Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese

     I know, 2 posts in the same day? I must have something important to do (studying). I'm just excited about my new blog. And yesterday was an eventful cooking day. I texted Joe and told him I went shopping so he's coming over for dinner. I gave him 3 menu options: chicken Francaise, chili, or buffalo chicken mac & cheese. I knew full well which one he would pick lol. He rationalized his choice by saying he didn't know what chicken Francaise is, and he's had my chili before, so there was really only one viable option. Fair enough. The mac & cheese was the one I was least sure about.

     I think I saw it first on Pinterest (LOVE) and I investigated further. A lot of people made their own cheese sauce with milk & flour, but I'm not ready to mess with that. I wanted easy mac & cheese... like add buffalo sauce and chicken to boxed mac & cheese. So that's exactly what I did. In case you couldn't tell, I'm no gourmand. I decided to class it up a bit, and got Velveeta instead of Kraft. I'm not sure why that's classier, but I feel like the cheese sauce is more "real" than the powder. And I like the shells.
     I also cheated on the chicken too, I got the pre-cooked Tyson stuff in a bag. Not the frozen kind, but the kind they keep next to the cheese. It's like, kind of gross. I mean, it tastes fine, but I was reading the ingredients, and there are a lot of chemicals. I might not do that anymore. (Buy that chicken, not read the ingredients.) I'm not like, super health conscious or into "natural" foods, but why would I buy that stuff when it's like almost as easy to chop up some boneless skinless chicken breasts and toss it in a pan? The only ingredient in that is chicken. It was kind of an aha moment. But anyway, I had it already, so I used it.

     The chicken was diced, so I just cut the pieces into even smaller ones, threw it in a skillet to heat it up with some wing sauce and bleu cheese. Let's talk about brand for a second. When you're doing buffalo anything, there's really only one option. Frank's Red Hot buffalo wing sauce, and Marie's bleu cheese dressing. End of story. So anyway, I tossed the chicken with the sauce. I eyeballed the amounts, just enough to coat the chicken. While I'm doing this, the pasta is just chillin in the colander (And I think I also overcooked the pasta. That's ok, Joe likes his pasta mushy.). 

     Something I haven't mastered yet is the art of having all parts of your meal be ready at the same time. Like the other day I was making spaghetti and meatballs, and the pasta was ready before the meatballs. That's definitely something I took for granted growing up... how was the side dish always ready at the same time as the meat and the rolls!? My mom is magnificent. I need to take notes while I'm home.

     Anyway, mixed up the macaroni, cheese sauce, chicken, and more hot sauce & bleu cheese. Then I decided I wanted to bake it. I put my gloppy mixture into a glass dish and sprinkled some panko breadcrumbs on top. The oven wasn't preheated, of course, but that was fine, I just turned it all the way up to broil. I just wanted a crunchy top. I kind of forgot about it for a minute and almost burned the breadcrumbs lol, but not quite. The crunchy top was a big hit with Joe, he commented on it. Bonus. Anyway, that's it. I forgot to take a picture of the whole thing in the casserole dish, but here's an individual serving of it.

      It looks SO orangey because of all the wing sauce haha. And you can see the lovely crunchy part. God, so good. It really did turn out awesome. I was a little heavy handed with the wing sauce- my roommate walked in and she was like "Oh my gosh, it smells so SPICY in here!" It did lol, but I love love love that smell lol. It tingled the nostrils, but it wasn't too overwhelming in the mouth. 

     I think I might try my hand at homemade mac & cheese eventually. It's just so good. And it's the same deal as the chicken. So many unnecessary chemicals, when you can just make your own cheese sauce. I'm still into the quick & easy for the most part, but as I get older I feel like homemade is becoming a bigger & bigger priority. And it's just more fun.

    Anyway, dinner was delicious, Joe had 2 helpings. I love cooking for other people :) There's still one serving left, maybe lunch tomorrow? Yum. Expect posts about chicken Francaise and chili soon!

Zucchini Cakes (not the frosted kind)

     I'm just gonna jump right in to the food part, maybe I'll get around to an introduction later, maybe not. Yesterday for lunch I made magnificent zucchini cakes. I've been wanting to make these for over a month... I bought a zucchini at the beginning of November. And I just threw it out 2 weeks ago. Oops. They were on sale this week at Publix, so I figured I'd do it for real this time. 

