Last night dearanxiety wanted me to go out and buy her a box of instant mac 'n cheese from the corner store. I politely declined, but had a taste of it when she'd made it. I know that if I'd grown up with the stuff I'd have some love of it (perhaps like my love of 2 Minute Noodles), but I just can't stomach them.

So I decided to make macaroni and cheese from scratch myself in the fashion I've enjoyed at restaurants here in San Francisco. In keeping with San Francisco restaurant tradition it had to have goat cheese, exotic mushrooms and truffles in it — I probably should have found a way to sneak in fois gras, but since we had a vegetarian coming over for dinner I decided to keep it simple.

After far too brief googling, printed three recipes, discarded two and settled on the one from What We're Eating for "Orgasmic Mac 'n' Cheese" - with white truffle oil, crimini and shitake mushrooms and a variety of cheeses.

I adapted the recipe somewhat. I used cheeses I had already (or like a lot) and replaced the crushed red pepper flakes with red chili powder.

Ingredients
1.5 cups sliced crimini mushrooms
1.5 cups sliced shitake mushrooms
2 tbsp olive oil (the original recipe suggested bacon fat, not an option for me this time)
1.5 tbsp cider vinegar (the original used sherry vinegar, I guessed and substituted)
4 tbsp butter
4 tbsp flour
3 cups whole milk (warmed)
3 oz appenzeller cheese (grated)
2 oz emmental cheese (grated)
2 oz gruyère cheese (grated, for sauce)
3 oz gruyère cheese (grated, for topping)
5 oz chevre cheese (crumbed)
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
2 tsp fresh rosemary (minced)
1 tsp fresh sage (minced)
0.25 tsp red chili powder
2 tbsp white truffle oil (the original recipe said 2-3 tbsp, I think 2 is plenty)
4 oz panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
10 oz elbow pasta (mostly cooked, still slightly firm)

Mushrooms
Sauté the the mushrooms in the olive oil till they're cooked and starting to caramelize (about 7-10 minutes). Season with salt and pepper, add the vinegar and reduce till it has evaporated completely. Set aside

Herb, cheese and truffle béchamel sauce
Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour and whisk for 30 seconds. Add the herbs and chili powder and sauté for another 30 seconds. Remove from the heat and gradually add the warm milk (to keep it from forming lumps). Return it to the heat and bring it to a simmer. Add the cheese (except for 3 oz of gruyère we're keeping for the topping) gradually, ensuring it all melts and disolves. Remove from heat and stir in the truffle oil.

Topping
Combine panko and 3 oz of gruyère in a bowl, mixing well with your hands.

Bring it all together
Combine the cooked pasta, mushrooms and sauce in a large bowl. Mix it well so that it all seems evenly distributed. Put it in a baking dish - I used an 11 inch ceramic dish. Cover the top with the topping. I set it aside till soon before dinner. Pre-heat the oven to 400F, put the dish on an upper shelf of the oven till the top is golden and the cheese sauce is bubbly - about 15-20 minutes.

The verdict
I was worried that it would be too truffley but it turned out to be pretty much perfect. Everyone loved it. Next time, when I don't have vegetarians I'll add bacon or pancetta.

Last night we made sloppy joes based on a recipe from Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn on the recommendation of our neighbor Jen. They were really good, but I think I want to make them a little spicier like Home's. Luckily they're really easy to make. Also, that site seems to have a ton of tasty stuff.

I've been wanting to do a roast for a long time. Since my new toy is a slow cooker I decided to do a roast in the slow cooker today.

I should probably accept that half the reason I was excited about cooking a roast was being able to buy the meat from my new local halal butcher. Alhambra opened in the past few months on 24th Street between Folsom and Shotwell - three blocks from my house. The shop is large and well lit. The butchers are friendly and professional and the meat is amazing. They have organic, grass-fed beef, goat and lamb, organic chicken and a good offal selection. They also carry some general groceries and lots of middle eastern specialties - where else can you get cans of fava beans and your choice of Lebanese or Jordanian olive oil? They didn't have any pre-cut roasts out so I asked them for a good 3 or 4 pound roast. Take a look at their page on Yelp or look at the photos on this review.

I seasoned the meat, threw it in my slow cooker (on low), chopped up some carrots, onions and potatoes, then added some mushrooms and garlic cloves, a tiny bit of water and closed it up. Eight hours said the internet, but after about six I pulled out most of the juice to make gravy and only cooked it for about half an hour. It was pretty damn good, but a three and a half pound roast will last me all week.

Oh yeah, I made yorkshire puddings with this recipe - somewhat successful, but not really to dearanxiety's liking. I used red wine in the gravy which gave it even more of a punch-me-in-the-mouth flavour. My experience making beschamel helped me understand what making the gravy was all about.

