Foodie Friday: Mac & Cheese Picture Gallery! (Fri 9/11/09)

Here is the picture gallery for my new Foodie Friday blog tradition!

I posted the first Foodie Friday blog on Fri. Sept. 11, 2009 at this link:

http://paulayoo.com/content/foodie-friday-mac-cheese-fri-91109

The text for that blog has been cut and pasted below as well. I've included this as a photo gallery because you can click on each photo below for a larger view. Then click to the right to see the next photo.

Happy Eating and Happy Writing!

From the Foodie Friday Sept. 11, 2009 Blog:

Keep reading for a new Friday blog tradition - Foodie Fridays! Every Friday, I will highlight a dish I've made during the week while in the writing batcave. This Foodie Friday's dish of the week: Bacon Mac & Cheese Pappardelle!

Normally, baking a hot dish of mac & cheese is not my idea of a fun light summer lunch fare. It's too hot to bake! But I have a friend visiting from out of town, and she is a fanatic about mac & cheese, just like me! In fact, I occasionally guest blog as "Paula Parmesan" on my friend Hilary Havarti's blog, http://www.weheartmacandcheese.com/

So I decided to do a little test kitchen recipe today for lunch in honor of my friend's visit. I will be making her this dish tomorrow. There will be some variations - because there will be several people visiting, I'm going to use regular penne pasta. But while I was at Trader Joe's today, I was so tempted by this bag of homemade egg pappardelle pasta that I decided to experiment with it today for the test batch.
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

Today, I made a variation on this. A warning: I don't really measure stuff, I just sort of eyeball it, so I apologize for those of you who need specific measurements.

So here we go...

Here are some of the ingredients: Cheese grater, salt, pepper, extra sharp cheddar cheese, aged Emmenthal Gruyere cheese, Parmesan Reggiano cheese, flour, and the egg pappardelle pasta. I grated the cheddar, Gruyere, and Parmesan Reggiano in a bowl. About two cups worth.

Then I melted a couple tablespoons of butter with equal parts flour in a pan to create a roux. 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.

Check out the photo of what the roux looks like after you mix the flour and butter together for a couple minutes (which also helps get rid of the raw flour taste)...

Then you add milk slowly, stirring it in little by little, until you get this nice white 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 used).

Then you add the cheese and stir it until it melts...

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.

I took a photo to show you how the cheese sauce should be thick and smooth and coat the wooden spoon. If it's too watery, add more flour. Turn off the heat and set this pan of cheese sauce aside.

I didn't have any breadcrumbs so I improvised by grabbing a couple garlic salad croutons...

And by then, the water for the pasta was boiling, so I added the egg pappardelle pasta into the boiling water with some salt and olive oil. I let the pasta cook for 8 minutes. (I dumped in the whole bag.)

Then, once I had my water boiling and the cheese sauce set aside, I returned to the garlic croutons and smashed 'em up with the end of my knife handle. I then added some grated parmesan to the "bread crumb" mixture.

At the last minute, I thought, BACON! Normally I don't care for bacon in my mac and cheese, but I was experimenting. So I chopped up just one strip of bacon (you can use more, but I found one strip was quite enough - bacon is very powerful and can overtake the cheese flavor, so I'd recommend less is more when it comes to bacon and mac & cheese). So I quickly fried up the bacon here.

Now what I like about making this mac & cheese dish is that you can really prepare it all in about 30 minutes or less. At this point, the cheese sauce was done, the noodles had cooked, and the bacon had fried. Maybe about 20 minutes had gone by. So I drained the noodles and added them to the pan of cheese sauce.

I then stirred the pasta and cheese sauce together until all the noodles were coated. Now... I did make one mistake. By dumping in the entire bag of pasta, I had no idea the egg pappardelle would expand like it did, so I did not really have enough cheese sauce for a proper mac & cheese dish. It really became more of a light coating. But given how flavorful the egg pappardelle pasta was, it actually turned out to be quite tasty still. I would recommend perhaps doubling the cheese sauce ingredients if you want to make this with a whole bag of pasta. I might even triple it!

Then I poured the pasta and cheese sauce into a baking dish. Because I realized I didn't have enough cheese sauce, I went ahead and grated another cup of sharp cheddar and gruyere and sprinkled it, along with my crouton "bread crumbs" on top and then added the bacon on top. I then put this in the oven (which I had started pre-heating at 350 degrees at the start of this foodie adventure) and let it bake for 20 minutes.

And check out the photos of the final product. Cheesy, bacon-y goodness! It tasted delicious. The one strip of bacon was surprisingly strong, so definitely my decision to use less bacon was a wise one. The cheese sauce lightly coated the pappardelle, and it made for a rich and hearty lunch. I would recommend pairing this with a light salad of mixed greens and arugula and a quick dressing of olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh lemon juice.

So that was my first Foodie Friday blog entry.

Now that I've eaten and blogged twice today, I think it's time to return to the Writing Batcave and get at least the teaser revisions done for one of my projects, a pilot spec script. (Yes, I have to juggle both the books and scripts for my writing jobs. It's fun writing both - I'll have to do a script blog one day to talk about that process for those of you who are curious about that world.)

Happy Eating and Happy Writing!