Cheeseball broccoli buffalo mac and cheese

To celebrate the end of the school year (and use up some very stale utz cheeseballs), I wanted to make cheeseball/buffalo blue cheese dip broccoli. I thought I could mix it into a Mac and Cheese for a one dish meal, but I had some ingredient malfunctions.

My daughter helped me, and by the end I was sure we had invented something inedible.

It was surprisingly incredibly delicious.

Ingredients:
- 7 ounces whole wheat rotini
- 2 tablespoons Earth Balance margarine
- 5 fresh stalks of chives from the garden
- 1 1/4 cup unsweetened Silk soy milk
- 1/2 cup vanilla silk
- salt
- pepper
- garlic powder
- 6 ounces extra sharp cheddar
- 2 ounces mozzarella
- 1/4 cup Archer Farms buffalo blue cheese dip
- 1 cup chopped spinach
- 6 broccoli spears
- 2 cups crushed Utz cheeseballs

Preheat oven to 375. grease skillet withthin layer of canola oil. Cook pasta. Drain. Set aside.

Melt margarine and cook chives in a 3 quart saucepan. Add salt and pepper. Reduce heat. Add milks, cheese, and dip. Stir constantly until well melted. Add spinach.

Pour 80% of the sauce over the pasta. Pour pasta into skillet. Sprinkle a light layer of garlic powder over the pasta.

Add broccoli artfully on top. Cover with remaining cheese sauce. Sprinkle cheese ball crumbs over everything. Cover skillet with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake 10 minutes more.

Hamburger-stuffed bread

A long time ago, my husband found a recipe database software for $9 and it came with "10,000 recipes." The software was Soft Key Home Gourmet and it no longer worked with Mac OS 9, so this is going back a few years... But hamburger stuffed bread was one of the recipes I discovered in that program. A variation is zucchini stuffed with sausage. I used my homemade bread, and I saved the bread torn from the inside to make my own breadcrumbs. In addition, I served mine open-faced whereas in the original recipe these meat-filled boats have lids. On to the recipe...

The original recipe:

Hamburger Stuffed Bread

1 loaf French bread (unsliced)

1 pound ground beef *

1/2 green pepper diced

1 can cheddar cheese soup

3 slices American cheese

2 cups bread crumbs

1 tablespoon Worcestershire

1/2 cup celery, diced

salt and pepper to taste

1. Brown hamburger. Drain. Add celery, green pepper, salt, pepper, Worcestershire, and soup. Simmer for five minutes.

2. Slice a lid lengthwise off the bread and hollow the inside. (Save guts to make breadcrumbs later.) 

3. Remove meat mixture from heat. Stir in breadcrumbs.

4. Place hollowed out bread on sheet of aluminum foil (on cookie sheet). Fill with meat mixture. Top with cheese. Replace lid. Wrap in foil.

5. Bake 10 minutes at 325 degrees.

Now, if you want the filling cheesy and gooey, cut the breadcrumbs down to 1 cup. If you want to make it funky and add fun and more nutrition, this is the meal as featured in the photo:

Hamburger/Veggie/Cheetos Stuffed Bread:

Alter ingredients list as follows:

Homemade Baguette

About a 1/2 pound ground beef

several cups frozen California blend (cauliflower, carrots and broccoli)

1 can broccoli cheese soup

Several ounces ultra sharp cheddar

2 cups crushed cheetos (leftover from broccoli with cheetos)

About 2 teaspoons reduced sodium soy sauce

garlic pepper, sea salt and four pepper blend to taste

Broccoli with Cheetos

For those who may be watching my grocery budget, my husband spent an additional $33 yesterday getting food for the covered dish at work, soda for a guest, and baking soda. Good news is I asked him to get double the ingredients for ugly bean dip when in reality, I didn't need any, so 90% of the items purchased when straight into the pantry.

We have not eaten well today, having used Christmas cookies as a breakfast.

To make up for this, I served bananas, ugly bean dip and a cheaped-down version of Broccoli with cheetos. Lots of fruits, veggies, beans and even calcium! The original broccoli with Cheetos recipe I saw in NY magazine, attributed to Chef Craig Koketsu. He can be found at Park Avenue Autumn. The recipe turned out to be much more complex and high class than I anticipated, so I did what I could with what I had on hand.

Broccoli and Cheetos
Serves 6 to 8
For the broccoli:
3 large heads of broccoli, florets cut into small pieces, stem peeled and cut (yeah, right, I'm not peeling and cooking a broccoli stem);
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil;
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped;
1 teaspoon red chili flakes (I have red pepper flakes, will that do?);
3 tablespoons butter;
salt

For the cheese sauce:
1 quart heavy cream (um, I had light cream, and the carton wasn't full);
2 tablespoons chopped shallots (I had diced red onion leftover from the ugly bean dip);
2 tablespoons garlic chopped;
10 black peppercorns (I used four-color peppercorn that I had in a grinder, and I ground them);
1 bay leaf (I didn't have any);
2 cups aged gouda shredded (I *shamefully* used monterey jack. I wish I had gouda);
1 cup grated parmesan
salt

1/2 9-ounce bag Cheetos crushed to pebbles

For the broccoli: Blanch broccoli in salt water for three minutes, remove and shock with cold water. Cool and drain. Place large sauté pan over medium high heat. Add olive oil, garlic, chili flakes, until it sweats, being careful not to brown the garlic. Add butter and melt thoroughly into oil. When butter and oil begins to bubble, sauté broccoli until hot. Reserve broccoli on paper towel lined plate. Keep warm. (Note: I think the broccoli at this stage tastes AWESOME.)

For the cheese sauce: In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, reduce cream with shallots, bay leaf, garlic, and peppercorn until it thickly coats the back of a spoon. Remove from heat and whisk in cheese until melted. Strain sauce through fine mesh strainer. (I skipped this since I didn't use whole peppercorns or a bay leaf.) Pour warm sauce into large serving dish. Arrange broccoli on top of sauce. Coat with cheetos. Serve.

We ended up with way more cheese sauce than we needed, so I reserved some for a pizza or pasta sauce.