Baked Green Bean Macaroni and Cheese | The Secret Life of Bees

They got under way slicing ham, laying out fried chicken, shaking paprika on the deviled eggs. We had green beans, turnips, macaroni and cheese, caramel cake - all kinds of funeral food. We ate standing in the kitchen holding paper plates, saying how much May would have liked everything.
The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd

I absolutely tore through The Secret Life of Bees. I think it wouldn't have taken me more than three days to read it from start to finish. There's something just so comforting about the book, it encourages you to keep reading and at the end manages to practically wrap your mind in a layer of warmth. Not to mention - the food. Every type of southern style comfort food imaginable must be mentioned throughout this book, be warned, you will spent a good amount of time hungry while reading.

I felt torn on what to make from it's pages, and likely will go back to try more from it. It wasn't until I was wondering through the local farmer's market the other day and came across fresh green string beans that I decided on what would be my dinner that night. My life has been at a bit of standstill recently, after graduating last year I've been faced with that awkward in-between of being a recent graduate and trying to find work in an appropriate field. I have a bad habit of medicating that feeling of crawling anxiety with comfort food.

Within the book, a death occurs, and like with many funerals an attempt is made to comfort the family of the deceased with platters of comfort food. What better to draw inspiration for when I needed a sense of comfort myself?

*Note: if you are using dairy cheese/milk/butter for this, the nutritional yeast will not be totally necessary (though it is delicious). It's super useful when creating a dairy free cheese sauce as it has a incredible cheesy/savoury flavour to it. 

Baked Green Bean Macaroni and Cheese
Serves 1 very hungry person or 6-8 side dishes
Ingredients
350g dry macaroni pasta
20g + 60g butter
2 tbsp plain flour
1-2 cups milk
1/2 cup nutritional yeast *see note
100g cheddar cheese, grated (I used Bio Cheese Cheddar, melts really nicely in this)
100g green beans, ends off and cut in half
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup breadcrumbs
Sea salt
Black pepper

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a baking dish - any size is really fine as long as it's not ridiculous huge. Common sense.

2. Place a medium sized pot of water with a inch of salt on the stove and leave to boil. When boiling add in pasta and cook until they are just about done - drain and leave to the side. You still want them to have a little firmness to it otherwise it'll go too mushy when baking.

3. Steam the green beans (anyway you want to it fine) until just soft. Heat the 20g of butter in a pan and wait till it is bubbling, when bubbling add in the steamed green beans and cook in butter for about 2-4 mins, adding in a pinch of salt and pepper. Remove from pan and put to the side.

4. Put the 60g of butter into a medium sized saucepan on a low heat until melted, add in the minced garlic and cook into the melted butter for 1-2 mins.

5. Add the flour into the butter, keeping it on a low heat - mix quickly, it should form a soft pasta.

6. Add in 1/2 cup of milk to the flour mix on the pan, whisking continuously as you do so. The mixture should thicken (make sure you keep it on the low heat) gradually. As it does continue to add half a cup of milk at a time - depending on how much sauce you want, you can use 1-2 cups of milk.

7. Take the sauce off the stove and add in both the nutritional year and grated cheese. Whisk together quickly until cheese melts in. It's fine if the sauce has some lumps - it'll just be bits of garlic or unmelted cheese. Add in a generous pinch of salt and pepper to the cheese sauce.

8. Mix the cooked macaroni, green beans, and cheese sauce together in the baking dish until the sauce covers everything nicely. Sprinkle the half cup of breadcrumbs on top with a little extra nutritional yeast if you have some.

9. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until the top has lightly browned. Enjoy!

Leek and Potato Stew | Coraline

Coraline was disgusted. 'Daddy,' she said, 'you've made a recipe again.' 'It's a leek and potato stew with a tarragon garnish and melted Gruyere cheese,' he admitted.
Coraline
Neil Gaiman

I don’t know how many times I’ve mentioned that I dislike summer but here’s another one; I dislike summer. I am not built for Australian summer’s, we’re currently on a 30+ heatwave in Melbourne this week and one day in and I’ve had enough. Also, hot weather means I can’t justify making soups and stews like this one - except I did because it’s delicious and I don’t care.

This particular stew was taken from the pages of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, a delightfully dark children’s book. Throughout Coraline laments the home made food that her father makes, stating with disgust that he’s made another recipe. As an adult I feel that most of the recipes mentioned throughout sound delicious, hand stretched pizza’s anyone? But memories of turning my nose up in disgust at the mere touch of ginger in any dish, or the weird texture of fish when I was younger definitely brings about a sense of relation to Coraline’s prospective.

This stew however is simply a bowl of deliciousness and comfort. You can add more stock and blend it up into a soup if you prefer, but personally, there’s some sort of cosy appeal to hugging a bowl of stew close while watching a movie or reading a book at night. Also! While I am aware that it is rosemary in the photo, not tarragon, however I forgot to buy tarragon but had rosemary growing in the garden - so, laziness prevailed. 

