I haven't had macaroni and cheese in a while, so I decided to make some last night. I wanted to take another run at a baked mac and cheese because our previous attempt turned into an egg souffle. I'll never understand what Delia was thinking in the Mac & Cheese throwdown. 12 eggs? Ridiculous.

To make this, we used the same recipe as the Shrimp Scampi with Fettuccine but made some slight alterations (shown in red):

1 pound linguini
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
2 shallots, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch red pepper flakes, optional
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley leaves
1 lb aspargus (thinner stalks, if you can find them)
2 cans diced tomatoes (drained)

Cook pasta in boiling water 6 - 8 min or to desired doneness.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Saute the asparagus, shallots, garlic, and red pepper flakes (if using) until the shallots are translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper; add them to the pan and cook until they have turned pink, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the shrimp from the pan; set aside and keep warm. Add wine and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Add 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons oil. When the butter has melted, return the shrimp to the pan along with the tomatoes, parsley and cooked pasta. Stir well and season with salt & pepper, sprinkle with parmesan cheese. Serve immediately.

As an appetizer, Lauren made us a Caprese Salad (mixed greens salad with tomato and fresh mozzarella) with a balsamic vinaigrette. I could have eaten an entire bowl of this. Fresh mozzarella is so good, but I never buy it because I'm scared that I would sit down and eat it like a popcorn ball.

Last night I made a Garlic Chicken Alfredo Lasagna, my first lasagna ever. It seemed straight forward enough but there were some rookie mistakes. First, I tried to make it convenient by purchasing oven-ready lasagna noodles. You buy them in the regular pasta section. The dry noodles are scored in such a way that they manage to absorb liquid from the lasagna ingredients. They seem easy enough, because you just lay them down like a brick mason, layering ingredients and sauce in between. However its a little unclear how much liquid is enough to get them to cook all the way through. So you might build your lasagna in 15 minutes, but you spend 45 minutes wondering if its going to be crunchy. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened to the top layer of noodles. They didn't quite cook all the way through. I don't know if that was because of the cheese on top or because liquid drained toward the bottom, but I have an idea of what it was.

My second mistake was in layering the lasagna. It had occurred to me that I should probably stack the noodles perpendicularly by layer but abandoned the idea quickly when I saw the size of the noodles. My pan was 13 x 9, but the noodles were about 10 inches long. So the noodles wouldn't fit across the pan without cutting them first, and when you cut dry pasta it cracks like glass. Yet another reason to take the time to get regular lasagna noodles and boil them before you lay them down. Much easier to manage odd lengths at that point. So I stacked the lasagna in the same fashion in all three layers. In retrospect I think what may have happened was that the liquid that should have remained at the top layer probably drained straight down the seam to the bottom. Or perhaps it was the order that I chose to layer my ingredients. Just for the sake of safety, I'm going to recommend that you use regular lasagna noodles if you attempt to follow this recipe just because I can't pinpoint exactly what I did wrong.

On to the recipe:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (approx. 2 lbs) diced, cooked
1 box no boil lasagna noodles (or regular lasagna noodles)
2 15 oz containers ricotta cheese
1 box frozen chopped spinach (defrosted, squeezed dry)
4 roma tomatoes, chopped fine
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 cup sliced mushrooms
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
2 jars alfredo sauce
1 cup milk
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
2 cloves garlic

Preheat the oven to 400. Mix ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese and spinach in a large mixing bowl and set aside. As far as the garlic goes you can either add it to the chicken or add it to the sauce. Whisk milk and alfredo sauce together until smooth. Spoon a thin layer of the alfredo mixture on to the bottom of your pan. Put your first layer of lasagna noodles on top of it. Then spread your ricotta cheese mixture on top of the noodles, followed by your tomatoes and pepper. Cover with alfredo sauce. Add second layer of noodles. Repeat ricotta cheese, followed by chicken and mushrooms, covered with alfredo. Add third layer of noodles, cover with remaining ricotta and alfredo, top with mozzarella cheese. Bake at 400 for 45 minutes.

