Foodie Friday: Mac & Cheese!
Yum! It's Foodie Friday! As you can see, I heart healthy to guilty pleasure foods!
Welcome to my first FOODIE FRIDAY blog! As some of you know, I am a huge foodie. I love cooking. I love watching THE FOOD NETWORK and THE COOKING CHANNEL. I have seen all the Top Chefs and any other cooking-related competitive reality show out there. I dream one day of hosting my own food show called ARE YOO HUNGRY? 🙂
Every Friday, I figured I’d just blog about my favorite foods, favorite TV food shows, favorite recipes, and any favorite places I go to eat. (Yes, I’m one of those annoying people who posts pictures of the food she eats on Twitter and Facebook! LOL!) And I will feature the occasional guest foodie blogger, so keep an eye out for that!
So I figured, why not start off the inaugural FOODIE FRIDAY with a tribute to my all-time favorite comfort food… MAC & CHEESE? 🙂
(Keep reading after the jump for the mac ‘n cheesy details…)
I Heart Mac & Cheese!
I heart Mac & Cheese! You can never have enough! 🙂
Whenever I am stressed out or need comfort food, mac & cheese is my “go-to” dish. I love mac & cheese so much that I occasionally guest blog as “Paula Parmesan” on my friend Hilary Havarti’s blog, http://www.weheartmacandcheese.com/
I normally make Emeril’s famous Mac & Cheese recipe. It’s such a great, basic recipe. You can find it here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/ems-mac-n-cheese-recipe/index.html
Here are the basic ingredients: cheese, flour, milk, pasta, salt, pepper!
The basic ingredients for your classic Mac & Cheese!
I like to use a mix of extra sharp cheddar, parmesan, mozzarella, and pecorino romano.
You can NEVER have enough cheese!
I melt a couple tablespoons of butter with equal parts flour in a pan to create a roux.
Roux, roux, roux your boat... (sorry! It was too punny! LOL!)
I also set a quart pan of water to boil on the other stove burner. AND I also turned on the oven to 350 degrees. Then I add milk slowly, stirring it in little by little, until I get this nice sauce. It should be thick but not too thick that it clumps, more like a smooth thick gravy consistency that coats the wooden spoon. (Again, I don’t measure stuff but cook by feel and eyeball the ingredients, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was about 3/4 cup of milk I tend to use.)
You know the roux is ready when it coats the back of your spoon and doesn't drip off!
Then you add the cheese and stir it until it melts… the cheese sauce should be thick and smooth and coat the wooden spoon.
Again, you can never have enough cheese! LOL! 🙂
Then you add salt and pepper and a hint of cayenne pepper and stir it all together! Just add a few pinches at a time to taste. Warning re: cayenne pepper – go easy on the stuff, it can overpower your dish. I use barely a pinch of cayenne pepper, really just as an enhancement.
Yum. I could just drink this cheese sauce alone. Not that I've ever done that before, uh... 😛
I then stir the pasta and cheese sauce together until all the pasta is coated. Then I dump the whole mess into a buttered baking dish, top it with bread crumbs and more shredded cheese, and then bake the whole mess for 20 minutes or so at 350 degrees. (The temperature may vary according to your oven. Ours is at least 20 degrees hotter than it says, so we tend to undercook just in case, LOL!)
The final product? Yum!
I heart Mac & Cheese! You can never have enough! 🙂
Now I’ve done variations on this where I add fontina cheese and bacon. There are a ton of other recipes I want to try, especially one I saw on Ina Garten’s THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA show. I’ll post my future mac & cheese adventures on a future Foodie Friday blog!
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Well, that’s my first Foodie Friday blog. What are YOUR favorite comfort foods, especially when you are on a writing deadline? I look forward to your comments! Until the next FOODIE FRIDAY, Happy Eating! 🙂 … Oh yeah, and Happy Writing! WRITE LIKE YOU MEAN IT! 🙂
14 Responses
Well, looking at my fridge right now, I’d have to say pizza and blueberry spice muffins. That could also just be a reflection of the fact the weather back here went from comfortable to AUGH IT IS HOT in the last few days, and cooking is the last thing I want to do.
