Sunday, March 8, 2009

Party menu


You asked for them, so here are the recipes that I served at dinner. If you weren't at dinner: I had a dinner and served some food :)

For the turkey and the macaroni and cheese, I followed the basic recipe with some additions/substitutions of my own, but the tiramisu recipe, I followed by the letter. Just make sure you have enough ladyfingers.

Ginger, soy and whiskey grilled turkey (chicken) from Steamy Kitchen. She used chicken, I used turkey tenderloins. I found the tenderloins, two to a package, in the meat section near the fresh ground turkey breasts. If you can't find them, you can also use fresh turkey breasts, chicken, pork, salmon. Anything would work with this marinade. I grilled them, turning every five minutes, until the internal temperature reached 160-165. This probably took about 20 minutes.

Macaroni and cheese
from epicurious. I made a few tweaks to this one. I halved this recipe and it still served seven ramekins full (1/2 cup) with an additional pan full of leftovers. The recipe is for a ton of mac and cheese, so unless you're feeding a football team, I suggest halving it.

For the asparagus, I just rubbed it with olive oil, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar and grilled it for about 5 minutes. Easy as pie.

The Tiramisu is from The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I followed the recipe exactly. I used brandy because I didn't have Marsala wine, and I didn't make it in a 9x13 pan, because I didn't have enough ladyfingers or my ladyfingers were too skinny. Either/or. Buy a big pack of the fat ones and you should be OK. The only thing I'd do differently next time, and I will make this again, would be to halve the coffee/brandy mix because you're going to end up with leftovers. But if you want to drink brandy-laced coffee, that's fine, too.

So there you go!

Macaroni and cheese
For topping
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cups panko (coarse Japanese bread crumbs)
1 cup coarsely grated extra-sharp Cheddar (1 1/2 cups)

For macaroni and sauce
1/2 stick unsalted butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2.5 cups milk (I used 1%)
3 coarsely grated Cheddar (I used a sharp yellow cheddar and a sharp white cheddar)
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1/4 cup goat cheese
3/4 pound elbow macaroni (which is a little more than half a box. I didn't really measure it, but 3/4 sounds right)

Make topping:
Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle.

Melt butter, then stir together with panko and topping cheeses in a bowl until combined well.

Make macaroni:
You know how to cook macaroni. Drain it and then use the pot to make the sauce.

Make sauce:
Melt butter in a heavy medium saucepan over medium-low heat and stir in flour. Cook roux, stirring, 3 minutes, then whisk in milk. Bring sauce to a boil, whisking constantly, then simmer, whisking occasionally, 3 minutes. Stir in cheeses, 1 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper until smooth.

Add the macaroni to the cheese sauce. Stir and pour into a prepared pan.

Sprinkle topping evenly over macaroni and bake until golden and bubbling, 20 to 25 minutes.

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