I Can Cook: Crabcake Mac & Cheese

Ever since my mum signed up for Singtel's mio TV a couple of years ago and I discovered the awesome channel which is WeTV (channel 259), I've been hooked. Hooked to David Tutera's My Fair Wedding (about real-life weddings with gorgeous themes), Love It Or List It (about renovating/revamping people's homes), Rich Bride Poor Bride (about how couples try to manage their wedding budget) and the crazy awesome cooking shows by Anne Burrell (Secrets of a Restaurant Chef), Bobby Flay (Brunch@Bobby's) and Rachael Ray (Week In A Day).

I've watched countless cooking shows by the abovementioned chefs but never have I had the urge to try something from their shows. Until Rachael Ray cooked her spicy crabcake mac & cheese on Week In A Day. And I knew that I had to try it.


Gorgeous, colourful shell-shaped carbs

I looovveeee mac & cheese. I don't know why, but just the thought of pasta happily soaking in cheesy goodness makes me go crazy. *insert crazy eyes* And marrying that with crab? OMG. I wanted to reach into the screen and snatch the whole pot of pasta out of her hands.

So I searched Food Network for her recipe and though the ingredient list was quite long, I omitted certain stuff such as the celery and hot sauce (since KU can't really take spicy food) and replaced the fresh herbs with dried herbs. And I couldn't find sharp white Cheddar at Jason's, so I had to make do with sharp red Cheddar.


Ready to rollllllll

The original recipe also called for fresh crabmeat, but I used frozen crab leg meat instead. It definitely isn't as tasty and sweet as fresh crabmeat, but for the convenience and amount of time and money saved, I'd say I can live with it.
Crabcake Mac & Cheese (adapted from here)

(Serves 2 generously)

Salt
2500g shell shaped pasta with lines
1 tablespoon vegetable oil 
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1/4 small red bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small bay leaf 
2 teaspoons dried thyme
About 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest 
Ground black pepper 
250g frozen crabmeat
1/2 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning 
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 
1 1/4 cups milk 
Grated nutmeg, to taste 
2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Dried parsley
1/3 cup grated sharp red Cheddar
1/3 cup shredded Swiss cheese 
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs 
3/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Directions

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over medium heat, then salt the water. Add the pasta and cook for 4 minutes, (it will be undercooked). Cool, drain well and add it to a large bowl.

In a medium saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, and 1 tablespoon of the butter over medium to medium-high heat. Add the onion, red pepper, garlic, bay leaf, dried thyme, lemon zest, salt and pepper, to taste. Cook to tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the crabmeat to the vegetables and season with seafood seasoning. Stir to combine, then remove from heat. 

It smelt and tasted as good as it looks!

In a medium sauce pot, over low heat, melt 1 1/2 tablespoons butter and whisk in the flour. Cook for 1 minute, then whisk in the milk and bring to a bubble. Season the sauce with salt, pepper and nutmeg, to taste, and cook for a few minutes, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Add the mustard and the cheese and stir in a figure 8 motion.

Add the vegetables and crab, sauce to the bowl with the pasta and transfer the mixture to individual baking crocks or a large casserole dish.


Bake me, baby!

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.

Single-portion casserole dishes which I absolutely loved

Combine panko bread crumbs, dried parsley and grated Parmigiano -Reggiano cheese. Top the mac n cheese with the crumb mixture. Arrange individual crocks on a baking sheet or put the casserole on baking sheet to catch any drips. Bake until brown and heated through, about 10 minutes.

Taste-wise, I personally would have preferred it to be really spicy, but that's because I left out the hot sauce. I compensated for that (sort of) by adding an extra tablespoon of mustard, which gave it abit more bite.

And because I couldn't squeeze all 250g of the pasta into the two casserole dishes, I had quite a large portion of mac & cheese left over which I boxed up to take to work the next day. Lunch time came and I dumped it into the office's microwave oven for 2 minutes on High and the mac & cheese tasted better than it was the day before! It was more flavourful and the cheese tasted cheesier (sounds weird but it's true)! I thought I wouldn't be able to finish the whole portion, but not only did I finish every single morsel, I was craving for more.

The next time I make this, I'll use more crab meat, maybe try a different type of pasta, and definitely add the hot sauce. Can't wait!

