"That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it."
-Goethe: Faust (reprinted on the dedication page of the Joy of Cooking).
I'm going to apologize for the delay between posts. I've been having trouble finding time to write, if not necessarily finding time to cook.
In other news, I may have found a maple bacon suitable to re create my Sweet Tooth Mexican Fried Rice. I'll let ya'll know how that goes.
The dish I'm going to share today isn't my own recipe, so I'm just going to refer you to the cook book I pulled it from and comment a little on how my own process differed.
The Recipe
I made a double helping of the baked macaroni recipe from the Joy of Cooking (34th Printing, March 1984). This is the first cook book I owned and, sad to say, the first time I've used it.
The Sauce
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| Off to a weird start. |
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| And continuing in the fashion. . . |
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| Doesn't exactly look appetizing at this point. . . |
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| I'd never shredded an onion before. Had plenty of leftovers. . . get ready to give your tear ducts a treat! |
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| Behold! Cheese! |
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| Bow to your cheddar-y god! |
The odd thing about this recipe, in my opinion, is that the sauce and the cheese are separate. When I make un-baked mac and cheese, the two things are one and the same. I might try this with a later baked mac and cheese by creating a cheese sauce and then mixing the other ingredients (egg, spices, herbs, onions, etc) into it. Or by adding the spices and eggs into the sauce and layering the more solid components into the noodle when I put it in the pan.
Okay, so here's how my own take varied from the recipe. First off, I didn't measure the cheese. Instead of measuring out two cups of the stuff (what a double recipe would call for) I opted to use an entire half-pound brick of smokey sharp cheddar. Remember this simple rule kids: when in doubt - MORE CHEESE!
The Noodles and Assembly
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| Well butter my noodle and call me a casserole. |
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| The fully assembled dish ready to go in the oven. |
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| Soon. Soon my plan will be complete. Muhahahahaha! |
I'm not going to lie. I normally just eyeball the amount of noodle to use. In this case, however, I stuck to the amount for a double batch of this recipe: 2 cups.
Actually preparing the noodle is no big issue. Just follow the directions on the box. The important details here are in the assembly. When you add the noodles into the pan you use (I used a bread pan) you need to be careful to layer your shredded cheese in evenly. I had some difficulties doing this as the cheese I use tends to like to stick to itself.
Once you've gotten all your macaroni into the pan with the cheese layers, pour your sauce in over it. Try to be as even as possible here. Once that's done, cover the top in your extra cheddar and top it with something crumbly. The recipe calls for Au Gratin which is a dry bread crumb mix that can include cheese. Instead of making this, I opted to just shake out some Parmesan cheese.
The Results
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| IT LIVES! |
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| Om nom nom! |
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| *CHOMP* |
Either because of a natural flaw in the recipe or because of a failure to adequately distribute the cheese I was able to taste distinct zones of 'cheesiness' and 'egg-i-ness.' I'm definitely making this with a straight up cheese sauce next time.
Another issue I had was that the parsley tended to cluster up together, so parts of the dish had none and in other parts it was overwhelming. In future iterations of the dish I might leave it out altogether, opting for red pepper or some sort of meat instead.
The shredded onion was unobtrusive, so if oniony taste and texture isn't your thing, don't be afraid.
Altogether the dish was tasty, despite its flaws and my thoughts on improvements. I finished off the leftovers in about two days.
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