I make almost the exact same mac’n’cheese you do, with three differences: I generally use a ricotta as well, just to sort of smooth and round out the taste of the cheeses, I use nutmeg as well as cayenne, and I almost always add a head of (chopped) cauliflower to the pasta water to blanche, and then bake it all together. Bacon will go in it, too, if I have any on hand.
Cayenne adds a nice touch of heat, but nutmeg adds a deeper flavour – it’s rounder, rather than the sharp spike of cayenne.
I like adding cauliflower because, aside from extending the amount of mac’n’cheese for leftovers (which is really when it’s best, right?), it gives the pretense of at least a bit of health. 😉
Kelly! OMG ricotta sounds FANTASTIC. I forgot to mention nutmeg yes that is great to use. The cayenne – yes, I’ve used that before but once I put too much in. I like the cauliflower idea – that is good lowcarb way to go if you replace pasta with that. I am gonna try that! Tnx! I’m glad I’m doing Foodie Fridays, I will get lots of fun ideas for new recipe tweaks! 😉
Yeah, I suppose you *could* replace the mac’n’cheese with the cauliflower. I’d rather have both, though. 😉
I’m *shamelessly* stealing your weekday writing themes (with credit), with hope that this helps me actually get my butt back in gear and to writing.
(By the by, this is Rocza from Twitter. Since there isn’t the helpful obscuring cat icon to identify me here, heh!)
LOL! yes, cauliflower ONLY in diet emergency. OTherwise, pasta included. 🙂 And tnx for the Rocza tip. 🙂 Let me know your weekday themes, too! Yes, it’s a way of keeping my website active. The front home page changes weekly, but I figured might as well do something with the blog too. I can’t predict how long it will last but at least it’s a way to keep my website current!
Oh, pretty similar to yours: Music Monday, Tuna Tuesday, Writing Weds, Pop Culture Thursday (cleverness ran out there), and Foodie Friday. I’m fond of alliteration, too. 😉
Hi, Enjoyed your first week of blogs! Mac & Cheese is a wonder food. We had a lobster mac & cheese last night at Hubert Keller’s Fleur and it reminded me that I love adding things to basic recipes. I think one of my favorite things to add to mac & cheese is tuna and peas. It’s cheesier than a normal tuna and noodle casserole. I’ve also added bacon, sausage and any number of vegetables. Some kale added to mac and cheese gives it a whole new dimension.
So, eventually I’ll have a new cat and I can chime in on that subject as well. Until then, all I need to do is get both my blogs back up and regular. You’re inspiring me!
Thanks! Oh I would LOOOVE to try Hubert keller’s m&c. I like the tuna and peas idea too. Bacon – always. Kale – unique, I will try that! Yes, your blogs are so great. My goal is to keep my blogs short and focused because the longer the blog, the harder it is to get anyone to read them, plus I don’t want blogging to take away from my writing. So it’s always a work in progress, trying to figure out the art of blogging. 🙂
Hubert Keller’s Fleur was really amazing. We spent too much, but it was worth it. It was the type of elegant food that I could just keep eating way past my hunger limits. Maybe next time you come back to LV we can go there.
To me, kale is the vegetable version of bacon. It makes everything better.
I should add that just this week we got to try a Hatch Green Chili Mac & Cheese from the Sloppi Jo’s Truck, a local food truck here in Vegas. Talk about delicious!!!
THAT SOUNDS AWESOME!
I’m a foodie too, but the kind that appreciates other people’s cooking and doesn’t do much of her own. 😉 I only bake…thank goodness for hubby who is a terrific cook. We’re always watching Food Network too (which is a bad thing after dinner because I just want to eat again).
My comfort food (one of them anyway) is congee! My husband makes a terrific one with turkey carcass (Thanksgiving leftover). My mom used to make the salty pork and thousand year old egg congee which was my favorite.
I am not good at baking, that’s a special skill, so that’s awesome T! I love congee, we have the Korean version too. It’s very comforting. Your mom’s and your husband’s congee sound AMAZING.
How does the Korean version differ from the Chinese one? Do you have a recipe? Hint, hint! 😉
Sadly, no recipe, my mom just made it whenever I got sick as a kid. 🙂 I should research this, maybe a future foodie blog? 🙂
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