Last October, during what should have been a routine dental checkup and cleaning for Miles , I was asked for permission to do a full-scan mouth x-ray as well. The dentist seemed concerned, so I consented. A few minutes later he brought me over to the lightbox to look at the film. He said “I hope you don’t have a daughter with a wedding to pay for someday,” then pointed at the image:
I said “I’m no dentist, but I’m pretty sure teeth aren’t supposed to grow three deep on top, or parallel to the jawline on the bottom — unless you’re a shark.” That was indeed the problem: Miles wasn’t a shark, but he had a mouthful of overcrowded teeth with nowhere to go.
He had four teeth extracted — two on top, two on the bottom — in the hope that the extra space would allow the new teeth to come in at the proper angle. Then it was time to visit the orthodontist, who took more x-rays, bite impressions, and photos. His assessment, “I’ve seen worse,” was somewhat comforting. Miles was in for a braces-filled adolescence, just as his mom and dad had endured.
Today two appliances were installed: a retaining wire on his lower jaw to keep the remaining teeth in position, and a palate spreader on his upper jaw. Orthodontia has advanced significantly in the 30-plus years that have elapsed since my experience, but the basic tools still retain (heh) that medieval torture vibe:
The palate spreader was a new one to me. You can barely make it out in the photo, but there’s a threaded axle running through the center of the device. Every day, using a special “key,” I have to give the axle a quarter turn, which widens the spreader by half a millimeter or so. I have to do this for 28 days, which by my calculations means his palate will have been pushed open an entire centimeter. Now is the time to do it, while Miles’ palate is still soft and unfused, but I know it must hurt.
He has to learn a new way to swallow, eat, and talk now that there’s a hunk of metal at the roof of his mouth. Dinner tonight, after attempting mac and cheese, was Jell-O. I know that he will get used to it quickly, that’s what kids do. I just hope he doesn’t resent that I’m the guy making his mouth hurt every day.
Someone and the Somebodies was the first local band I saw perform, but the first band I reviewed when I returned to Boston was the Dark, a quirky quintet with a hyperkinetic punky sound and a black (uh, dark) sense of humor.
Even though they were a new band, they played mostly original material. Their two notable covers were a version of “Secret Agent Man” played at breakneck speed and retitled “George Bush” (Bush #41, Reagan’s newly-appointed director of the CIA), and an equally fast version of “Smoke on the Water,” which remained in their set list as an encore.
They were shopping a three-song promo cassette around which contained this gem, “Moral Majority”:
The song gives you a good idea of what the band sounded like: herky-jerk rhythms, tight ensemble playing (similar to early XTC), and snarky lyrics half-sung/half-yelped by a vocalist with an impressive range.
You either loved the Dark or hated them; there was no middle ground. The Globe‘s music critic described them as an “artsy annoyance” and a “boring contrivance.” I thought they were a necessary counterpart to most of the guitar-driven music being made in the city, saying as much in this review. (I know it’s unreadable due to poor scanning, but I assure you it was incisive — and it looked cool.)
Guitarist Roger Greenawalt conducted a relentless PR campaign to get the band noticed. He hosted pancake breakfasts every Sunday following a Saturday gig. The band’s crashpad on Mt. Auburn street in Watertown (known from that time forward as “Darkworld Headquarters” regardless of the band actually living there) would fill up with other musicians, writers, and hangers-on who exchanged news about who played where and for how much, who was booking shows, and where to find cheap rehearsal space.
Later in the year Roger announced that the band had been acquired by an unseen benefactor, Wade Steel, who took on the PR job while the band practiced. They brought in a new bassist and a percussionist (both from the Berklee School of Music) to improve their sound. In the fall of 1981 “Mr. Steel” made good on his promise and released the Dark’s first single, “Judy,” in which Roger confesses his stalker-level infatuation with Judy Grunwald, singer for The Maps:
In addition to name-checking the hipster hangouts (the Channel, the BFVF (Boston Film/Video Foundation)), Roger created a bit of a stir with the line “I’m really glad you dumped your boyfriend/He looks like an East German border guard.” Judy hadn’t dumped her boyfriend; he and she didn’t take it very well.
What I noticed about the Dark was that they were musicians who could really play, which was both an asset and a limitation in a scene that valued raw energy over craft. But they kept at it, releasing two more EPs: Darkworld (1983) and Don’t Feed the Fashion Sharks (1984), both receiving only a lukewarm reception from the press. They were tighter, more polished, as you can hear on “What I Need”:
Roger thought the Dark needed to make a go of it in New York; his bandmates disagreed, so Roger left for the city alone and the Dark was no more. But this is where it gets interesting.
I tell people if you knew someone in a Boston band, you automatically knew members of other bands — the scene was too small to avoid cross-fertilization. So follow along: singer Jace Wilson was involved with the singer/bassist for the Young Snakes, a newcomer named Aimee Mann. Jace and Aimee broke up, percussionist Mike Hausman left the band after Darkworld, got involved with Aimee and co-founded her new band, ‘Til Tuesday. You may have heard of them, they had a hit with “Voices Carry.”
Judy Grunwald left the Maps (which became ArtYard) and formed Salem 66, recording an EP and two full-length albums.
When Roger left, Jace, drummer Clark Goodpaster, bassist Matt Gruenberg, and keyboardist Bob Familiar found a new guitarist and continued on as Life on Earth. When Jace and Bob packed it in, Clark, Matt, and Reeves found an amazing vocalist — Gabrielle Travis — and regrouped as The Atom Said, still legendary as Boston’s greatest unrecorded band. Reeves became the guitarist in David Bowie’s Tin Machine project.
Ten years ago (actually January 22, 1994 – thanks, Steve Latham!) Roger, who was now a producer, brought one of the bands he signed to Boston. He made a few calls and managed to set up a reunion show featuring the Young Snakes and The Dark. I brought Diane to the show so she could finally hear what I had been raving about for years. Although my perception of the show was altered by nostalgia, both bands played killer sets. The pressure to succeed was long gone; they were a bunch of old friends playing for each other.
Aimee Mann, Mike Evans (photo by Steve Latham)
A “greatest hits” set would have been more than enough, but that’s not what Roger had in mind. