Well I guess my luck leek soup wasn’t that lucky after all, because my sweet little girl has come down with this crappie bug going around, and so tonight when she requested mac and cheese, I couldn’t say no… especially after torturing her all day with oregano oil, and other cold fighting witchery.
There must be something in my DNA which I unknowingly passed down to her, that has a deep routed LOVE for carbs covered in melted cheesy sauce. I must admit it’s hard for me to say to this request ever, as I am just about always up for mac ‘n cheese. HOWEVER over the years I have come to adjust my mom’s golden gratin recipe full of butter and cream to my homestead healthy versions.. often using gluten free pastas and flours, lots of veggies (sometimes even pureed and hidden all together), I have even made a few delicious vegan versions.
It’s funny as I was enjoying this dish I did a quick surf through all the recipes I have posted which resemble these mac ‘n cheese spin offs… here are 8 of the ones I have loved before.
squash-and-feta-stuffed-ravioli
lemon-ricotta-and-red-kale-rice-gnocchi’s
gooey-gluten-free-gouda-mac-n-cheese
no-dip-artichoke-spinach-tortellini
As for tonight’s meal I used this lovely organic cottage cheese made fairly locally, along with a dollop of cream cheese and a smudge of butter, no flour and no gluten. I actually used a new organic spiral noodle that is corn and rice… it took forever to cook and yielded the standard rice noodle snot water, but they were pretty good! And this simple cheese sauce was way easier to throw together than the aforementioned moms roux recipe.
While cooking your favourite gluten free pasta get a frying pan going for the sauce.
Using a small pad of butter brown 2 garlic cloves chopped up fine
season with:
S+P
fresh grated nutmeg (a good pinch)
once the garlic starts to brown add and stir in 3 tbsp organic cream cheese
along with a splash of whole farm fresh milk
toss in a handful of chopped parsley
stir gently
then add 1 cup of nice cottage cheese (the beautiful organic stuff I used was closer to ricotta than standard cottage cheese)
add a dollop of nice grainy mustard
and grate a wee amount of parm into the suace
strain pasta and reserve about 2 tbsp of gloopy water, toss the lot (pasta, sauce and gloopy water) and serve!
mmm comfort food for a cold!
eating with S.O.L.E. 