Cheese and Macaroni

Crescat Sentantia's part-time blogger Waddling Thunder offers a recipe for homemade mac and cheese (as well as a mockery of tedious fusion/Spain-inspired cuisine). I beg to differ. What's all this just melting the cheese in the half-and-half short-cuttery I see? Where is the white sauce? I realize that the reason I offer so many more dessert recipes than savory ones is that I measure the sweet recipes, while I cook all the savory ones by ear, and I feel a bit silly offering recipes which don't have any fixed amounts. So, if you totally don't know how to cook, then sorry about this. I'm guessing, here. Go with the flow.

Mac and Cheese:

3-4 T unsalted butter
3 T flour
1 1/2 c chicken broth
1 c milk
3-4 c grated cheese, mixed sharp cheddar, swiss, and parmesan
4-5 dashes Tabasco sauce
2 t Worchestershire sauce
black pepper
1 box penne, cooked till al dente in boiling water
breadcrumbs and grated parmesan

1. Melt butter in heavy frying pan till bubbling. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 2-3 minutes. Add broth and stir till smooth. Turn down heat and add milk, and stir.

2. Add cheese and stir till smooth and melted. Add tabasco and Worchestershire. Mix with drained pasta. Top with breadcrumbs and parmesan. Cook in 350 degree oven 30 minutes.

Diced ham is nice in here, as is steamed, chopped broccoli.

Note: none of this is meant to imply that Mr. Thunder is anything other than a fine chef. These are more of the cordial-disagreements-between-friends type thing.

Comments

[mattH]

Instead of the Worchestershire, try steeping the milk with a bay leaf and one or two cloves or some nutmeg in cheesecloth, then letting it cool a bit before adding.

[woof]

Wow! This is what my dad meant when he talked about "goyische food".

[belle]

damn straight, woof! white sauce for white people. and mayonnaise. and fried pork chops.

[Mitch Mills]

I usually don't melt the cheese into the sauce. I just add the finished white sauce to the pasta, stir in the grated cheese (and often, as you suggest, broccoli), mix it all up together, put it in a dish, add breadcrumbs, and bake. Not because it's quicker, although it is, but because the cheese kind of maintains its integrity more this way and the dish ends up tasting cheesier.

Oh, and use cream instead of milk. It helps keep poor mac&cheese from getting scoffed at as "health food" by mayonnaise and fried pork chops.

[Carlos]

Chicken broth? Hm. Back in Wisconsin we usually just added more milk. If we wanted to get extra fancy, we'd add some bacon bits (either small-b or large-B). But the roux-bechamel-Welsh rabbit thing was pretty fancy by itself.

Here's what I grew up on: hot spaghetti, butter, quarter-inch cubes of a mild yellow cheese -- Colby is my fave for this, and a sharp cheese is kinda pointless here -- and salt and pepper to taste. Toss just enough so that the cheese isn't clumped.

It's not mac&cheese, or even the deliciously chemical-flavored Kraft dinner, but it's ridiculously easy comfort food all the same. You need good butter to get the full unctuous sense of well-being that this dish can provide.

(This is an authentic farm recipe from the heart of dairy itself, so scoff and the ghost of Vince Lombardi will mess with your head. Anyway, you can tell it's authentic because it's so completely microbiotic.)

C.

[Des von Bladet]

This "Worchestershire" sauce, is it an American perversion of Worcestershire sauce, or simply of its name?

(Of course, I support Gloucestershire CC, so I'm not terribly bothered either way. Especially since the one time I actually went to see Worcestershire play, the mighty Graeme Hick scored approximately nothing. Nice ground, though.)

[DJW]

That's almost exactly how I do it. Only major difference is I use a mushroom broth/milk combination, and the bits of mushrooms used to create the broth often find their way in to the final product. And I've never used worchestershire sauce, although it sounds solid. I have included sage.