Meats & Hot Dishes - Macaroni and Cheese

We are into the most frightening depths of the cook book.  This and the next section frequently cause me to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with a paralyzing that some mayonnaise or cream of soup is coming up the stairs to get me.

Don't fall asleep.  Cream of soup's gonna get you.

Previously when I came to the Meats & Hot Dishes section, I made Chow Mein Hot Dish, and it was pretty terrible.  In returning to the section, I didn't want to cherry-pick the best looking or the worst looking recipe on the second page of the section.  It isn't my intention to skew perceptions (too much) of the food of this time period by making things look consistently horrendous, nor by downplaying some of the culinary poor decisions of the age either.  That said, I also don't want food to go to waste.  That last point made me pass on the Tuna Fish Loaf.  2 cups of "tuna fish", with little more than 1/4 of a teaspoon of green pepper or pimiento for seasoning.  Yeah, no thanks.  Instead, I hesitatingly went with the macaroni and cheese.

We make macaroni and cheese regularly here at home, both boxed and home made.  While I am not particularly interested in eating packaged ramen noodles any longer, I don't turn up my nose at boxed mac and cheese.  But given the choice between that and home made mac and cheese, there is no question.  So though, I wasn't inspired with confidence by the recipe, I thought it would be worth a try.

Why did I start blocking out the other recipes on each page?  That was silly.  Too bad I don't have an unaltered scan of this page any longer.  Oh well.

Preparation

If there is one thing to be said about the recipes in the cook book, it is that they are generally pretty easy.  This macaroni and cheese recipe is no different.  I'll sum this recipe up in nine words:  Make roux, melt cheese, cook noodles, mix, bake, eat.  That may be somewhat inaccurate though.  Let me try again, though it won't be quite as succinct.  Make roux, melt cheese, cook noodles, mix, bake, raise eyebrows, look in the refrigerator for dinner alternatives, sigh in resignation, eat.  Twenty one words.  Much better.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  To the cooking!

Dinner in five ingredients, and zero flavors.

Please forgive me for the poor quality of the following pictures. The batteries in the camera died just as I was getting started.  Pretend the blurry pictures are your tears.  Also, we needed to have some music while I was cooking.  Music for the night was Dire Straits.  Listen along to feel like you were having dinner with us.

So first we make a roux.  Making roux is simple and I've done it a number of times, but I always feel unsure of myself when doing it.  It's such a basic thing, but knowing that it is the base for so many classic sauces makes me feel like it is very important to get it just right.  Julia Child would probably be happy that I'm cooking and having fun though.

Thanks for the encouragement, Julia!

So it's roux time!

Roux!

Then we whisk in milk, and cook to thicken and then add a whole half cup of cheese!  Goin' crazy here. Now here is where you pretend that I've got a picture of cheese being whisked in, and then a picture of macaroni.  I don't though, but I do have a picture white soupy lake of sauce poured over those noodles.

Hmmm... this does not bode well.

I gave it a stir to attempt to distribute the pasta and sauce a little better.  Then it was time to sprinkle another whole half cup of cheese on top!

Here we go.

So here's the problem.  The directions say to bake the dish until the cheese is delicately brown.  Fine, ok.  But, as you can see below, after some time in the oven, the sprinkled cheese is floating on the sauce.  It could brown in time, but considering how the pasta is already cooked, I don't particularly want to cook it for another hour or more turning it to complete mush.  Yuck.

Not gonna brown.  Not gonna look much better either.

I put the broiler on for a couple minutes, but it was kind of a lost cause.  Everything is cooked, and we're hungry.  Time to eat.

Tasting and Reaction

I didn't get a good picture of the finished dish, but I do have a picture of a nice yellow and white dinner for James.  The blur in this case is James' natural state.  If he isn't moving and wiggling, he's probably sick or asleep.

Looks like a Minnesota meal to me.  Who needs color?  Not us.  Ski-U-Mah!

The dish is pretty runny, clearly having not set up.  There is a very high sauce to pasta ratio here, and it appears that the sauce broke a little bit.  At first James was excited, but became less enthusiastic with successive bites.

James – They’re really good with lots of cheese, and it’s really good with the salt [that I just put on].  I don’t really like to mix salt and pepper in the things I’m eating.  I really like salt and pepper when they’re just put in and not mixed.  I always like it that way.  If it’s mixed in, I can’t taste the flavor of it.

Me – It’s just kind of like a vaguely grainy cream sauce.  I don’t know that I taste very much cheese.

James – It’s REALLY cheesy.

James – I didn’t want you to put as much cheese in.

Me – What?  What do you mean?

James – I didn’t want you to put in the cheese that you can see.

At this point, he decided there was too much sauce, which he seemed to confuse for cheese.  I’m not going to let this go to waste.  I go back for another small helping and see that it has set up a little bit more.  It’s bland, but it’s filling.

Later:

James *sad voice* - Daddy, I don’t really like all that cheese.

Me – But James, there isn’t as much cheese in this as what we usually make.

James – But I don’t like it.

Me – Do you mean the sauce?  There is less cheese, but there is more sauce.

James – Yeah, I don’t like it as much.

Now after Sarah comes back from Thomas's bath

Me – What do you think, Sarah?

Sarah – It’s about what I expected.

Me – Yeah, it’s alright, just really bland.  The sauce is kind of grainy too.  I don’t know if that is the recipe or my technique.

Sarah – Or maybe it just means that Yvonne needs a husband.

Me - !!!

Later still.

Sarah – I think this would benefit from a lot of bacon.

Me – As it’s cooled down, it has gotten decidedly gross.

So the take away here is that this recipe fails because Yvonne doesn't have a husband to give her a reason to cook good food.  Poor Yvonne.  There is far too little cheese in the recipe, and far too much sauce.  I'd double the cheese and halve the sauce.  Sarah's idea about some crispy bacon would go a long way to giving the dish a little more character.  Even with those changes though, we'll probably stick to the Mac and Cheese With Roasted Butternut Squash recipe that we've been making for a few years.  We got it out of the food section in the Star Tribune and it makes an appearance on our table about once a month or so.  We will often use sweet potato instead of squash, which works just as well.  I'd highly recommend it even though it takes a bit of time to make.

If you didn't see the last post, there's a great show on the BBC about post-war food of Great Britain.  It's a lot of fun to see this family dealing with food, kitchens, attitudes, and technology of the post-war decades.  That poor mother though.  I included information on how to watch the show online even if you're not in the U.K.

Next time:  Salads.  Joy!