Not for the faint of heart.
Greg:
Teresa's birthday was yesterday, so I whipped up her favorite dish, which is of course my famous three-cheese Mac and Cheese. Since it was received with such laud and honor (the present company demanded that I crown it with a laurel wreath), I've decided to do something that I almost never do, which is publish one of my personal recipes.
I fully understand that doing so may get me in Dutch with the FDA or the AMA or one of those other agencies that try to safeguard some of our less-than-mentally-adroit citizens from expiring due to their own dietary negligence and misadventure, viz., eating D-cell batteries and the like. The fat content of this dish is alone enough to cause even the stoutest heart among us to seize up and shudder to a stop, the sodium content notwithstanding. That said, by way of illustration, a small-enough dose of strychnine will cause nothing more than ennui, so why not have just a little taste and leave the worrying to the eggheads? So here you go. Indulge. Just do so with the caveat that a serving of this dish no larger than a baby's fist is probably more than enough to kill you. Bon apetit!!
THREE-CHEESE MAC AND CHEESE
INGREDIENTS:
1 pound dry elbow macaroni
8 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons flour
4 cups whole milk
Salt to taste (more than a pinch, less than a fistful)
Black pepper to taste (more than a pinch, less than the GNP of Indonesia)
1-1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
About yay-much paprika
8 ounces shredded extra-sharp cheddar cheese
4 ounces shredded Jack cheese
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
Panko breading - enough to cover your ass with
Diced garlic - enough to please the gods
More Parmesan
More paprika
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. If you have some beer, drink one. Put on a Taj Mahal album. Start some water boiling in the biggest damn pot you have.
Now - melt the butter in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in the flour to make a roux. Let the roux get brown if you're feeling that adventurous. Pour in the milk and continue whisking like an absolute madman so that it doesn't scorch or stick to the pan. Sooner or later it will thicken to a creamy consistency, or it just might not just to piss you off. If it does boil, it'll sputter like a mud-filled caldera and blister your forearms if you're not careful. If it does not boil, but thickens up nice anyway, then immediately whisk in the salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, mustard and paprika.
Take the dry macaroni and throw it in the boiling water. Now go back to the roux. Reduce the heat and stir in all the cheeses. Keep stirring until you have an ubelievably awesome cheese sauce. Turn off the burner. When the macaroni is just shy of al dente, drain it and rinse it with cold water.
Remember the cheese sauce? Okay, now meld the mamcaroni and the cheese sauce in the big damn pot, the one you used to boil the macaroni. Once melded, pour it all into a well-buttered casserole dish. Sprinkle the top with the diced garlic, panko breading, and additional parmesan cheese. I will not hold it against you if you also add more salt and/or paprika, or actually go completely nuts and saute the breading in butter with cayenne pepper and garlic before sprinkling it on top. Dowhatchalike.
Place the whole damn thing (which should weigh about as much as a Holstein calf by now) on the center rack of the oven and let it bake for 30-45 minutes, or until bubbling.
EAT!!
Cheers, and give my best to Marie.
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