Mac n Cheese for Adults

Mac n Cheese.. for adults!

So this past weekend I made some adult variety mac n cheese. I must say that for me MnC is usually the blue box. Highly processed crap... I don't know.. maybe there is crack in it. Well this past weekend I made some potentially high "adult" mac n cheese. I think that is why i went down this route, it was not the typical MnC,it was different. Though I don't like the recipe as I got it. The roux base is way off, initially calling for 7 tbs of butter and 3/4 cp of flour... yeah needless to say this was the worst thing about it. Also I swapped the cheese out, Trader Joe's carries a 4 cheese Italian blend that I went with instead of the parmesean it asked for. Overall I liked it a lot, there is a huge amount of potential in this dish.

So the basically it called for the following..

1 lb of macaroni
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 milk
4 oz cheese (Parmesean is on the recipe I swapped this with the Quattro Formaggi from Trader Joes)
3/4 cp flour (I'd change this to 7 tbs of flour as it should be 1:1 ratio on flour & butter)
7 tbs of butter
1/2 tsp each of the following:
Salt
Pepper
Old Bay Seasoning (or eyeball the following - 1/4 tsp celery salt, 1/8 paprika & red pepper (not 1 each but 1/8 tsp total) I found Old Bay to be a bit of a luxury item considering it contains celery salt, black pepper, red pepper and paprika - in that order on the container.)
3/4 cp MINCED onion - Minced I said!

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

Boil up the macaroni to al dente, should be about 8 minutes. Follow the directions and go with the first number if you have a range i.e. 8-10 minutes, go with 8 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the pasta from cooking any further and set aside.

So you make the roux by melting the butter on med heat in a medium sized pot, then slowly whisk in the flour which should be a bit on the pastey side. We are looking for a light golden color, just before caramel. Then add the dry ingredients and then the milk & cream, then combine these in a casserole dish and cook for about 20 - 30 minutes until you get a slight golden crust.

Now this is a slightly modified version of what I had, notations made where I changed it.

Comida Yonke

First I do not speak Spanish at all... so don't let the title fool you. I have a very limited Spanglish vocabulary and get ridiculed by my wife all the time for my poor grammar and even "poorer" pronunciation.

So has the title says Junk Food... the items in question for the menu for this weekend. I've been wanting to make Sloppy Jose's and hot wings since before the Super Bowl. To add to this culinary antacid extravaganza, a new Mac n Cheese recipe I got from the LA Times.

To highlight the menu choices...

Less than 6 months ago I made hot wings from scratch. They turned out freaking great and I'm looking to recreate that. I need to refrain from "experimentation" as these were adequate and filled the craving and hot wing void that had accumulated over the months. Hooters was not in the budget and all in all one of my favorite wing places to go to. (I'm wondering if I could make a corn meal crust..... must... re..frain from.. experimentation...)

Second on the list is my experiment... Sloppy Jose's, the "Mexican" twist to Sloppy Joe's. Apparently loose meat  sandwiches are a dime a dozen and this once could even well be nothing new, but for me it is.


As I love nachos.. l-o-v-e'em and love all things spicy. I was thinking about a attempted meal my wife made from a Pillsbury cookbook, basically it was a cheeseburger macaroni-esque loose meat sandwich. They were ok... something was missing. The meat was ehn and they just did not have enough cheese oomph to them. So I started thinking why not take the Sloppy Joe and make em a bit spicier and add nacho cheese sauce to it. Now that I think about it.. I'm torn... tortilla or a hamburger bun. I'll make 'em both ways. The nacho cheese aspect will be made from scratch, I just need to figure out what chilies to use. The meat will be more on the ground beef taco meat side, so this will be a total WT meal.

hhmm.. The mac n cheese recipe is yet again an attempt to confirm that the only MnC that I like, comes from a box. I may tweak the cheese a bit on this as it calls for Parmegiano and add some Romano and Asiago to it as well.  Though for me.. I always have and always will love the blue box..