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Gilroy Garlic Mac & Cheese

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The Child gets braces, and we immediately discover two things: 1) braces hurt, and 2) now there’s even less that she can eat. She mostly doesn’t mind – half the foods on the restricted list are things she didn’t eat anyway – but she misses popcorn as soon as she hears it will be banned, even before the braces go on.

I’m sympathetic, and vow that I will henceforth produce soft, bland, vegetarian food that The Child will love.

Also, I’m lucky – at least as far as cookbooks are concerned – and had recently received a review copy of The Mac + Cheese Cookbook, an assortment of, well, Macaroni & Cheese recipes.

So, the day after the braces were attached to The Child’s teeth, I settled on Gilroy Garlic Mac & Cheese, since it didn’t involve any meat nor any really radical changes to the Mac & Cheese concept. Mild gouda cheese sauce with a bit of Romano and a ton of garlic for flavor. It was pretty straightforward to make, although it did seem to involve a significant number of pans.

All the recipes in the book are made using a base white sauce, then adding cheese and other ingredients as directed. The resulting dish can then be cooked on the stovetop until done, or, if you like a nice crunchy topping like I do, you can toss it in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Either way, if you have anyone in the house, they will hover around the kitchen and ask helpful questions like, when will it be done? soon?

When it came out of the oven, I passed out forks to The Child and her friend, and although The Child and I immediately started sampling,  straight from the pan, and immediately loved it, her friend did not, and stepped back a bit.

Do you want your own plate? I asked her.

Oh, no thank you, she said. She handed me her fork. It’s just that … I’m vegan.

I could have sworn I’ve served this child pizza at this very table.

How long? I inquire.

Since a month ago, she says.

Got it, I say. This would have been helpful information to have had before she came over, but as it happens, we are all headed to a potluck: a lucky potluck, this time anyway.

Later, I let The Child know that she’s welcome to be vegan, but not while I’m cooking dinner. No problem, she says: Like I’d ever give up cheese.

I loved this recipe and we’ve made it a couple of times since, but I have one complaint about the cookbook (which I note, does include a recipe for Vegan Mac & Cheese, should The Child’s friend visit again): Nearly every recipe calls for two cups of “Mac Sauce”, but the base “Mac Sauce” recipe makes three cups. I imagine I could adjust the recipe accordingly, but it strikes me that the authors could have too. You can actually go ahead and use all three cups in this recipe, but it results in a much milder Mac & Cheese that kind of defeats the point of throwing in all that garlic in the first place.

 Gilroy Garlic Mac & Cheese

Gilroy Garlic Mac & Cheese
 
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Author:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
Mac Sauce (Makes 3 cups)
  • 3 cups whole milk
  • ½ cup unsalted butter
  • ½ cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons kosher salt
Gilroy Garlic Mac
  • 4 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
  • ½ pound dried elbow pasta
  • 2 cups Mac Sauce (see recipe)
  • 1½ cups grated Gouda
  • ½ cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
Instructions
Make the Mac Sauce
  1. In a pot over medium heat, heat the milk until it just starts to bubble, but is not boiling, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat.
  2. In a separate, heavy-bottomed pot, heat the butter over medium heat until just melted. Add the flour; whisk constantly until the mixture turns light brown, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat.
  3. Slowly pour the warm milk, about 1 cup at a time, into the butter-flour mixture, whisking constantly. It will get very thick at first, then thin as you add the full 3 cups.
  4. Set the pot back over medium-high heat, and continue to whisk constantly. In the next 2 to 3 minutes, the sauce should come together and become silky and thick. Dip a metal spoon into the sauce. If the sauce coats the spoon and doesn't slide off like milk, you'll know it's ready. You should be able to run your finger along the spoon and have the impression remain. Add the salt. Use the sauce immediately, or store it in the fridge for a day or two. (It will thicken in the refrigerator and may need a little more milk to thin it.)
Make the Mac & Cheese
  1. In a small bowl, mash together the garlic and butter to form a compound butter.
  2. Cook the pasta in salted boiling water until a little less than al dente. Drain, rinse and drain the pasta again.
  3. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, combine the sauce, both cheeses and the garlic butter. Cook over medium heat, stir until the cheese is barely melted, about 3 minutes. Slowly stir in the cooked pasta and cook, stirring continuously, until the dish is nice and hot, 5 more minutes. Spoon into bowls and serve hot. If you like your Mac & Cheese baked, top with breadcrumbs and bake at 400F for 15 minutes.
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Waukau (Berry Pancake)

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The Child is going on a trip. She will fly on a plane without me; she will hand her passport to a customs officer by herself. She will see Niagara Falls, someplace I have never seen, and ride the Maid of the Mist, something I have never done.

