Friday, October 9, 2009

My favourite comfort food: Mac and Cheese




Mac n Cheese is one of my favourite comfort food. I do not scout for the best mac and cheese in town as I used to think all mac and cheese taste the same. I was so wrong. There are so many variations to the recipe and one can use from 2 types of cheese to 7 types of cheese to prepare this yummylicious serving of M n C. All the different type of cheese sound greek to me. From swiss gruyere, emmanthal to mimolette blah blah blah ... What are they? Yes, cheese. I know I know... I 'think' I know. Since young, I only know cheddar cheese, blue cheese etc. Never had I for once come across such exotic cheese names. One day, I decided to try making mac & cheese, so I stumbled upon Chubby Hubby on a random search for M n C recipe. I tried his other recipe on Mexican wedding cookies before and it worked well for me, so I've full confidence in his recipe.

It wasn't easy getting Mimolette cheese though I understand Chubby Hubby mentioned where he got his. As I don't drive, I prayed hard that I can get M cheese in the supermarket in town rather than the one located in Dempsey Road (unless I am left with no choice). Finally, I found my M at 'The Market Place' in Tanglin mall shopping centre. Yay!! They sell kinds of cheese. And if you want to learn more about cheese, you can go to cheese.com .


Recipe from: Chubby Hubby


Since this is my first attempt, I approximately half all the ingredients mentioned in his recipe. I omitted bay leaf and kirsch.

Ingredients:
200g marcaroni
400ml
300ml water
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon flour
50g mimolette, diced
50g swiss gruyere, diced
50g emmanthal, diced
20g parmesan, grated
100g mozzarella, shredded
salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Pour the milk into a pot and add the water in. Add salt to the liquid and bring to a simmer.  Add the macaroni and cook until al dente.  Al dente is an adjective which describes pasta that has been cooked so as to be firm but not hard. Explanation provided by wikipedia . Drain the macaroni and kept aside. Keep the liquid ** used to cook the macaroni.

Pre-heat oven to 175 deg celsius.

In a pot, melt the butter in low heat. Off the heat, add the flour and stir quickly until completely combined. Bring the pot to the heat, add the liquid** slowly into the pot and keep stirring constantly until the liquid simmer and thickens abit. Keep aside a small handful of diced cheese and add the remaining diced cheese and mozzarella to the sauce and continue stirring slowly till all the cheese melted. Add the macaroni to the cheese mixture and mix well for a minute. Pour the macaroni into a baking dish. Sprinkle the top with the diced cheese and parmesan cheese and bake for 30 mins.




Notes: Mimolette cheese takes a long time to melt, so it is better to dice the cheese to much smaller bits compared to gruyere and emmanthal.


Enjoy!

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