If you have one, that is. And none of the ingredients had better come from a bright yellow box.
I have a recipe that I’m proud of, which I have always served to rave reviews. But tomorrow I’m baking one for my coworkers & decided to stop in here to check for possible suggestions or modifications.
I start with a medium roux & add milk until I have about three cups in liquid volume. Add 1 tbsp of double strength mustard & enough ground pepper until the roux becomes heavily speckled (yes the final product will have a peppery hint). Once the roux is hot, I add various blends of grated cheese depending on what I happen to have lying around. I always use at least a half pound of extra sharp cheddar, and try to blend in an equal amount of gruyere or romano- something to give an otherwise bland dish a little “twang”.
The trick is to get the proportion of roux to cheese right, otherwise you’ll end up with a mass of elbow noodles all glued together by cheese. The final cheese/roux mixture should be about as thick as egg nog so that after baking, the M&C will be gooey, and you won’t need a knife to cut sections out of the baking dish, like brownies.
Boil noodles until until firm, them pour into a large baking dish (mine is pyrex 13×9×2 and one box of large elbow noodles fills it to the top). Then pour the roux/cheese mixture over & let it seep into the noodles. Then sprinkle a little cheddar over the top so that the noodles aren’t exposed to the oven elements (damn my stupid electric oven).
Chop up some parsley & sprinkle on top, sparingly. This is mainly for decoration; I can’t detect the flavor of the parsley after baking but the dish looks blah without it.
Bake at 450° for 20 minutes, then change oven setting to broiler and position the dish directly under the elements. Allow to brown to taste (I like mine crispy- almost burnt on top, but would never make it this way for company). This will take only a few minutes… watch it closely! Two minutes too long may make the whole dish inedibly burnt.
So… feel free to chime in with you hints & secret recipies.
(Yes, Zenster, I have posted my dish in The Ultimate Recipe Thread, but wanted to have the topic line show up for maximum response before tomorrow)