I should be happy; I will have some much-needed time to myself. I should be proud; look at my girl, growing up fast! I should be excited; she has the opportunity to see more of the world, something I have always wanted for her.

I am sure that I am all of these things, though it doesn’t feel like it when I think about it too much.

She and one other girl were invited on the trip by a friend from school, also an only child; she is going to Canada with her family for ten days at the end of the summer. Just before the trip, we have dinner with the family so we could talk about the plans for the trip. The mother of the other invited girl, is also a single mother, is also there. She talks a lot, as she usually does, about nothing in particular: there are no pauses or silent moments around her.  The Child and her friends hang out in the hammock while the adults grill and marinate and slice and discuss things like allergies and food preferences and the validity of American health insurance in other countries.

I write notes and make a to-do list in a small notebook: The Child will need a suitcase and water shoes. There isn’t much for me to do: the host girl’s father has thought of every possible detail, and paid for everything. I try to think of things I should be asking, but it seems to be under control, and in any case, the constant chatter makes it hard to focus, so I don’t: I relax and watch the three girls, giggling in the hammock.

We amble through dinner, sipping lemonade and discussing the latest advances in mosquito-repulsion technology. The chatter starts to wear on me, and I find things to do to be in a different room from it, when I can: I help out in the kitchen, and then focus my attention on the host mother’s cookbook collection. She likes Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country, and I find myself entranced by America’s Best Lost Recipes, a collection of vintage recipes that have been tested in a professional kitchen and tweaked if needed to provide reliable results.

I focus on the cookbooks as long as I reasonably can, but then the girls disappear into a playroom, and the four adults are left to discuss the final details. I suddenly realize The Child does not own a suitcase; she is leaving in just a few days and everything has been thought of except the most basic travel necessity. The Departed packed his stuff in her suitcase when he left, and she and I have shared a suitcase ever since, but I am taking advantage of her trip to go away for a few days, too – and I never thought to buy her a new suitcase.

No suitcase. Not ready.

I remind myself that, like the babysitting, she is more ready than I realize. She is among friends and clearly well cared for. She will be gone for ten days, and will come home glowing with stories and memories.

A day or two before she leaves, I get a copy of America’s Best Lost Recipes from the library, and make her a special breakfast: Waukau, a berry pancake that is partly fried and partly baked, kind of like the pancake version of a frittata. It sounded really good, and not hard.

Waikau1

The recipe called for what seemed like a lot of sugar, so I reduced the amount, but the end result was still a bit too sweet for our taste. The pancake itself had a nice crispy bottom, and a crispy-sweet top from the sugar, with the all the berries resulting in a soft middle. The pancake base has very little flavoring and no sugar, so the whole dish is really about the topping.

Neither of us really liked it, though we both had ideas about what would make it better: Less sweet and more tart. I thought a strawberry-rhubarb mix with cinnamon sugar would cut the sweetness, or even just something more tart that the blueberries I used.

Or maybe just less sugar.

My Waukau also did not spread out to fill the pan as the recipe indicated, though it still puffed up nicely. This may have been my fault, since my pan is slightly larger than the 12-inch size called for in the recipe.

It wasn’t what we expected, and The Child didn’t eat much of hers.

Waikau2

 

 

Waukau (Berry Pancake)
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
Author:
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 large egg
  • ½ tsp vanilla
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 cups fresh berries
  • ½ cup sugar
Instructions
  1. Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Whisk the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk the milk, egg, and vanilla in a small bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the milk mixture in. Whisk until combined; a few small lumps may remain.
  2. Melt the butter in a 12-inch ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Pour the batter into the center of the skillet and let it level itself. Scatter berries over the batter, leaving a 1-inch border around the edges. Sprinkle the sugar over the berries, again avoiding the 1-inch border.
  3. Bake until the edges are puffed and deep golden brown, 50-60 minutes. Transfer to a serving plate and serve immediately.
Notes
Use any combination of berries that appeals to you for this recipe. I used blueberries. The original recipe calls for ¾ cup sugar; I reduced this amount to ½ cup and still found it to be a bit on the sweet side.
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Ginger Flank Steak

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Although she is initially pleased at the result of her yard sale, The Child quickly realizes that she needs to find a source of income: the yard sale was a lot of work for not much money, and worse, eventually she was going to run out of stuff to sell. She starts to research.

