Hot Dish Review

Winter is a great time to hibernate with your honey. Although it wasn’t very cold, me and ST decided to stay in and snuggle up to a couple of bottles of red wine, an organic rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods, and some homemade mac & cheese.

In honor of the Australian Open, we picked up a bottle of 2006 Australian red called Yard Dog. It’s a blend of petit verdot, cab, and merlot with a really cool label and a screw top. Pretty tasty. We ended up opening the bottle of 2007 Volver tempranillo I already had purchased, despite its unattractive label, at Ansley Kroger (the best wine store in Atlanta, by the way).

I had pulled a couple of mac ‘n’ cheese recipes out of magazines over the last few months, some with three cheeses, others with cream cheese, ham and spices. There were so many variations it was hard to come up with a solid recipe. I ended up loosely basing mine on a three-cheese pasta bake from Southern Living.

Thankfully, there are no photos of the process….not a pretty sight. It was quite a fiasco. The cheese sauce was absolutely delicious, prior to baking. However, once baked, the dish was rather dry. Maybe more sauce, less pasta? (I only used 3/4 of the pasta that I cooked). Maybe eat it without baking it? Here’s the recipe. let me know if you have a solution to the dry outcome!

SMOKY HOMEMADE MAC & CHEESE

4 oz. macaroni
1 tbsp. butter
1 tbsp. flour
1 cup 2% milk
1/4 cup grated fontina
1/4 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup grated smoked gouda
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. fresh ground pepper
pinch of cayenne

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare pasta according to package directions, al dente. Grease two 6″ individual casserole dishes with cooking spray or butter.

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour, cooking for one minute. Gradually whisk in milk and continue cooking 3-5 minutes. Stir in the three cheeses, garlic, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Add cooked pasta to the sauce and stir to coat, then pour into the individual casserole dishes. Top with bread crumbs and bake for 20 minutes.

That’s it! I wanted to put bacon in it but didn’t have any (what the fuck, no bacon?). Anyway, the flavor was great. Also, I wanted to use an interesting pasta like cellentani but ended up with regular elbows….I’m sure penne or shells would be a good choice too.

Maybe the mac & cheese didn’t turn out exactly like I expected but I was with ST and that’s always delicious.