “Self, what would I do if my only cooking implements were a shot glass, a bowl, and a cast iron skillet, and I really wanted to make some cornbread? Would I be fucked, or what?”

Thanks to the revolutionary method of cooking cornbread you are about to learn, the answer will now be “or what,” although to be honest life is probably not so good for reasons having nothing to do with cornbread if you find yourself in this situation. The way this revolutionary method works is, you measure things with a shot glass instead of with a measuring cup. Note that when I say a shot in the recipe, I mean a big shot class filled to the brim—one of those 2 fluid ounce ones, which is a quarter cup.*

Ingredients:

• 5 shots flour
• 3 shots cornmeal
• 1 shot sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder**
• Hefty dash of salt
• 4 shots buttermilk
• 1 shot vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• Butter

If you’re going to be drinking while you cook this, you should probably use a different shot glass for that, or wait until you finish using the main shot glass for measurements. I don’t know what whiskey does to cornbread.

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Or so. Why are gas ovens always so hard to calibrate?
2. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Beat the egg. Add the buttermilk and vegetable oil.
4. Grease the living shit out of your skillet (or pan, if you prefer) with butter. I’m talking like three coats of butter all over that sumbitch. This is how the goodness gets in the crust.
5. Mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. SPECIAL BONUS TIP: Don’t do this until you’re ready to put it in the oven. Once you mix them the baking powder starts doing its thing, and if you let it sit around for a while it’ll go flat. I used to have this happen when I would pre-mix a second batch while the first cooked, until my old landlady Laura set me straight.
6. Put the goop in the skillet, put the skillet in the oven.
7. This nominally takes 20-25 minutes to cook. If your oven sucks as much as mine, you just gotta be on your toes. Check it starting at 15 minutes or so—you’re going for that point where a fork comes out clean from the middle. Err on the side of caution.
8. De-oven, de-heat, de-skillet. Breakfast for a week!

Also, just in case you wanted them, here are the results of some of my experiments with this recipe.

• The half-flour/half-cornmeal variant: This is the one with four shots apiece of flour and cornmeal. Some recipes recommend it, and I used to do it a bunch cause it kind of seems more authentic (corn bread oughta really be about corn, you know?), but I just don’t think it’s as good. Kind of grittier, and tastes less sweet.
• The milk/buttermilk decision: Your standard cornbread recipe is going to call for milk instead of buttermilk. Why you would ever use milk when you could use buttermilk totally escapes me. Plus I used to make it that way, and it is definitely better with buttermilk.
• The vegan edition: You can substitute some banana for the egg. I did this once, and nothing disastrous happened.
• The maximum butter option: In general, if you want to make things better, add more butter. In this case, you can replace the vegetable oil with melted butter. Personally I don’t do this much because it’s a pain in the ass to melt the butter, and also I’m worried about getting addicted.
• The forgot-to-add-salt mistake: Why is salt so forgettable? I know, most recipes say it’s optional. But cornbread just ain’t the same without it. I throw salt onto the cornbread when I eat it if I forget about this.
• The more baking powder way: imagine if your cornbread was carbonated. That’s basically what happens, texture-wise, if you go with the three tsp of baking soda that some recipes recommend. You might be into that.
• There are ways to make sweeter cornbread. Personally I’m a bit fearful about mucking with the sugar : grains ratio, but other bolder souls might want to try some experiments.
*For those who prefer non-shot measurements:

• 1 ¼ cups flour
• ¾ cup cornmeal
• ¼ cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• Hefty dash of salt
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• Butter

**I know, I didn’t mention any teaspoon. That’s because it sounds less cool. It is a non-canonical teaspoon.

Also, I broke the fonts and they won't get un-broke. Oh well.