Can I take surveys online for money? she asks.

No, I tell her.

Can I sell the photographs I take on this website?

Sure, unless you have to be 18 to do that, I say.

She grumbles and mutters. In the early part of the summer, she got training to be a lifeguard at the city pool, but even though she was allowed to take the class, and passed it, she was not old enough to work as a lifeguard, and spent her summer helping out as an unpaid volunteer at the little-kid swim class.

I say encouraging, mom-ish things, telling her she’s laying the foundation for a great summer job in the future, and eventually she’ll get paid for her efforts. She wants to get paid now. She signs up for a babysitting class, which is then canceled for lack of participants.

She attempts an allowance re-negotiation, complete with legal-looking contracts. I consider her proposals, and, realizing her allowance will decrease if I agree to them, end the discussions.Let’s talk about grades, I tell her.

She sulks.

I send an email to the next door neighbor, who has an at-home jewelry business. Any ideas? Please?

Can she babysit for us? I’m desperate next Saturday, she says.

I text The Child and her reply is immediate: OMG, YES!!!!!!

I plan to be home the evening of her first babysitting job, so I’ll be right next door if anything – anything at all – is needed. Or happens. Or she has questions. Or gets lonely after the little neighbor girls go to sleep.

I can do it, The Child tells me. She heads over to the neighbors’ house at the appointed time, and I watch nervously as the neighbors drive off, leaving my little girl in charge of two even littler girls.

I putter in the back yard, checking on my garden, and listening to them play in the yard next door. I hear squeals and fun and hope nobody gets hurt. After a while, I don’t hear them anymore. I go out to the mailbox – I think I might have forgotten to get the mail – and The Child is in the neighbors’ driveway, sidewalk chalking with the little girls. I ask her how it’s going.

You don’t have to be here, she tells me.

I head back inside, and after a while, make dinner. I don’t want to make anything fussy – in case I get called away to help next door – and I really, really want steak, which I can’t eat when The Child is around. I make one of my fallback recipes, a ginger-soy marinated flank steak, which is simple to make, tasty, and cooks quickly on the grill. I toss some asparagus in sesame oil and grill them alongside the steak for a light late summer meal. (The steak can also be broiled, and is super atop a bed of rice pilaf for a heartier meal.)

When dinner is done, I check in with The Child, by text, and she replies: I’m fine. I relax a bit and watch a movie, drifting off to sleep for a while. I wake up at 10, and send The Child another check-in text, but this time, she does not reply.

I try not to panic. I didn’t hear any police cars or fire engines. I turn on the porch light, just in case, and check next door, but the neighbors’ house just sits quietly, revealing nothing.

I sit on the couch, awake, and wait for The Child to return – and around midnight, she does. The neighbor delivers her to my doorstep, where she stands, beaming I did it and clutching $40.

It was so awesome, she tells me. This babysitting thing is so awesome! All you do is play with them, and feed them, and then eat and watch tv. And you get paid for it!

It’s a great gig, I tell her.

It’s easy, she says, and beams.

 

Ginger Flank Steak

 

Ginger Flank Steak
 
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I never make the mushroom topping for this, because it's simple and delicious on its own. But I've included the directions for those who might want to try the dish in its complete original form. generally skip the mushroom topping when I make this. It's delicious on its own.
Author:
Serves: 4
Ingredients
  • ¼ cup soy sauce
  • 2 Tbsp fresh ginger minced
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1 Tbsp pepper
  • 1½ - 2½ lb flank steak
Instructions
  1. Mix all ingredients besides steak. Marinate overnight.
  2. Broil or grill steak 5 minutes per side.
  3. Optional:
  4. Slice 1 lb mushrooms
  5. Saute mushrooms in 3 tbsp butter, cayenne pepper, and juice of 1 lemon.
  6. Add reserved marinade and boil.
  7. Serve over steak with pilaf.
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