So this past weekend I finally got my hands on Fast Food My Way, a book by Jacque Pepin on how to cook delicious foods quickly.
I started right in on sunday and made Crab cakes, a salad, and a pasta dish. The pasta dish won the prize for delicious. The picture is below:
The hardest part of the recipe was cutting up the ham and shredding the cheese. Other ingredients included: peas, corn, zucchini, and cooked pasta. The sauce was a Bechemele (sp?) white sauce which was super fun to make. Here’s how:
Take about 2 T of butter and throw it in a sauce pan. Melt it.
Add 2 T of flour and whisk quickly. It will immediately thicken.
Then add 2 C of milk. Whisk and bring it to a boil. The sauce will thicken nicely.
After the sauce is boiling, remove it from the heat and immediately add 1/2 C of heavy cream.
I poured the sauce over the other ingredients and then sprinkled some parmesean cheese on top and broiled it for a few minutes.
And that’s that! easy and delicious!!
Brainiac. There is an attachment for your Kitchen-Aid for shredding cheese. Get it. Its like 25 bucks or so, but its the best thing in the world. no more cut knuckles and it saves SO much time.
ooh, good suggestion.
Although, this time I just had my roommate Thomas shread the cheese.
bwa ha ha!
i don’t know how you’re shredding cheese but if you’re cutting your knuckles, you’re doing it wrong.
Knuckles? A few fingernail (polish) shavings never hurt anyone. I have a (good) reputation for my cooking, and people ask me for my secret ingredient but I never tell (oops).
Bechamel… I made some of that last night for Alton Brown’s fantastic mac+cheese recipe for a potluck thing i’m going to.
The butter/flour thing is a roux…. the trick i’ve found is to add 2 tbsp of each, but keep adding butter until you see the mass of flour start to rapidly expand when you compress it. You won’t wonder if you’re there, it’s pretty amazing!
Anyway, try the recipe… apparently you can deep-fry the leftovers the next day too, though i’ve not tried that:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_18422,00.html