Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A long and winding blog entry

Work has become a little bit of a hard slog lately. I'm busy, but I know that I've only got a few weeks to go. With my time in London limited I have been doing a lot more both during the week and on the weekends, which means that Mondays are especially difficult.

The only thing that gets me through the day on a Monday is MODEL MONDAY MADNESS! Fashion reality television reigns supreme on Monday. First we had Make Me A Supermodel US (MMASUS), and now it's the latest season of America's Next Top Model (ANTM).

This has started a bit of a Monday dinner party tradition for me. Apart from when I was in Munich, each Monday I have people over for dinner and we dissect and judge the pretty people.It started off as a casual affair, with Angela coming over for Chicken Kiev, and has grown into a culinary delight, with me trying out new recipes for Angela and Kasia this week.

And my baked macaroni cheese went down an absolute treat! Angela licked the saucepan of any leftover bechamel sauce and supported Jaala's claim that I should open my own cafe. Jaala and I have discussed this many times. My cafe would be an open kitchen and dining room, where guests would have to sit and talk to me while I cooked, and eat whatever I decide to dish up that day. Oh, and the guests would have to bring a bottle of wine. Them's the rules.

So anyway, I present to you, my Delicious Baked Macaroni Cheese recipe!

Purchase oven proof bowls, big enough for an individual serve.

Cook macaroni. I don't know how much, just whatever you think.

Cut up maybe four or five rashers of bacon, fry, then remove from pan before they get too crispy.

Dice half an onion, fry until soft, add two finely diced cloves of garlic and fry for another little while but not so long that the garlic burns.

Add the bacon back to the pan, stir around, turn off the heat and set aside.

In a saucepan melt a wad of salted butter, a big wad, on low heat. Once melted add an equal amount of flour, until it sort of looks like play doh, then stir constantly for one minute to cook off the flour.

Over low heat, add a quarter cup of milk. The flour and butter mixture (roux) will absorb it quickly and turn into mush. This is good. Add another quarter cup of milk and stir. Keep adding milk until the sauce thins out a little and then start whisking to get rid of lumps.

The amount of milk required depends on how much roux you made. I don't know the correct amount. Hang on. *Googles a recipe* For 50g of butter and 50g of flour you should need about 500ml of milk. Use common sense though - less milk, thicker sauce.

Once you have a smooth sauce add cheese. Shit loads of cheese. At this point my bechamel sauce starts to resemble a cheese fondue mixture. This is good.

Mix sauce with macaroni, bacon and onion mixture, and approximately 10 grinds of pepper.

Spoon mixture into bowls and top with more grated cheese.

Cook in the oven for however long it takes to make the sauce bubble a little. This is where glass oven proof bowls are awesome. Maybe 10-15 minutes or so. Then turn the oven grill on for 3-5 minutes to crips up the top.

Serve with a side salad, to counteract the fact that you are eating hardcore carbs and cheese for dinner.

Voila!

1 comment:

SuvvyGirl said...

A wad of butter...I love it! I will have to remember this term for my own recepies. I will have to try this though it sounds very yummy. I finally mastered my rue for my country gravy so I should be able to handle this.