I Can Cook: Grain-Free Cauliflower-Crust Pizza

In an earlier blog entry this year, I said that one of my resolutions was to cook more often.

Well, I'm really happy and proud to say that I've been a really good girl about that, cooking once a week for the two of us!*beams* And all thanks to Pinterest and the Internet, I've managed to amass quite a number of droolworthy recipes, some of which I'm saving for special occasions. Just so you know, I don't believe in purchasing recipe books (unless they are on desserts and chocolates) especially when many awesome recipes are online, waiting to be discovered. The plus point of trawling the Internet for recipes (besides it being FOC) is that you can read reviews from people who have tried the recipe and see what tweaks they make, and whether or not the recipe works for them.

For a start, the websites I usually go to for Western food are Food Network, Allrecipes, and Taste of Home, and the website for Asian food is Rasa Malaysia. And besides that I search Pinterest for interesting recipes and go crazy repinning just about every other recipe I come across. And at other times, I look through every Sunday's The New Paper for Hedy Khoo's column which features a recipe, complete with pictures. After using the recipe, I stick on the refrigerator door so that it's easy to find when I need it again next time.

But now that I've quite a number of loose sheets of recipes stuck to the refrigerator door and lying around the kitchen, KU's been nagging me to digitise or blog the recipes so that I can refer to them easily when I need them. (He knows how disorganised I am and is amazed at how I manage to misplace a lot of stuff in our house. :X)

It's going to take me some time to digitise every single recipe here, so I'm just going to start with the most recent one, which is also pretty darn amazing - Cauliflower-crust Pizza!

I first chanced upon this recipe on Pinterest, which caught my interest immediately cos I was like, how do make a pizza crust from cauliflower?! And truly, I didn't have to use a single grain (speck?) of flour in this recipe at all, and the crust still came out slightly chewy and tasting very much like normal pizza crust! Definitely a winner for me cos I can enjoy the taste of sinful pizza and yet still go low-carb!


Ignore the half-cooked, runny egg white pls!

So, recipe time:

Grain-Free Cauliflower Crust Pizza (recipe adapted from here)

Ingredients:
1 small head of cauliflower - should yield 2 to 3 cups once processed
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
1 egg

Preheat oven to 220 degrees Celsius. On a cutting board, place a large piece of parchment paper and spray it with cooking oil. 

Wash and roughly dry the cauliflower. Cut off the florets (you don't need much stem). Pulse in your food processor until you get powdery snow-like cauliflower. Place the cauliflower in a bowl and steam for 7 to 10 minutes, until cooked. Pour out cooked cauliflower onto a clean tea towel and allow to cool for a bit.
Once cauliflower is cool enough to handle, wrap it up in the dish towel and squeeze as much water out from the cauliflower as possible. This will ensure you get a chewy crust instead of a crumbly mess. 
Pour squeezed cauliflower into a bowl. Add 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, and 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano. Add one egg and mix, using hands.

Once mixed together, pour mixture onto oiled parchment paper and use your hands to form the dough into a crust. Pat it down thoroughly, forming a tight crust that is not too thick or thin.

Slide the parchment paper onto baking sheet. Bake for 8 to 11 minutes, until it starts to turn golden brown. Remove from oven.

Add however much sauce, cheese, and toppings you want. Slide parchment with topped pizza back in the hot oven and cook for another 5 to 7 minutes until the cheese is melted, bubbly, and slightly golden.

Cut with pizza cutter and serve!

For myself, I wanted to use up some ingredients that we had sitting in the refrigerator, so I stir-fried small pieces of marinated chicken thigh and added them to the pizza crust, along with sliced garlic, asparagus (loveeee 'em!!), baby tomatoes, loads of mozarella cheese and then I cracked an egg on top before sending it back into the oven.

Our pizza was really overcrowded though, cos I originally wanted to make two individual-sized pizzas and the recipe yielded only one square pizza about 18cm by 18cm, but it turned out rather filling.


Cheesy wholesome goodness!

Overall, I'm really happy with how the pizza turned out - you couldn't tell that the crust was made from cauliflower, and KU thought it tasted good! The only thing I would change about this recipe is to use either the egg yolk or white, and not the whole egg, cos it was a little wet. Annndd.. it took a rather long time to make cos of the time taken for the cauliflower to cool down before I could squeeze it, and also the double baking. I think next time I'll make the crust beforehand and freeze it.