Last week I came across an episode of Good Eats on macaroni and cheese. More than half the episode was spent on your typical fancy baked macaroni and cheese casserole, which is wonderful but ultimately not very practical for someone that typical cooks for one or two.

But just before the episode ended, Alton Brown talked about how to make a quick homemade stove top mac and cheese to compete with the powdered Kraft Mac N Cheese and Velveeta Shells N Cheese. It is ridiculously simple and really only requires one or two oddball ingredients, but you can buy and store those ingredients at room temperature almost indefinitely.

Alton Brown's Stove Top Macaroni and Cheese:

• 1/2 pound elbow macaroni (2 cups dry)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 2 eggs
• 6 ounces evaporated milk
• 1/2 teaspoon hot sauce
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• Fresh black pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 10 ounces sharp cheddar, shredded

In a large pot of boiling, salted water cook the pasta to al dente (6 minutes) and drain, then rinse with cold water. Return to the pot and melt in the butter. Toss to coat.

Whisk together the eggs, milk, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and mustard. Stir into the pasta and add the cheese in 3-4 separate handfuls. Over low heat continue to stir for 3-5 minutes or until creamy.

I used mild cheddar rather sharp and I just bought bag of shredded Meijer brand. I didn't feel the need to be fancy by buying a block of cheese and shredding it myself, and some of the reviews I had read weren't so keen on the sharp cheddar flavor. I tried to limit my ingredients to whole containers (where possible) so I could get a read on how easy everything would be to buy, store and then make on demand, similar to the boxed macaroni and cheese. Evaporated milk comes in 5 oz containers (not 6 oz) and shredded cheese is sold in 8 oz bags (not 10 oz) so those were the amounts I used. I also skipped the hot sauce because all we had was habanero hot sauce and I didn't feel like taking that risk.

As far as the ingredients are concerned if you are in the habit of weekly grocery shopping, butter and eggs should be staple ingredients that you'll have on hand for your other needs. Here is a complete price break down. A "serving" in this case means the amount of ingredients you'll need to make one batch of mac and cheese.

Elbow macaroni - $0.46 per serving (servings per box)
Butter - $0.25 per serving (2 servings per stick)
Evaporated milk - $0.69 per 5 oz
Shredded cheese - $2 per 8 oz
Eggs - $1-$3 per dozen ($0.10-$0.25 per egg)
Dry mustard - $0.35 per serving ($2.35 per oz, 6 teaspoons in one oz)

Give or take some sale prices this comes out around $4 per batch. The difference is that when its all said and done this 8 0z of mac and cheese can easily feed four adults. My experience with the 7.25 oz Kraft mac and cheese and the 12 oz Velveeta shells n cheese is that you're looking at feeding about 1.5-2.5 people if you're lucky. So in the end when you weigh all the pros and cons of the various macaroni and cheese preparations, they all come out pretty close to even in price per meal. Which means the winner should be decided on taste, and nothing comes close to the home made stove top macaroni and cheese.

In my opinion this is the kind of mac and cheese you're going to want to put out at family gatherings/work parties/potluck dinners as a side dish. A little bit goes a long way, people will love the taste and then you can impress them by telling them how simple it is to make.

Lastly, I didn't take a picture of my mac and cheese because its hard for a picture to capture how it tastes any different than any other mac and cheese.

Also worth noting is that if you refrigerate it and heat it up later (like I did for lunch today) the cheese doesn't get all clumpy and oily and the noodles don't get weird and rubbery. I'll stop short the hyperbole of saying "I'll never buy mac and cheese again" and just say that I don't see any reason why I shouldn't make a habit of keeping all the ingredients on hand so I can have it on demand.

Last night I took the fresh pasta that we didn't give away and made some chicken fettuccine alfredo. Unfortunately we had some issues with the sun dried tomato fettuccine. It refused to unravel from the coils we rolled for freezer storage. I think it was because ours were at the bottom of a bag full of noodles, and they simply got packed a little more tightly than we intended. I hope the bags we gave away didn't have the same problems. If they did, I apologize.