I'd like to make a lamb roast - the classic with mint sauce, and I'd like to roast in the actual oven. My roast was really really moist out of the slow cooker, but it never got crispy on the outside. More experimentation is in order. Oh, and I'd love to do a south-asian spiced roast goat at some point. One of these days...

PS: randomly, I ended up making a chicken soup too. Sharon's been sick, and I've had a chicken carcass in the freezer for about a month now that I wanted to get rid of. I put the frozen carcass on a tray in the oven for a couple of hours at about 400F. Then put it in a pot on the stove with a carrot chopped up, an onion quartered (skin on), a garlic that I smashed as much as I could (skin on), bay leaves, peppercorns, ground pepper, salt and some tarragon I had lying around. I cooked that few a couple more hours I guess, occasionally poking it to try to get as much flavour out as possible. In the end I strained it and it was a tasty (though very garlicy) soup.

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This morning a few friends (archfear , earlyprose  and Kelli) came over for eggs benedict and an outing to San Francisco's Alternative Press Expo. The other night _aaronj gave me some valuable hollandaise advice that I heeded but screwed up. I made a white wine reduction (simmered 100ml vinegar, 300ml white wine, a few peppercorns, a couple of bay leaves 5 or so tarragon sprigs till it reduced by about a third) to use instead of lemon juice, and I tried doing a bain marie thing with a metal bowl in a pot of water. I don't think I cooked the egg enough at the start so it didn't want to thicken. I managed to bring it back from disaster by returning it to the heat, but it still never got to quite where I wanted it. People seemed to like it though. dearanxiety made super tasty potatoes with onions and red bell pepper.

It turns out that the Alternative Press Expo isn't a weird San Francisco fetish book fair (though there is a share of that), it's the San Francisco arm of ComicCon. Of course San Francisco has to find a totally poser way to say "Comic Convention". It was cool. There was a lot of cool stuff and we got to catch up with some of our more productive arty friends who were selling their fine printed wares.

My recent cooking obsession has continued. I basically spent all day Saturday planning, shopping and cooking. I've returned largely to French cooking, trying to get a handle on some of the dishes I grew up cooking.

The main project was cooking a ratatouille. I went for a simplified, eggplant based recipe that originally appeared in Gourmet Magazine. Since I wanted some left-overs I doubled the quantities and since I love mushrooms I added a couple of cups of quartered mushrooms. It's pretty tasty - I had some leftovers for lunch and I think it improves with re-heating. I want to try again (once all the ratatouille in my fridge is gone), perhaps separating the vegetables like Julia Child recommends and baking. I'm also hoping to experiment with my leftovers, perhaps attempting cannelloni, omlettes or something.

I made another scalloped potatoes but this time I used a mix of emmental and chèvre since dearanxiety's two favourite foods are potato and goat cheese. It's certainly tasty but the chèvre was hard to grate and spread so the cheese distribution was uneven. I tried putting the cheese in the freezer for a couple of hours but it didn't do much good. If I was Ferran Adrià I would have used liquid nitrogen, but I forgot to pick some up at Rainbow.

On Sunday went to a "political potluck" where everyone brought a dish and research about a particular local or state proposition. I made some chewy oatmeal raisin cookies on Saturday evening. They were okay. I think I ended up picking a relatively healthy recipe because it didn't involve any butter. I say "relatively" because it still involved a good amount of sugar, but I'm trusting recipes that don't involve butter less and less.

Sunday morning I made eggs benedict. While I've been enjoying cooking a lot I'm fundamentally a very lazy person, so foodwishes' technique for hollandaise was appealing - no double-boiler, no clarifying the butter. It worked pretty well, I'm not sure that I heated my yolks enough, but they took the butter pretty well. I think I could have used a little less lemon juice since there was a distinct lemon flavour (though that was less obvious when it was assembled into the eggs benedict). Poaching the eggs was slightly stressful but ultimately pretty easy. I just used a pot of hot water with vinegar, kept under boiling point, poaching two eggs at a time. I fried the slices of canadian bacon in a pan to make them warm and a little crispy and we ate the benedicts with leftover scalloped potatoes. I've got ideas about where to take this but I think it's something I can reproduce for guests if need be.

Last night our Canadian friends Matt and Dana had a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner that was potluckish in nature. We promised to bring a salad but I got fancy and decided to do scalloped potatoes as well. They both turned out kind of amazing. My tasty food was in good company. Especially memorable for me were the bacon wrapped figs, the magical artichoke dip (that somehow reminded dearanxiety of her mother's stuffing) and mig's trifle. The turkey (including the chipotle spiced one I deemed the NAFTA turkey), stuffing and mashed potatoes were great too, but people seemed to take this potluck as an opportunity to pull out their best recipes, thanksgiving relevant or not.

( Tomato and Feta Salad )

( Scalloped Potatoes... )

I love that word. Anyway, I made some and then made bechamel and then mornay. And I steamed cauliflower and broccoli and poured it all over. It worked well.