2011.02.13 Macaroni and Cheese

I'm not having a bad day at all, but if I were, this would be the meal for it.  There is a classic quote about French cooking that goes something to the effect, that the secret to a good meal is hiding fat in every bite.  Think about mashed potatoes, or souffle, or a croisiant.  What's the basic idea?  Layering fat into a carbohydrate.  Fat by itself can be cloying or heavy.  Just think about the last time you ate a big chunk of cheese.  It was delicious, but, you probably were not thinking that the overall aesthetic was transcendental.  But, now, melt some brie inside of a puff pastry--or that first light, crunchy, airy, and saliva-inducing bite of a brioche in the morning and you get the picture.

Now, you can see why mac & cheese comes together to from the perfect meal.  Its the basic winning formula of fat layered into carbohydrate.  Problem is, as easy as the basic idea is, the execution can be pretty complicated.  After all, a giant bite of fat is kind of unpleasant, and a giant bite of carbs can be blase.  Execution is key.  It's why melting a stick of Velveeta and butter into some elbow macaroni just isn't going to cut it.  We have to take things back to basic and create a liquid medium to hold all the fat from the cheese we are about to layer into pasta.

Macaroni and Cheese Recipe

Things start off with the classic French white sauce, the Sauce Bechamel, which is basically just a roux to which milk has been added.  We up the fat ante-slightly in this dish and add cream to the roux, which technically creates a sauce Supreme.  This thick milk-cream sauce, sweetened with a little nutmeg is great on its own--and I want to stress the addition of the nutmeg.  Just a pinch adds a whole new dimension to the sauce which cannot be missed.  Addition of cheese to the milk-cream sauce results in a Sauce Mornay.

The sauce Mornay is left to simmer for several minutes.  Then, we add the macaroni (I could not find macaroni in Dublin so I had to settle on ear-shaped dried pasta that went by the name gnocchi, but, which certainly were not gnocchi) and some sauteed wild mushrooms.  Stir this and lay it into a ceramic baking dish.

  

The next step is the topping, which is really important to get right.  Remember, we're not just making a cheese and pasta mixture to be baked, we are really making a layered pasta gratin.  The topping to that gratin is important to give the correct mouth feel and add one additional layer of fat-carb emulsion.  First step is a layer of comte cheese, which is delicious.  Onto this is added a good dose of homemade bread crumbs. 

To make the bread crumbs, I took left-over no-knead bread, put it in the food processor (which incidentially is the first time I have ever used a food processor).  Spun the blade a few times and made some home made bread crumbs.  The final result cannot even be comapred to store bought crumbs.  The effect is like biting into bread that has been sauteed in butter rather than just having a dry and crunchy crust.  Finally a tablespoon of fresh thyme made the whole thing gorgious and added a great herb background taste and smell which paired incredibly well with the earthiness of the wild mushrooms.

Bake for only 20-25 minutes at 375.  I found the top browned just fine by itself.  The final result was absolutely gorgeous.  Probably as good as mac and cheese can get.

Word to the wise--let this guy cool down for a good 20-30 minutes.  If you eat it piping hot, you are going to loose a lot of the more subtle flavor interplay between the cheese and herb and mushrooms.  Each bite is heaven--light and airy.  No feeling of grease or fat--the sauce is velvety and silky.  And, the crust is, like I said before, light, airy and crisp. The buttery top crackles and then gives way to the silken cheese and pasta below.  As good a dish as there ever was. Until tomorrow.