Anyhow, fettuccine alfredo isn't exactly the type of thing you post a recipe for (all we did was add sauteed mushrooms, onion and broccoli to the jar of sauce) but it looked to good to just ignore, so instead I'll tell you what I did with the chicken:

• two fresh/thawed boneless skinless chicken breasts
• rub with salt & pepper
• roll in flour (shaking off any excess)
• dip them in egg wash
• roll in 1/4 cup bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 350. Then heat 3-4 tbsp olive oil in a skillet until it just barely starts smoking (not burning). Saute (pan fry is probably more accurate) the chicken breasts for 4 minutes per side in the skillet. This will give the chicken a nice crispy breaded crust. When finished, place the chicken breasts in a glass baking dish, cover with tin foil and bake for 20 minutes.

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned this before but if you're wondering why my pictures are often up close and crooked its because that is how I turn things from a simple picture into art. Zoom in real tight, and tilt the camera towards 45 degrees.

Yeah, I'm on to you professional photographers. Your secret is now on the internet for everyone to see.

Sunday has become pasta day over at Lauren's house. After brunch we usually get out the eggs and flour and make a pound of pasta for quick dinners later in the week. Yesterday I made some to give to a friend for letting me commandeer his computer Saturday afternoon. The use of semolina flour made things go so quick and smooth that we finished up without any bickering and decided we wanted to make more. So I went to the grocery store and got more flour and eggs so we could make tri-color fettucine gift bags for our friends with children. I hope nobody takes it the wrong way, we were just thinking it might be nice to give some friends an easy dinner starter for some night when things get a little hectic.

The green pasta is spinach fettucine. The red is sun-dried tomato fettucine and the light-colored pasta is basil & oregano herb fettucine. The pasta will keep for about a month in the freezer. When you're ready to cook it just boil some water, add salt and cook the noodles for about 4 minutes. I think its just under a pound of fettucine, so it should be good for 2-3 servings, but to be honest I haven't quite figured out how to do the conversions between the weight of the pasta dough (1.5-2 lbs), the weight of the rolled and cut noodles (presumably 1.5-2lbs), the lighter weight of the dried/frozen coils and the number of cups of pasta when its cooked.

I'll be making deliveries tonight after work.

Early yesterday I felt a need to revisit fresh pasta, considering how poorly my attempt at ravioli went. Throughout the week I did some minor research and noticed that about half the recipes or people I talked to mentioned the use of semolina flour. Evidently its a coarser flour used in commercial pastas and lends yellow color and stretchiness (less tearing) to the final product. I didn't want to like it because even at a store like Meijer, semolina flour is $3.50 for 24 oz. Essentially a dollar per cup for flour is ridiculous. Not only that but 24oz was the biggest bag they had, so even I am willing to pay that much for flour I'll probably need to go to the grocery store to buy it at least every other time we make pasta. In the end though, it was worth it.

Spaghetti is by far my least favorite pasta. It is not very creative or flexible and I think that as a child I just had a few too many bad spaghetti dinners when it was dad's night to make dinner. But fresh spaghetti is awesome. I can't really explain it because it seemed pretty ordinary while I was eating it. But some hours later I was still thinking about the spaghetti and realized how much better it was than the last time I boiled a box of store bought spaghetti.

In addition to the pasta we had homemade turkey meatballs from Giada DeLaurentis.

Semolina Pasta
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups semolina flour
4 large eggs
2 tbsp olive oil
3tbsp water

Turkey Meatballs
1/4 cup plain dried bread crumbs
2 tablespoons whole milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup grated Romano
1 pound ground turkey
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
5 cups tomato sauce

In a large bowl add bread crumbs milk and mix until well combined. Mix in eggs and 1/2 cup Romano cheese and mix well. Add turkey and gently combine, being careful not to overwork the meat. Season with salt and pepper. Shape into golf-size balls.

