.: Fat Wednesday

Fancy pictures from a fancy camera!

Prosciutto is the new bacon.

I'm really happy with the recipes I chose to cook this week. I often look at choosing recipes from a DJ's perspective - picking out just the right song for just the right mood is a craft that can only be mastered by few, after several rounds of errors. In lieu of Fat Tuesday, I picked out the most decadent items on my list of things to cook - homemade Mac and key lime pie. Since my Tuesdays are 12 hour days, ending with a wet and chlorinated self after a dip in the Chinatown YMCA pool, the celebration of Fat Tuesday was postponed 24 hours.

The macaroni ingredients were inspired by macaroni served at Max and Dylan's, a hideaway restaurant near downtown crossing. Their macaroni dishes contain a delicious blend of ingredients most commonly found in your refrigerator that you would never think to combine with such a carb staple as Mac. For this recipe, we used prosciutto and broccoli. You bet your bottoms it tasted outta this world! A beautiful blend of sweet, salty, greens, and about 2 pounds of cheese. We had to make a roux (the boys loved that word) on two separate occasions to thicken up the cheesy sauce, and it felt pretty awesome to utilize some cooking skills developed a few months ago.

Beautiful shot, but a little too soupy. Time to make more roux!

Cheez

Donezo

I'm not that into baking, but key lime pie has been on my to-do list for quite some time. It was also an excellent excuse to use a lime I purchased last week but forgot to add into the mango salsa. I went to Trader Joes for the ingredients, and the guy helping me knew they didn't carry graham cracker pie crust, but took the time to explain to me how to make homemade pie crust using graham crackers, sugar, and butter. I was so astonished at the customer service that I took his advice and purchased the graham crackers. Suck on that, Shaws!

Didn't end up using the parsley (pictured left). Womp womp.

The ingredients of the key lime pie went together real easy, and were put together in a jiffy with only a bit of cursing when squeezing the limes as the juice stung unknown cuts on our hands. In fact, the whole prep process went quite smoothly, even though it took about two hours. After the candles were lit and Dave Brubeck cued up, we sat down for what would be the greatest home-cooked fat Wednesday dinner ever. I'm still impressed at how well the dishes turned out when we hardly measured out any ingredients. Especially the key lime pie. So so awesome. Also, to Ben's chagrin the Celtics won that night so it was a great night overall.