I arrived yesterday in Cape Cod for a getaway weekend with some college girlfriends, and I’ve been working on a few branded deals that have taken up a lot of my time. But I wanted to make sure I checked in this week because I want this community to grow into a more integral part of the easygayoven operation (which will also mean I can do less branded content.) So I’m bringing you today some ideas that are variations on my recipes or just very forgiving directions that are really easy to riff on and make your own. I’ll have more Cape Cod info/rec’s for next week!
“Recipes”
Sesame Noodles:
I’ve been making this all the time (which means like once every two weeks). Sometimes I throw in sliced green onions or grilled asparagus, sometimes I sear little cubes of tofu. Sometimes I use rice noodles, sometimes I use spaghetti. I always add garlic, and sometimes I throw in grated ginger if I have it. Anyway, here is a very rough approximation of how I make the sauce: In a glass measuring cup or small mixing bowl, I pour, oh, I don’t know, ¼ cup of neutral oil, ¼ cup of dark sesame oil, a few tablespoons of soy sauce, a few tablespoons of rice vinegar, a tablespoon or so of sugar or honey, maybe 2 teaspoons of sambal oelek, two cloves of grated garlic and if I’m really feeling it, a heaping spoonful of smooth peanut butter. Whisk everything together (an immersion blender makes this really easy.) You’ll want to taste it and adjust from there. If it’s too oily, add more rice vinegar and soy sauce. If it’s too salty or tangy, add more sesame oil and/or sweetener. If the peanut butter makes it too thick, dilute it with some water. Prepare whichever noodles you choose as directed and toss them with just enough sauce to coat them and save whatever’s left. You can also use the leftover sauce to marinate the tofu in. It crisps up so nice in a skillet.
Somehow I have almost no photos on my phone of this recipe but I make it all the time. Here it is pictured with no tofu (and no pb) but with a fried egg instead.
Blue Cheese Mac ‘n’ Cheese:
So if you saw my Instagram Stories this week you may have caught a glimpse at the mac I made with blue cheese. Let me tell you more about it here. So I used my mac ‘n’ cheese recipe as a starting point. I replaced all the cheese with about 5 ounces of blue cheese, crumbled (not pre-crumbled crumbles), about 2 ounces of cream cheese, and about a cup of finely grated parmesan. I chopped up some rosemary and fried it in the butter pre adding the flour to make the roux — I loved the herby flavor this added. Once the milk and cream just started to bubble I took it off the heat, let it cool slightly, and added the cheeses. I used an immersion blender to encourage the blue cheese to break down and it worked beautifully. The resulting sauce was a little too creamy and so next time I would add maybe 4 ounces of white cheddar or gruyere. Otherwise it was *SO GOOD*.
Do not judge my messy stovetop. I mixed it with these weird noodles I was sent and I was not crazy about them so I never posted them. (I don’t post gifted product that I don’t like!)
Updates
The recipe for last week’s confetti cookies is now up on the blog and available for printing. As a reminder, if you make and LOVE any of my recipes it means so much to me when you leave a review on the site and it helps the blog a lot in terms of showing up in search results.
So long and I will talk to you next week! I’m off to do what I was born to: eat a sandwich on the beach.