Tired of hearing what not to eat?
I’m starting the new year with giving you tips on how to do it, how to wow and wooo it… I’ll say more than don’t roux using butter. I will tell you how to do it right! Deal?
DEAL CHEF. BUT WHAT’S ROUX?
What’s roux (rooo) you waskel wabbit? Glad you asked. You know that yumalicious Mac n Cheese you like to chow down on?
YES CHEF!
Well, it all starts with a roux. It’s the basis of a cream or cheese sauce that makes it stand up and be counted!
Well, the standard of a roux is flour and butter. But this New Year’s Eve, I had a couple of people over to play music… and you know musicians, right? Broke, broke and more broke.
So I decided to have everyone chip in and do comfort food. That means a good salad, pizza from scratch, Mac N Cheese, and for the people that would rather picnic it? A side of chicken salad sandwiches on great bread, coleslaw, mac salad, roasted garlic, hummus, cucumbers marinated in mirin and a bit of brown sugar, and dill pickles with a nice champagne toast at midnight, along with some dessert items and coffee. It was easy to make and we really rocked it out!
And can you imagine we jammed until 10 secs before the ball dropped? lol
It was the best New Years of my life, for sure! Music is a close second to cooking and singing harmony trumps cooking! lol
Getting back to the roux…. you usually heat butter and add flour and stir it up. But I was thinking it would be better to put the flour in the pan and drizzle in both walnut oil and coconut oil to create that pastie consistency. I set it up like we do pasta dough… liquid in the middle then putting flour into it a little at a time, adding more oil when I needed to. This time around?
I used a new product. An organic culinary spread. Hey! They named it that, not me! lol It worked well and added another layer of flavor you want in a Mac n Cheese.
And once you’ve got your roux? You can add what you like…. cream (I used a coconut creamer) and cheese (I’ve done this before with vegan cheddar and it was amazing). And I will say the key is blending cheeses if you’re doing a standard Mac n Cheese. So Gruyere (the lovely cheese crust on top of a good cup of onion soup), White Cheddar, maybe some Jack are my ‘go to’ cheeses. And the final touch? The one that really makes it heart attack on a plate? Marscapone. (Get the one that isn’t for Tiramisu cause this is savory, not sweet).
And now for the spices and condiments that really make it rock: Dijon Mustard, Salt, Pepper, and…. drum roll please…. a good pinch or two, or three of nutmeg.
No one will know your secret ingredient is nutmeg, but they’ll know something in this Mac N Cheese is off the charts.
Did I mention pimentos? Sometimes hard to find, you can just take a roasted red pepper and dice that into it. It’s a wonderful touch they used to use at the Automat in New York City. People came from far and wide for their Mac n Cheese and nobody knew why.
Feel free to put it into a baking dish into the oven and crumble bread crumbs and spray a little oil to moisten and it can sit in the oven at 350 degrees for a half hour or so, ready to pull out just after appetizers.
Well, there you have it!
Now we can’t always be good. Can’t always do everything right. But little by little, in baby steps, we can start replacing things in our diet, so that the “new black” becomes normal to us. Then, we start craving a roux without butter, without that heavy greasy taste that leaves your cholesterol bouncing off and most time sticking to the walls inside! lol
Tomorrow? Or within the next day or two? We’re going to talk about how you can build a chicken dish into your life, that in one two hour block of time once a week or once every other week will create soup and chicken dishes with variations so it doesn’t get boring! You can freeze half of it to use in a couple of weeks, or break it up with something different every other day. But this way? You can go organic and not feel the pinch of the price tag, because we’re making food stretch… just like grandma did!
Happy Eating,
Chef Marian