Pasta Month: Annie's Mac 'n' Cheese (aka: Nathanael remembers his bachelor days)

Nathanael Yellis

Most people do not have 4,000 years to make their own pasta. They go to the store and buy it. If they are bachelors, they forget to purchase sauce. Someone invented Annie's, and now people like this can buy pasta and cheese sauce in a handy box. Here's how to make it.

Goals: speed, minimization of dishes, and multi-tasking opportunities.

Ingredients:

Also one pot--it could be a used tin can, if you are comfortable putting that on the stove.

Krispy Kale

Today's post comes from my friend and faithful blog reader, Natalie Glaser. As much as I enjoy vegetables, I must admit I was a bit skeptical about this recipe. I was even more skeptical after the first time I made it, and it turned out a slimy, chewy glob of green leaves. Even my husband wouldn't eat it.

But Natalie had raved about this recipe so much, I thought I should probably give it another try. Plus, I still had half a bunch of kale in my fridge! Not one to waste food, I looked around online for a better method of making this dish.

Natalie's method called for sautéing the kale in a very hot skillet (or "flash frying" it, as she calls it--which is a pretty cool name, I think!). I deduced that I did two things wrong the first time I made it: I used too much oil, and I didn't cook it long enough. The first problem I solved by tossing the oil with the kale first--this way I could use whatever amount of oil I wanted, but since it was evenly distributed, the kale would cook evenly. Secondly, I tried using the oven instead of a skillet, which again, caused the kale to cook more evenly.

The oven method worked much better for me. After 10 minutes at 400 degrees, the the kale was bright green, with lightly browned edges. The kale shattered when you bit into it--a vast improvement from the "stewed" version I came up with last time. When you cook kale this way, it has none of the bitter taste you usually associate with kale, and easily takes on the flavor of whatever aromatics you flavor it with (salt, garlic, lemon juice, etc.). And there you have it: a tasty side dish for about 15 cents per serving!