I've experienced a few new things today. First off, a much much needed haircut. I always go to Rokk Ebony and have been going to the same stylist for a solid 4 years. I love his style and I like how he understand my hair but I thought for this year, I want to try someplace new. Now enters - Organika Hair. I found out about them from an instagram post. For the past year, I have been diligently growing out my hair and making sure that it stays healthy. I know that much of this is based on what I eat and exercise. After growing my hair out, I want to actually color it - yes! It will be my first time EVER to do this, so I'm pretty excited. Well, because this post is not really about Organika and before I move on to the next topic - I have to say that I'm pretty impressed. I learned a lot about natural and organic ingredients in hair products and my stylist told me that she found my hair to be healthy! Yey!So on to the food. Years ago, after dinner at a pub around the area, my friends and I were walking along Elgin Street and I saw La Latteria. Since it was closed already, it sort of stuck on my mind that I wanted to come back to this cheese room again someday. It was purely by chance that I walked past it, I had retrace my steps and go back to the store. La Latteria is a very simple store with a very simple layout. It is not your gourmet megastore like The Essential Ingredient or Simon Johnson. It is a family run business. After looking over what they have, I settled on getting a 1 liter semi skim milk, 2 balls of buffalo mozzarella, their homemade tiramisu and an oddly named cheese that I cannot remember the name of. It starts with "SQA-". I used this to make a very nice pasta bake lovingly cooked in a (Falcon) blue rimmed enamel pan that I bought recently.
Ingredients:
2 small broccoli heads, cut into small florets
1 medium sized zucchini, cut into small cubes
5 medium sized fresh mushrooms, cut into chunks
10g butter
1 tsp all purpose flour
1 tsp dijon mustard
half liter milk
salt, pepper and nutmeg
1 cup dry macaroni, cooked
I used the cheese that I bought from La Latteria but you can use any cheese you like here - shredded or cubed cheddar, mozzarella, feta, brie, etc - about 100g
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
10g of butter, cut into small cubes
Steps:
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Cook down the broccoli, zucchini and fresh mushrooms in a pan with some olive oil. Set aside.
Make the bechamel. In a saucepan, melt the butter then add the all purpose flour. Cook for a few seconds using a whisk or fork. Pour in the milk and let it come to a light boil. This will thicken the sauce. Add the mustard, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Set aside.
Now we can assemble. In an oven proof pan - mine is about 26cm - combine the vegetables, bechamel, cooked macaroni and cheese together. Fold gently to combine. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top and dot with the butter.
Bake for 20-30 minutes until the sauce is bubbling away and the top and sides are lightly browned.
Serve hot!
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