In a large skillet heat the oil over medium high heat. When almost smoking, add meatballs and without moving or turning the meat, allow it to brown for about 3 minutes. Turn meatballs and brown other side. Continue to cook until all sides are golden brown, about 8 minutes total. Add tomato sauce and bring to a boil. Lower heat and allow meatballs to simmer for 5 minutes. Turn off heat and keep warm on stove. Be careful not to overhandle the meatballs since they are soft and fragile.

In a large pot, bring to a boil 6 quarts of salted water. Add pasta and cook until al dente, about 8 minutes. Drain pasta in a colander. Do not rinse pasta with water since you want to retain the pasta natural starches so that the sauce will cling to the pasta.

Remove meatballs from sauce and place in serving bowl. Pour some tomato sauce over meatballs, but leave about 1 cup of sauce in skillet. Place the cooked pasta into the skillet with the remaining sauce and toss well. Pour sauced pasta into a large serving bowl. Serve alongside the meatballs.

I don't have pictures of the meatballs but they turned out very well. If you decide to make them you need to know that during the first three minutes they have the ability to get very brown on the bottom without showing any other signs that they're cooking. So you need to keep on top of them and turn them per the instructions in the recipe. If you do let them get a little crunchy on one side just make sure you let them simmer in the tomato sauce a little longer to soften them up.

Lastly, we made about 1.5 - 2lbs of pasta so we had quite a bit extra. The simplest way to store fresh ribbon pasta is to make coils with a large spoon, and freeze them for 1-2 hours on a baking sheet. After 1-2 hours remove the hardened coils from the baking sheet, place in a freezer safe storage bag and freeze for up to a month.

Yesterday I decided to again test the abilities of the KitchenAid pasta set by making my own ravioli. I don't have the ravioli maker attachment so I prepared for a fairly long and tedious process in order to have ravioli with chicken on the inside instead of the outside. As far as recipes go, everything was very simple. I used a basic pasta dough recipe, ricotta cheese, spinach and chicken. To top it we used some store-bought alfredo sauce with sauteed bell peppers.

The first mistake I made was in buying fresh spinach instead of frozen. On Wednesday when we made spinach pasta we used frozen spinach, but even after being thawed and squeezed it still retained enough moisture to make the dough very sticky. In hopes of avoiding that a second time I bought one 10oz bag of fresh spinach. Of course in order to use it for filling I had to trim all the stems, pulse it in a food processor and cook it in a skillet, all of which yielded exactly the same 10 oz of spinach as the frozen package with just as much moisture.

Once I dried the spinach, I mixed it with the ricotta cheese and some diced cooked chicken I had also pulsed in the food processor.
At this point Lauren joined the process and we rolled out some dough. Some very sticky and stretchy dough. But with some patience (and frustrated bickering) we managed to put together about 25 finished ravioli.

We had a ton of leftover filling, but by that point we were both so annoyed with process that we decided to refrigerate it and figure something else out. In my estimation there was enough extra filling to make another 30-40 ravioli.

Once we cooked the ravioli, we ended up losing about four ravioli to leaks and holes in the dough.

So to review, we started this process around 3:30pm. We finished at almost 6pm. And we netted 21 cooked ravioli.

This was so not worth it, regardless of the actual taste of the finished product. I blame the dough. It was too stretchy, which was probably my fault. This dough might have worked for cut noodles, but it was never going to work for ravioli.

In summary, with some refinement (and possibly the ravioli maker) in the assembly process homemade ravioli would be a worthwhile process if your plans were to eat a small portion (25 or less) and freeze the rest (50+) for easy meals later in the week. But at the moment for me it just isn't worth the effort.

Using the KitchenAid pasta attachment set I got Lauren for Christmas we made an awesome Shrimp Scampi with Fettucine. We used a mix between an herb pasta (light) and a spinach pasta (green) for the noodles. The shrimp was caught wild, then frozen by Lauren's dad back in September. All in all the meal took us about 2 hours. Not all that time was active but we had to figure out how to use the pasta attachments, thaw the shrimp, then peel and devein them.