     I told Joe (my boyfriend) what I made and he was grossed out because he thought like, dessert cake made with zucchini. And then he was grossed out because he claims he doesn't like zucchini. "But you like eggplant," I said. "Yes," he said, "I like eggplant. I like pickles too." I just kind of looked at him for a second, because I didn't know when we had started talking about pickles. After a short awkward silence he realized his mistake. "Oh, wait. Cucumber. That's what I don't like. Not zucchini. I don't like crunchy vegetables." Tactfully sidestepping his vegetable faux pas, I gently explained that when you cook food, it stops being raw and crunchy. I told him these were fried zucchini patties.He was like "You can do that?" "Yes, Joe, you can. You can fry anything." He seemed ok with that. Unfortunately for him, he didn't get to taste these delectable morsels because I made them for lunch while he was at work.

     I adapted the recipe from here, mostly because it's the first result for "zucchini cakes" on Google lol. I looked at a few different ones, though, and they're all pretty much the same- zucchini (duh), breadcrumbs, egg, and cheese. But I didn't follow the recipe to a T. That's one of the coolest parts about cooking, especially in contrast with baking. You can kind of do your own thing. So that's what I did.

I didn't want to make a large serving, in case they sucked. So instead of using a huge zucchini, I used a little one. Which messed with the ratios of the other ingredients, so I kind of just eyeballed it. Usually when I do that it doesn't turn out too great. It seemed to work ok this time, though, except as I'll note later, my mixture wasn't the same consistency as Ryan's.

     Another zucchini problem was my grater. I only have a grater with little holes. Not the tiny ones, but also not the large ones. so instead of having nice stringy zucchini pieces, I had more of a zucchini mush lol. And then when it was time to squeeze the moisture out, I didn't have a cheesecloth or anything like that, I made do with a paper towel or five. That zucchini was WET! Not damp, but like sopping wet. I made it rain zucchini juice. It was pretty gross. Especially when the paper towel ripped. Because I can't afford Bounty or Brawny. There may have been little paper towel particles in those cakes. But thats ok. I got the mush down from a watery glop to a damp stringy mess.

     And then I used one egg and a little more than a quarter cup of breadcrumbs. The only cheese I had was a container of Locatelli brand Pecorino Romano. That shiz is expensive, so I didn't want to use too much. Ryan used the jarred garlic, which I have, but I also have fresh, so I decided to go all out and minced up 2 cloves. Definitely think that was the right call, getting a chunk of garlic in a bite is the best ever. I sprinkled in some S&P and added some red pepper flakes for pizzazz. The breadcrumbs were preseasoned, so I didn't feel the need to go wild with the spices. I started mixing with a fork like he suggested, but that was proving stupid, so I got in there with my hands. It's how my mom would do it. And she is most definitely my cooking idol. (Maybe a post on that over winter break, while I'm home!)

     Now that I'm looking at the pictures again, I can tell my ratios were off. His mixture was more of a batter consistency, where mine was more of a dough. Instead of dropping a spoonful into the pan, I was able to form little cakes and place them in. Mine ended up being thicker, so they took longer to cook and weren't as crunchy. During cooking I began to doubt myself and the amount of oil I used. I thought it might be too much, they were just kind of sitting in an oily pool. I didn't want them to get soggy, so I poured out some of the oil into the sink. I was desperate. Then I was concerned about there being oil on the bottom of the pan and potentially starting a grease fire. But I wiped it all off with a paper towel, without burning myself, so we were good. Sometimes I'm amazed at how my food turns out, given the problems I have cooking it lol.

     These things were DELISH. They taste way more delectable and bad for you than they probably are. I scoured the fridge for dipping choices, and my only viable option was marinara, which made sense to me. But they were super tasty sans sauce too. I am most certainly making this again. I'll use a large zucchini and follow the recipe exactly to see what happens. I think it's pretty hard to mess this up, though. Because I clearly did whatever I wanted and they still turned out great. Another cool thing is that you can adapt this recipe to other veggies. Squash/eggplant cakes? Potato cakes... LATKES! 

     Be on the lookout next week for my Chanukah post, so stoked to make my own for the first time. I'm very much a Gentile, but grew up with an abundance of Jewish friends, so I dig Chanukah. Also, my dad's side of the family is Polish, so he makes latkes, but calls them potato pancakes. And he makes gingersnap gravy to pour over them... it's a savory-sweet taste explosion. I think he also usually makes this pickled beef at the same time... I forget what it's called. He hasn't made that meal in a while (or I just haven't been home for it!). I think I'm gonna go the traditional Jewish route with my potato pancakes and use sour cream & applesauce for my dipping options. Gonna have to get a potato grater. I forget what we use, if it's just the cheese grater with the big holes. I'll double check on that before embarking on my adventure.

     Anyway, that was my adventure with zucchinis... I still have 2 little zucchinis left! (They came in a pack of 3 for around a dolla) What to do!? More zucchini cakes? I'll keep you posted :)