The picture is your starter. Assume a basic pantry for your other ingredients. What are you cooking?
These two ingredients were less than $4 total when I bought them.
For me, an obvious choice here is quesadillas. A little bit of salt, baking powder, oil and water and you have tortillas. You could add a little sour cream or hot sauce or peppers and onions or any number of other things to make this into a meal.
What are you going to make? How much is it going to cost per a person? Bonus points if you know how long it’s going to take? You kind of have to rest tortilla dough for 30 minutes. So for two people this meal is going to take me about an hour.
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Not included in the price is the cutting board. I made it years ago as an experiment to see if I could frame an edge face cutting board without it cracking breaking itself apart. It’s made of poplar and it refuses to die. Materials caused on it was probably about $10. Labor time was probably about 2 hours.
Poplar makes a horrible cutting board. It’s too soft even though it’s a hardwood. However, for end grain butcher blocks it’s a champion. I usually only use this for cutting and serving pizza because every knife mark shows on it.
Mac and cheese!
Make a Bechamel sauce, stir in grated cheddar until it’s properly cheesy, add a pinch of nutmeg and white pepper. Pour over macaroni, add more grated cheddar on top, and bake.
If I had aged Gruyere I’d mix that with the cheddar.
Is macaroni really the right word for that in this context? I’m pretty sure you don’t have a elbow noodle extractor. Pappardelle, Tagliatelle, Fettuccine?
I think this needs a seasoned breadcrumb topping when you boil it.
I assumed a basic pantry for my other ingredients
The reason I made the distinction there is because I can totally accept macaroni noodles as a basic pantry item. But I was thinking make the pasta because you have the flour. I can see the confusion here. You’re going to take pre-made elbows and use the flour for the cheese roux. I get it. I just wasn’t seeing it at the time.
By the way, I have elbow macaroni in my pantry right now. About 2 lb worth. They are sealed up in mason jars to prevent the pantry moths from getting in.
I have never made pasta before and while I want to give it a go, I don’t think I’d start just for mac and cheese.
Just scratch made mac and cheese.
My wife has made spaetzle from scratch before. It might be one of the easiest pastas to form - just squeeze the dough through a coarse strainer for finer pieces or out of a piping bag for more coarse pieces. And a disposable plastic bag with a corner cut off works as a piping bag. I think a nice cheese sauce would work perfectly.
Not OP, but I would have thought a basic pantry included staples like rice, cheap dried beans, and pasta (probably elbows or shells, since they’re pretty versatile).
I’d also do mac & cheese, the same as theirs, but with different seasonings: a little sauteed, minced onion or a dash of onion powder; a tiny bit of mustard for creamier cheese sauce; and a dash of black pepper.
PS: This is great! I hope you do these regularly.
More is the plan. That’s why I did 001 instead of 1.
Yes, a basic pantry would include those items. Picture yourself somewhere between 1850 and 1870 living on the prairie what’s in your kitchen. What can you get access to? You definitely have sugar and yeast. You probably have cinnamon. You don’t have saffron or caviar. But you have all the starches like rice, bean, potatoes and flour to make pasta. You definitely have milk and butter, but you definitely don’t have 9-month aged parmesan.
An Italian kitchen in 1850 would!
I don’t know shit about cooking. Could you melt the cheese in a pot and then add some flour to thicken it up like a fondue texture? Then cut up some Vienna sausages into 1/4 chunks and put a toothpick in each one. Then you can dip the sausage bites into the fondue.
I think you need a little bit of wine to make that work but yeah. I can see it. I’d probably also make some crusty bread. You already have the flour. All you need is some salt yeast and water.
Crusty bread with beer or wine cheese fondue sounds really tasty
Pot pie; flour goes into a shortening crust, cheese melts into a creamy veggies/choice-of-meat-if-desired stew for the inside.
What are your go-to veggies in a pot pie?
First jump is some southern cheese biscuits.
Crêpes
Like make a crepe and put cheddar in it? Like a French quesadilla?
Yes, basically.
A crêpesadilla
That does not sound as good as it probably tastes.
Pizza.
I have thought about cheddar pizza a couple of times and my brain always shuts off.
I like to do a cheddar sauce instead of tomato and then top with mozz, cumbled beef, and bacon bits.
Instead of tomato sauce? So like a cheesy bread with meat toppings people might do if they got heartburn from a tomato sauce? Are we talking like pizza crust then or like focaccia?
Cheddar goes really great on taco/nacho pizza.
Or a cheeseburger pizza.
Or Mac and cheese pizza. (Found at Aldi. They slap.)
To name a few.
CiCi’s pizza when I was a kid had macaroni and cheese pizza I fucking loved and think of very nostalgically, cause I was a picky eater that loved both pizza and mac and cheese
Cheesy bread
If this is what you’re restricted to, (ie. no eggs, milk, spices/herbs, etc.) then I’d say you were looking at a chance at a fondant-texture cheese dough, if you’re patient? Essentially, a roux to a Beschamel without milk, but it’ll take a steady heat and a non-stop, gentle stir/folding.
I’d start by rendering the oils from ~⅓ of the cheese, and begin the roux from there. Then, slowly and completely, melt only enough grated from the ⅔ to emulsify without clumping.
