Thalia Learns to Cook: Fancy Mac and Cheese

Recipes and examples of dishes I can now make! Taken from a variety of sources and changed according to my abilities, needs, and dislike of doing dishes.

I was recently the proud owner of a lot of cheese. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot. Like, picture a cocktail party platter worth of cheese.... and no one ate any. Delicious cheddar, munster, gouda, havarti etc. So, what do you do with a large amount of cheese? Fondue? Nah, too drippy. Simply sit and eat cheese until you feel like a mouse? Um, perhaps an overwhelming dairy based feeling that you're not going to like. How about something that is comforting, brings up remembrances of cold days and comfort. Ah hah! Mac and Cheese!

So I decide to look up online fancy recipes for homemade mac and cheese from scratch. Apparently, you should start with a white roux. Basically, this is a mix of butter and flour.

However, I think I did it wrong, because when I mixed 4 TB of butter with 6TB of flour, I ended up with something that looked more like dough and less like the base of a sauce. So I added more butter.

Ah, that's better. Then I started to add some milk, and more milk, until I got a nice creamy sauce. I continued to whisk like a mad woman. I was actually afraid that stopping to take pictures would cause the roux to have problems, but I couldn't leave you guys with no pictures!

Once I had a good thickness going, I started to add cheese. Using my genius moment from the carrot cupcakes a few weeks back, I decided to use the food processor to turn my cocktail sized lumps of cheese into delicious small pieces of easily meltable cheese. And it totally worked! Amazing!

Meanwhile, I chopped up all my ingredients. I decided on broccoli, mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes. I know they've gone out of style at this point, but I desperately love sundried tomatoes. I think they are delicious and add fabulousness to many pasta based recipes. I also love pesto. I will not apologize.

I used my favorite vegetable shortcut and microwaved the broccoli into submission. This was really easy. You just cut up the broccoli, add some water to the bottom of a bowl, and microwave it until it's soft. I actually overcooked it a bit, since it also then got to cook in the oven, but in the end it was delicious and look at that bright green!

Once my roux with cheese was melted, and the pasta was cooked, I mixed it all together with the cooked broccoli, sun dried tomatoes, and mushrooms, topped it with more cheese amazingness, and then a bunch of breadcrumbs to get some crunch on top. I baked it for 20 minutes at 350, and it was amazing. Really, really really bad for you, but amazing. A good use of leftover cheese! Highly recommended.