Mac & Cheese

Last week, my work had a “how to make a comfort food lunch” webinar. They do a “how to make healthy lunches” thing every now and again and that was the most recent. Our intrepid nutritionist made macaroni and cheese. It seemed to take too long and I have a Cook’s Illustrated recipe that I’ve been wanting to try, so here we are…

I timed myself. I have attention focus disorder. When I’m busy doing something, I don’t notice time passing normally. I took a picture at each milestone. The time is in the caption.

The pasta is first. In our webinar, that was so that it could boil in the background while she did other things. For this recipe, it’s so that it can hydrate.

1 3/4 cups (8.75 oz) all-purpose flour
2 large eggs plus 5 large egg yolks
5 tsp extra virgin olive oil

Process flour, eggs and yolks, and olive oil in food processor, about 30 seconds. Turn dough ball onto counter and knead until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Wrap in plastic and let rest at room temp for at least an hour or up to 4 hours.

I’d never made dough in a food processor, before. This turned into that “pea sized gravel” that one is supposed to aim for with pie crust. It was quite moist and kneaded together easily.

I’ve become a big fan of measuring by weight. The accuracy issue is a thing, but it’s also convenience. I tried to get a measuring cup into that canister to scoop out a cup, but it’s difficult and annoying. Just dumping 8.75 ounces on the scale is much easier. In the same vein, I have no idea what a teaspoon of olive oil weighs. I can pour into teaspoon – although that’s also annoying because teaspoons are small; I used two scant tablespoons.

It took an additional 5 minutes to get everything cleaned up and start the dishwasher. Imagine me spending the next two hours energetically doing something productive. That’s not what happened, but it sounds better.

Next step: Béchamel. Interestingly, our webinar cook did the same thing. She did it with the sautéed onions. I’m not sure why she used olive oil instead of butter (it’s mac & cheese!), but it was at least béchamel-ish. This is an Italian recipe, so it is besciamella, but whatever. Since it’s from The Most Serene Republic of San Marino, I doubt mislabeling their sauce will disturb them.

3 Tbl butter
1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp nutmeg
3 cups milk, divided
1/2 cup water

This is a bit weird to support not boiling the pasta.

Melt butter in 10-inch broiler proof skillet over medium heat. Add flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg and cook, stirring constantly, about 1 minute. Slowly whisk in 2 cups milk and bring to boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Cook, whisking occasionally, until sauce is thick and smooth, about 5 minutes.

Transfer 1 cup to liquid measuring cup. Add water and remaining 1 cup milk to skillet and whisk until smooth. Set aside.

They may be serene, but their mac & cheese is complex. The next step is “nidi”, whatever that means. I guess I’m serene, too, because I’m not worried about it.

6 oz fontina cheese, shredded
6 oz white mushrooms, chopped
6 oz ham, diced
1/4 cup Parmesan, grated

Quarter the pasta dough. Roll each quarter into a 6×20 rectangle. Start by hand-shaping a 3×3 even (this is critical) square. Roll it into a 3×6 rectangle. Roll that into a 20×6 rectangle. Flour surface, flip, use rolling pin correctly, etc…

Tidy all the 6×20 rectangles into actual rectangles of the same size. Cut them in half. Line four of them up and cover with 2 Tbl béchamel and filling.

I don’t usually hand roll pasta (I have a pasta roller for that, but it’s not 6″ wide) so it took me a while and you can see that “same size” is a stretch goal.

Having a scale was handy here, too. That’s half of them, so 3 oz of each filling. Dump that on the scale, then pull out 0.75 ounces for each one. The sauce comes from the cup poured out before diluting it with water and more milk. Amazingly, a cup is enough for 2 tablespoons on each of eight pieces of pasta. (The world really needs a sarcasm font.)

Transfer 1 cup of the thinned béchamel to now-empty measuring cup and set aside. Cut each roll crosswise into 3 equal pieces and transfer, cut side down, to skillet. Drizzle reserved sauce over top. Spray aluminum foil with grease, seal tightly, bake at 375 for one hour.

Dishwasher emptied, loaded with new dirty stuff, and all cleaned up by 1615.

I can hardly throw stones at the webinar version taking 40 minutes when mine took twice as long – even if one excludes making the pasta. In my defense, she didn’t have to roll out the pasta, which took much longer than expected. In her defense, mine does not include roasted vegetables, which is not exactly a speedy process.

Was it worth it? I think so. There is definitely room for improvement.

• It’s a bit more béchamel-y than cheese-y. Fontina is too bland. The fontina came in a 5 ounce package, so I added an ounce of cheddar. I think smoked gouda or smoked cheddar would taste amazing.
• The recipe called for deli-sliced “Black Forest Ham”. I bought some random chunk of ham (that’s why the waffle iron/panini maker is in the background of a couple of pictures; I’ve been making ham and cheese sandwiches with it). Something with a more distinctive flavor would be good (spam is not out of the question).
• I like the idea of making béchamel in the sauteed onions – perhaps with a bit of garlic. I will not use olive oil, though. Onions and garlic are yummy sauteed in butter. I wonder if the mushrooms would be improved by that – but then I’d need to fish them out before making the sauce. Probably not worth it.
• The pepper and nutmeg basically disappeared. That’s probably the purpose of the nutmeg: It adds umami; if you taste nutmeg, you used too much. More pepper would be good, though.

I must thank both my employer and our webinar cook for inspiring me to finally make this.