Continue until the roux won’t take any more grated without breaking (you’ll see oils sweating/escaping on the surface, just dust w/ sifted flour and fold until absorbed evenly)
Assume a basic pantry. So yes, eggs, milk, herbs, spices, baking powder, yeast, butter, etc.
saw a “recipe” by Guga for a spicy cheesy cornbread today that looked pretty fire. Two boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix, eggs, milk, butter, poured in buttered cast iron with a layer of sliced pepper jack halfway through. Looked pretty damned good.
I stopped using the blue box a long time ago, but one of my favorite cornbreads is your basic cornbread mat mixture (recipe available on request) with either bacon or smoked hog jowl, cheddar cheese and jalapenos mixed in.
Chopped hog jowls are low key fire.
Mmm, hog jowls. Such gluttony-adjacent succulence. 🤌🏼
If you’ve got yogurt, I highly recommend cheddar naan. 😱🫠🤘🏻
Cheddar naan sounds epic. I have made naan. I have never put cheddar in it or on it. Some butter, garlic and parsley. It’s probably heaven.
The best time to make cheddar naan is yesterday, but the next best time? It’s today. ✨
Oooh do you have a particular recipe for this?
Nah, naan is pretty foolproof and even fairly forgiving, too. Have fun, and don’t overthink it. Get creative, find your flow, discover where you’re able to blur lines. 🤓🤙🏼
Bonus: I will say that if you want the cheddar to be more subtle and pervasive in each bite, then mince it post-grating and sprinkle it when adding to help separate the pieces.
If you’re wanting crispy cheese bits on the surface instead, then aim for a larger grate and add the cheese right before baking/pan-frying with minimal mixing. 🥳
Thanks, I’m going to try this out!
Cheddar cheese biscuits (a la red lobster) come to mind - butter, baking powder & soda, salt, garlic powder, sugar, milk would be basically all you need.
Have that with eggs served however you want. Bonus points for eggs benedict if you can get a lemon too and some more eggs to make a hollandaise.
$4 for flour and cheese, probably $1.50 of butter, $1 of various pantry things, ~$0.50 for a lemon, ~$0.50 of milk, $3 for a dozen eggs. ~$10.50 total. 4 servings. ~$2.13 each
I found this recipe like two decades ago. I made it and my girlfriend swore that it was a perfect clone of Red lobster biscuits. You can tell how long it’s been in my notepad because it talks about things like biscuit mix which I would now make from scratch and it would talk about shredded taco cheese instead of the specific cheeses. This is long before I really started cooking from scratch.
Mexican Drop Biscuits
2 cups biscuit/baking mix
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded taco cheese
1 can (4 ounces) chopped green chilies, undrained
1/2 cup water
3 tbsp butter, melted
1 tsp dried parsley flakes
1/4 garlic powder
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/8 tsp cayenne pepperIn a small bowl, combine the biscuit mix, cheese and chilies.
Stir in water just until moistened.
Drop into 12 mounds 2 in. apart onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.
In a small bowl, combine the butter, parsley, garlic powder, oregano, thyme and cayenne pepper; brush over biscuits.
Vareniki, absolutely!
You only need to add salt and water to these ingredient and you’ve got tastiness!
Of course it gets better with potatoes, onion, and maybe mushrooms?It’s weird how I think tasty Chinese dumpling soup but when I think of Vareniki I’m picturing soggy pierogies and sadness. Maybe I spent too much time in Ohio. I should fix this.
Made soggy they are pure sadness.
You need to have very precisely the least possible amount of water that still enables all the flour to become a (very very firm) dough.
And then you need to hold the dough in one hand and pummel it with your other hand’s fist while talking with your friends or whatever.
These done properly, and your vareniks will not ve soggy!
And then, of course, don’t overboil them!
I have a leek in the fridge. I’m making leek and cheese soup.
Hassleback potatoes w/ cheese sauce.
Every time I’ve tried hasselback potatoes, I’ve been disappointed. It always seems like they don’t cook evenly. So the centers are raw and the outsides are overdone? I suppose lower and slower might work. What’s your time and temperature on them? Do you wrap them? What fat are you using?
I have successfully made the hasselbacks every time. I just cut a small slice horizontally at the bottom so they stay put when I slice into them and slice them very carefully very thin. If you slice them thick, they won’t cook well enough. Then just add melted butter and salt on top. 45-60 minutes in the oven at 225°c (435°f).
Cheese biscuits if you have enough butter. Yum.
Does this basic pantry have eggs? Cuz if I have 1 egg, I can make fried cheese with the flour and cheese.
I suppose I could do it without the egg, just making a simple flour water dough to encase the cheese. 🤔 Take less time than making a quesodilla. And probably better anyway since that isn’t corn flour.
I hope it includes eggs. It would be weird if it didn’t.
Broccoli cheddar soup, using the flour to make a roux + a cup of milk mixed with chicken broth. Ideally with some crackers to crumble on top… Probably would take me 20 minutes or so to make. Not sure on cost exactly – maybe ballpark of $3 or so? I have everything on hand to make that right now, actually, except the crackers. (I suppose I could make crackers with the flour, but that’s more trouble than I’d normally want to go to cooking just for myself.)
