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March 9, 2006
Cooking for Kids 2- Mac and Cheese
Mmmmmm.... mac and cheese. Kids love it and I do too, especially with Survival Spice™. Add it to the mixture, or just sprinkle to taste at the table. This was for picky eaters, so no pictures of it with Survival Spice™ yet, you'll just have to use your imaginations for now! Throw in a few Parmesan Chicken Strips, and it's kid heaven.
This is a basic mac and cheese technique, based on a bechamel sauce, one of the mother sauces, that becomes a simplified Mornay sauce with the addition of cheese. See? You might have thought that French cooking is really complicated, but a Mornay sauce is just a cheese sauce. Okay, you can embellish a Mornay with stock or a egg liason, but still...
This stuff freezes pretty well, so I made a double batch. Here's some pics of mac and cheese in progress:
TPC's Mac and Cheese for Kids (and adults!)
Here's the bechamel, bubbling away. It's a blond roux of butter and flour, then milk and mustard is added and boiled until nice and thick. You have to boil your bechamel for it to thicken properly and to cook the flour. Don't skimp on this step, or you'll have mac and paste.
Turn the heat off and add your cheese. I'm using a kid-friendly colby here, but variations are great, just make sure that most of the cheese you're using is meltable. Parm, fontina, cheddar, jack, pepper jack, a little bit of brie or gorganzola, etc. Whisk until it's nice and smooth.
Add your cooked mac, stir well, and cook on low heat until everything's nice and bubbly, then transfer to baking pans, top with bread crumbs and broil until the crumbs are golden brown. Keep an eye on them, because they'll go from brown to black very quickly. You can do your bread crumbs in a food processor if you have one, and cutting in a little cold butter with them helps your topping brown more evenly.
Mmmmmm.... mac and cheese. Is it lunch time yet?
Posted by The Pragmatic Chef at March 9, 2006 10:46 AM
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Comments
Scott, the girls would love this. I wonder... does anyone know of a Vegan cheese that actually MELTS. Everything I have tried, crumbles or becomes grainey, or WORSE, liquid (like melted pudding with sand) - Blech. I use Velveeta with the G-unit, but I don't like the idea of all that "crap"... (plus it makes her sick to her stomach).
Help? I'd love to make this.
Posted by: Shelleigh (aka Pie Shell) at March 9, 2006 3:04 PM
Shelleigh, are the girls vegan or do they just not eat meat? Can/will they drink milk? There's no need to use processed cheeses, something like colby works really well as long as you make your bechamel sauce first. Whatever cheese you use, add it off of the heat first and stir it in well, then add your cooked mac. Once you have all of that stuff in there, you can turn your heat on low and cook it a bit without the cheese breaking.
I don't know a lot about vegan cheese, but I suspect they're really high in oil, which is why it's so easy to break them.
Let me know, and I'll do some thinking about it. I don't know if soy milk would make a decent bechamel or not.
Posted by: the pragmatic chef™ at March 10, 2006 10:11 AM
Soy makes a bearable bechamel but soy cheese won't melt for love or money. To make a decent vegan mac n' cheese you'll have to go to the uncheese cookbook and use one of their nut cheeses (essentially a raw nut butter with appropriate flavorings). Nut butters will take any number of flavorings and give a close aproximation to cheese but it's not exactly the same. The bechamel wouldn't be needed if you were going vegan. You'd just have to make a boatload of "saucy" nut butter (there are lots of recipes), pour it on the macaroni, put on the bread crumbs (Canoleo works as a good sub for butter), and voila!
Posted by: Ana at March 11, 2006 5:39 PM
Good stuff, Ana, thanks!
Posted by: the pragmatic chef™ at March 11, 2006 5:49 PM
Oak can't eat anything that comes out of a cow so I'm all hip to the vegan cooking thing.
Posted by: Ana at March 11, 2006 7:09 PM
Same here. Scott - Gabby LOVES cheese and milk, but they do not love her. I try to keep dairy limited... what I'm thinking I'll try is a combination of real Colby and one of the subs Ana suggested - half and half. We'll see what happens.
Thanks y'all!
Posted by: Shelleigh (aka Pie Shell) at March 12, 2006 1:37 PM
I LOVE this mac and cheese! We were fortunate enough to have an expert chef prepare it for us a few years back - my mouth is still watering.
Thanks for the hints for making it so yummy!
Posted by: Barbara Gibbs at November 6, 2007 12:09 PM