Recipe: Almost "Italian" Grilled Cheese

My roommates periodically think I'm crazy. They see me making mac & cheese or grilled cheese or any of my various strange mixings of sweet and savory and think I'm insane.
It makes me laugh, because I may be strange, but I make really good food.  Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I know I can cook and cook well. The constant request for meals from friends leads me to believe that for as strange as my recipes can be, everything must be quite good.

In any case last night I made myself a different grilled cheese with this lovely creamy cheese called stracchino. It's another spreadable cheese that has a richer texture and taste than something like cream cheese.
It's very typically Italian so I decided to go with one of it's traditional pairings for my grilled cheese.  Often in restaurants you'll see crostini (toasted bread) with stracchino and sausage, so I decided to do a grilled cheese utilizing the combination.
And then of course I added my own twist by adding an egg cooked over easy to add to the texture and flavor of the whole sandwich and served it with a rich balsamic vinegar as a dipping sauce.

Ingredients:
2 sausages
1/4 small onion
1 tbs olive oil
1 egg
Stracchino cheese
2 slices of whole grain bread (I used white bread because it's what I had)
2 pats of butter
salt and pepper to taste
red pepper flakes to taste

Dice a quarter of an onion finely and put to the side for the moment. Remove the casing from your sausage and cut (or tear) it into small pieces.  Pour a little olive oil into a saucepan, not a lot because the sausage should render out its own fat. Let the oil get hot slowly over a low flame and then add the

onions. As the onions begin to sweat add in the sausage and red pepper flakes to taste.  Leave on the heat stirring often until the sausage is cooked all the way through.
Put the sausage and onion into a plate but do not drain the oil from the pan.  You can use the renderings to cook your egg quickly.  Put the pan back over a low heat and crack the egg into the pan carefully. Spice with a little salt and pepper (I would suggest more pepper than salt).  If you prefer, you can keep your egg sunny side up and cook it on just the one side.  I like cooking both sides briefly, so after a few minutes I very carefully flip my egg and let it cook a little more.  I like to keep the yolk still runny, so I don't leave it in the pan for very long.
Unfortunately, I wasn't using a nonstick pan last night so I had a bit of a problem flipping my egg.  It looked a little wonky but still tasted delicious.  I put the egg on the plate with the sausage and put it to the side.
Next spread the cheese thickly on both sides of bread.

At this point you have two options, you can either grill the bread in the remaining oil in your first pan or you can get a second clean pan and use butter.  I chose to use butter because I liked the idea of the additional flavor and also because my egg had stuck in the first pan so I don't imagine the bread would've cooked evenly.  Using the first pan however would give your bread a lovely smoky, sausage taste that would work on the whole.

If you choose to use butter, place it into a new saucepan and melt slowly on a low flame. When the butter has melted, add your bread into the pan.  Let it brown for a few minutes until golden and then remove from the heat.
Add your sausage and then egg onto one piece of bread. For additional flavor, you can drizzle the egg with balsamic vinegar or a balsamic reduction or you can do what I did and use the balsamic vinegar as a dipping sauce.
The richness and bite of the vinegar should really complement the creaminess of the cheese.

Recipe: Homemade "Italian" Style Mac & Cheese

Let me start by saying that Italians don't eat Mac & Cheese. It does not exist in their vocabularies. They definitely don't have cheddar here, so making a traditional mac & cheese is pretty much out of the question. I think the closest they have is a 4 formaggi sauce but it's very different than mac & cheese. It's heavier with stronger flavors since it usually involves gorgonzola (which is a kind of blue cheese I think).
I looked up Mac & cheese recipes yesterday because I was having a craving during work.  I found a wonderfully simply recipe Revolutionary Macaroni and cheese on Cate's  World Kitchen and decided to adapt it since I lacked certain ingredients (like cheddar).

Since I did not have access to cheddar cheese I used this wonderful creamy walnut cheese. It helped the consistency of the mac and cheese and also added a lovely crunch because of the pieces of whole walnut. Then to supplement that cheese I also used some parmesan cheese to round out the flavor.
I loved that the original recipe only required dirtying one bowl... That being said, because I'm me, I wound up dirtying 2 pots because I started cooking making my pasta in one that was too small.... Yeahhh. I made a large mess. Use the appropriate pots and pans!

Ingredients:
2 cups dried pasta (I used rigatoni)
2 cups milk (I used whole milk, but you can absolutely use 2% or skim)
1/2 cup creamy walnut cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp salt
2 tsps pepper
1 pinch red pepper flakes (optional

Combine the pasta and milk in a pot (make sure it is big enough for 2 cups of cooked pasta!!) and bring to a simmer.  Add in salt, pepper and red pepper flakes at this point.  The flavors will really seep into the pasta.  Cook and continually stir on low heat until the pasta is cooked through.  It should take about 15 to 20 minutes but make sure the milk doesn't boil! If it boils (like mine did for a moment) it will go right over the edge of the pot and make a disaster for you to clean up!
When the pasta is just about done and the milk is almost all gone stir in the walnut cheese and parmesan.
Cover and let stand for about 5 minutes. Stir well to serve.

This was super simple to make and absolutely delicious. Cooking the pasta with milk definitely lended to the taste and really helped the overall creaminess of the dish.  I'll definitely be trying it again with different cheeses.