Mac'n'Cheese remix

So in the past month, I've made mac'n'cheese twice. I still have one lonely blue box sitting in my apartment, but I have a feeling that that's going to be sitting there for quite some time. Go me!

The roux that I had made in my previous attempts had never been that great until I was prompted (thank you Joe) to add salt. This made things *way* better. Also, the inclusion of non-skim milk probably helped. So my final mac'n'cheese sauce base looks like this:

2 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 c milk
1/3 bag of cheese

And basically the only instructions are to add those things in the aforementioned order and keep stirring. The first time I made the mac'n'cheese, the cheese mix that I got turned out to be reduced fat and I didn't realize this until I tasted it and was so so sad. Salt is amazing and I used that to cover it all up. The second time I did this, it was with the intention of feeding it to someone else without poisoning them, so I made extra super sure that it wasn't low fat. I also added in almost an entire block of edam. It was really good, but it's mostly going to waste now because I can't eat it without getting pretty sick. Yay lactose intolerance. I learned my lesson from the first time and I now have a can of plain bread crumbs too. So it's add, stir, put cheese sauce over pasta, add more cheese to pasta, sprinkle LIGHTLY (I had issues with this once) with bread crumbs, and place into a 500 degree oven for 7-8 minutes.

I think I'm finally learning how to cook...

Thai Green Curry Chicken

So I was introduced to the sweet sweet nectar that is Thai food this summer in Honolulu. The absolute favorite was definitely Thai-style curry. The first dish I cooked when I got back to my apartment was green curry with chicken. It came out too bland to justify the amount of spiciness, but I know what adjustments I want to make to it the next time.

1.5 Tbsp green curry paste
14 oz. Lite coconut milk
3 pieces of boneless Tyson chicken (really small pieces) cubed
1.5 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1/3 c. chicken "stock"
1 small golden potato sliced thin-ish (about .75 cm)
1/4 green pepper, thinly sliced
1/4 serrano pepper, very thinly sliced

Add curry paste and coconut milk to pan and combine on medium heat for five minutes. Add diced chicken, as well as everything else. Cook until the chicken is done enough such that it won't kill you immediately after ingestion... or even shortly thereafter.

So the next time, I'm adding fresh garlic and basil. I'm also decreasing the curry paste by about 0.5 tbsp and ditching the serrano pepper because I'm fairly certain the one I was using wasn't ripe at all. Oh well. I'm also (hopefully) going to watch the next one more closely and not let it get to a boil. To top it all off, I won't burn the rice the next time and I'll get real chicken stock, as opposed to making broth stolen from the Mrs. Grass' noodle soup packet.