Needy Macaroni

I just can’t help but snipe at serenity. This is version two of Nidi di Ronide from The Most Serene Republic of San Marino (version one, for backstory).

The differences:

• Smoked Gouda instead of Fontina. Fontina was too bland. The smoked gouda is excellent. It has a full-bodied flavor without being sharp. It came in an 8oz package, so there is extra cheese in this one.
• Real ham instead of that slimy, pressed stuff. Every time I buy a grocery store sliced ham, I swear I’m never going to buy another one, yet I keep doing it. I was at the Farmer’s Market (to give Deb some cookies), so I picked up some actual ham (from Maude Hog and Cattle). This is much better, although it made me realize that it’s time to sharpen my knives.
• Lion’s Mane mushrooms. While at the Farmer’s Market, I ended up chatting with the Black Hills Mushrooms folks, so why not get fresh mushrooms? They had lots of lion’s mane and I like them. A serendipitous change that turned out well, if a bit bland. A garlic butter sauté (got to love spellcheck for the accented vowels), first, seems like a good idea, but this is already painfully slow to make.
• Ham fat in the béchamel (if one uses all “e”s for that, spellcheck will fix it with the accent). It’s real ham, so it has a fat rind. I cut that off the slices, fried it, then removed the pieces before adding the butter for the sauce. It’s subtle, but adds some depth to what’s basically biscuit gravy.
• Onion and garlic powder in the béchamel. A 1/2 tsp of onion powder. A 1/4 tsp of garlic powder. I didn’t want to deal with sautéing them, let alone fishing the mushroom pieces out. Powder seemed a good work-around. This was an excellent decision. Much better tasting sauce.
• Baking dish instead of skillet. I had to let the cast iron skillet soak to get all the remains off it. Cast iron doesn’t like that. I used a casserole dish this time. As you can see from the picture, it’s aesethically important to wipe the excess sauce off the sides, which I did not do.
• Pasta roller instead of hand rolling. This wasn’t any faster. If anything, it took longer because there were more pieces. It did result in thinner, more consistent noodles. I’m not sure what I’ll do next time. There are advantages to working on improving my hand rolling skills.

To roll the noodles, I decided that an eighth of the dough at a time was a good amount, mainly because it’s easy to measure by eye. There’s a reason base-2 fractions are common. The trick to getting the same width out of the roller is to put the same width into the roller. These were about two inches wide by a half inch thick before being rolled, which resulted in about four inches wide after rolling.

After ensuring it has some flour on it (“lightly floured surface” is cookbook speak for that), fold it in half – ish. Overlap the wide parts and let the tips land where they may because you’re going to cut them off with the dough scraper. Then unfold and cut at the fold line.

Repeat until out dough. Recycling the trimmed bits resulted in a ninth eighth. Lay them out just like the original recipe. I did three eighths, six sheets, at a time.

As you can see, even with the pasta roller, size consistency is still a stretch goal.

Fill and roll them. The difference is there will be more of them so you need to reduce the stuffing. I had odd amounts (8oz cheese, 6oz ham, 5oz mushroom). I used a heavy 0.5oz for the cheese, 0.5oz for the ham, and a light 0.5oz for the mushroom. This results in much mental arithmetic to subtract as you pull filling out of the bowl. I didn’t try to be overly precise (4.32 – heavy 0.5 is 3.7 or so. Etc…). Note the left two unrolled ones. They’re in the same filling state, but the leftmost has been patted even. That’s very helpful for rolling. If there is not enough flour underneath and they stick to the counter, well, that’s what the dough scraper is for, isn’t it?

Pour a cup of the reserved, thinner bechamel from the skillet into the now-empty measuring cup. (I didn’t do this, which is why there is a burned streak on the corner of the casserole dish – that’s where I poured it from.) Pour the rest in to the casserole dish.

Slice the rolls into smaller rolls, put them into the casserole dish, drizzle reserved sauce over the top. Wipe down the sides to remove excess sauce, which will burn (do as I say, not as I did). Bake covered on rack 2/3 to top at 375 for an hour. Remove aluminum foil and broil until browned.

I expected to do halves, since these are four inches(ish) and the original was six inches(ish). I did thirds to get more pieces. I think it was the correct choice for the 11×9 baking dish. If you use a smaller dish, halves will probably work better.

Bob’s my uncle – and he loves mac & cheese, but hates spaghetti. He also loves bacon & eggs, but dislikes omelets. Oh. That’s a different blog post, which I don’t seem to have actually posted so there is no link. I just wrote it just to get it out of the way.

Bonus points to anyone who recognizes the wine glass. Hint: If you’re not a coworker, you’ve got no chance.