Herba Pasta
2 cups unbleached flour
3 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup mild herb (basil)
1/4 cup strong herb (oregano)

Mix the ingredients and knead into a reasonably smooth lump of dough. Cut into 4 pieces, wrap loosely in plastic wrap and let sit for 1 hour before using.

Spinach Pasta
2 cups unbleached flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp olive oil
1 pkg (10 oz) frozen spinach, thawed, dryed thoroughly

Mix the ingredients and knead into a reasonably smooth lump of dough. Cut into 4 pieces, wrap loosely in plastic wrap and let sit for 1 hour before using.

Shrimp Scampi
1 pound fettucine
4 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
2 shallots, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Pinch red pepper flakes, optional
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry white wine
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley leaves

Cook pasta in boiling water 6 - 8 min or to desired doneness.

Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt 2 tablespoons butter in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat. Saute the shallots, garlic, and red pepper flakes (if using) until the shallots are translucent, about 3 to 4 minutes. Season the shrimp with salt and pepper; add them to the pan and cook until they have turned pink, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the shrimp from the pan; set aside and keep warm. Add wine and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Add 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons oil. When the butter has melted, return the shrimp to the pan along with the parsley and cooked pasta. Stir well and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle over a bit more olive oil and serve immediately.

Yes, these are the actual pictures of our creation. I got a digital camera for Christmas.

Last night we had a special Wednesday edition of FoodLab. Lauren has a Thanksgiving potluck lunch at work on Friday and everyone has been asked to bring a side dish. So she thought this would be a good chance to make Delilah's 7 Cheese Mac & Cheese from Throwdown with Bobby Flay.

The recipe:

• 2 pounds elbow macaroni
• 12 eggs
• 1 cup cubed Velveeta cheese
• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter, melted
• 6 cups half-and-half, divided
• 4 cups grated sharp yellow Cheddar, divided
• 2 cups grated extra-sharp white Cheddar
• 1 1/2 cups grated mozzarella
• 1 cup grated Asiago
• 1 cup grated Gruyere
• 1 cup grated Monterey Jack
• 1 cup grated Muenster
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon black pepper

The first thing we did was head to grocery store to check out these cheeses. Its a good thing I wasn't buying, because cheese is expensive. Gruyere is $8 a block. Block Asiago cheese is almost $6. Extra-sharp white cheddar was $5. You can see how this is going to turn out, and so could we. So we dumped the Gruyere, found store brand block cheese at 3-for-$5 for the sharp cheddar and monterey (pepperjack), found a small block of Muesnter for less than $4, used a bag of shredded mozzarella rather than the block. The only truly expensive cheeses we needed were the Asiago and Extra-Sharp White Cheddar.

Next we halved all of the ingredients because this was supposed to be dinner for two. In addition to that we figured out that we didn't want an egg souffle, so we used a quarter of the 12 eggs to make our half batch. Lastly we used milk instead of half-and-half, because we're not gross.

Half of that recipe filled a 13x9 baking dish to the hilt. It seemed as though it was going to be a little runny, but after baking it for an hour, the eggs did their job and firmed everything right up. In fact one more egg would have been too dry, and I probably would preferred a little more creamy balance in the cheese. So we probably need to adjust the milk or butter. I would never use 12 eggs for this recipe unless you'd rather end up with some kind of weird scrambled egg macaroni bake for dinner and breakfast. What it comes down to is that if you're used to eating Velveeta shells and cheese, this recipe isn't going to deliver a high-end version of that. This mac and cheese is more of a casserole you cut with a fork. In terms of price, if you make the original recipe you're going to end up with a $50 mac & cheese that serves 15-20 people. If you halve the recipe and catch a break on some sales, you can get two $16-20 meals that will feed a large and hungry family.

The half recipe make more than enough to feed 6 adults. I was disappointed and disgusted to see how much mac & cheese we had left last night. I'll enjoy it for lunch today and then swear off mac & cheese for a few months. This recipe is pretty good, but I can easily see why Delilah lost the Throwdown.