Note: I did not leave myself enough time to find a vegan gruyere cheese for this so I just used a vegan cheddar I had in the fridge. Still delicious!

Leek and Potato Stew with Tarragon and melted Gruyere Cheese
(Serves 4)
Ingredients
5-6 red potatoes, diced
2 leeks
4-5 cups of vegetable stock
2 tbsp tarragon, roughy chopped
3 tbsp butter
1/4 cup gruyere cheese grated or crumbled *see note
Sea salt
Fresh black pepper

1. Slice the white part of the leek finely and then dice up (if you’d prefer not to discard the green parts you can save them and use them in a homemade veggie stock later).

2. Place the butter - it is a lot of butter but honestly the more you use the better it will taste - into a large saucepan on a medium heat until it is melted and bubbly. Add in the leek and cook for around 2-3 minutes while stirring to ensure they don’t stick and burn.

3. Add in the tarragon and diced potatoes and mix to coat with butter before adding in stock (reserve about a cup for later).

4. Leave on a medium heat for around thirty minutes so it’s bubbling just a little(it could take a little less time depending on how small you dice your potatoes). During this time you may want to add in the remaining cup of stock if the stew is reducing too much.

5. At this stage the potato should be well cooked and slightly mushy, I mixed my cheese through so it would melt in throughout the whole thing but simply melting it on top would also be super yum. Enjoy!

Pasta Puttanesca | The Bad Beginning

For most of the afternoon, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny cooked the puttanesca sauce according to the recipe. Violet roasted the garlic and washed and chopped the anchovies. Klaus peeled the tomatoes and pitted the olives. Sunny banged on a pot with a wooden spoon, singing a rather repetitive song she had written herself. And all three of the children felt less miserable than they had since their arrival at Count Olaf's.
The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Lemony Snicket

The intenseness of the Christmas holidays is finally wearing off and I've found myself with time to actually write up some of these recipes I've had waiting. Working in hospitality is both quite lovely and also so awful around the holiday time, while everyone is in a great mood and customers are delightful, I always find myself working a ridiculous amount - coming home and binging on Netflix and leftovers.So it was quite nice that Netflix released the new season of A Series of Unfortunate Events, it really reminded me that I had quite a few blog posts and recipes piled up on here on draft that had to be finalised and published. And this is one such recipe, probably one of the more notable and memorable foods from the beginning of the dismal series. The Baudelaire Orphans cook Pasta Puttanesca for Count Olaf and his troupe of performers - it maybe didn't go down quite so well with them, however, it is indeed delicious and super easy to make.

*Notes: the chilli is optional depending on whether or not you like a bit of heat. I also omitted anchovies, because I don't eat meat, I don't really think you lose anything by not putting them in, but if you want obviously feel free to put in 3-4 finely chopped anchovies. If you do not have a food processor also - you can simply mix the flours and water together by hand.

Pasta Puttanesca 
Ingredients
Pasta (serves just so many, I had pasta for days guys, and no matter how many times I tried to make less it didn’t happen. Or let’s say, 8.)
1 1/2 cups of Tipo 00 flour + extra for dusting
1 cup semolina flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1 - 1 1/2 cups of hot water
Sea salt
Fresh black pepper
Puttanesca Sauce (serves 4)
4 cloves of garlic, sliced finely
2 tbsp capers, drained
1/4 cup black olives, pitted and sliced
5-6 large ripe tomatoes, diced and squished a little
1 red chilli, sliced finely *optional
Handful of roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
Fresh black pepper
Sea Salt

Pasta

1. To make the pasta place both flours in a food processor (*see note) and briefly pulse to combine - add in a few cracks of black pepper and about 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt. Turn on food processor again and slowly add in the oil and hot water while running - it will combine slowly until it forms a giant ball of dough.

2. Remove the dough and flatten out as best as possible before cutting into quarters. Cover with a clean towel and leave to sit for 10 - 15 minutes.

3. If you’re planning on cooking straight away, this is a good time to get a large pot of salted water on to the stove to boil.

4. While resting the dough prepare a clean large area with a dusting of flour in preparation of rolling out your pasta. Doing each quarter of the dough at a time, use a rolling pin to roll out the pasta as thin as possible. I made this a few times - and trust me, as thin as possible still ended up being quite thick once cooked - so definitely go overboard in the rolling out of the dough. Having a pasta maker will entirely help with this step.

5. Once rolled out, cut into thin strips of whatever width you particularly feel like, I would recommend hanging the pasta once it’s cut, I just improvised something with a cooling rack, it will just help stop the pasta strands from sticking together. Repeat with the rest of the dough till it’s all done.

6. Cook the noodles a few batches at a time for about 3-5 minutes each and drain and toss amount desired with your puttanesca sauce.

Puttanesca

1. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan, when hot add in diced tomatoes with a pinch of sea salt, making sure to keep them moving in the pan to prevent them burning. Add in olives, capers, chilli and garlic and cook for another minute, mixing them with the tomatoes as best as possible.

2. Remove from heat and season with fresh black pepper, add in the chopped parsley and mix through before serving with your fresh made pasta.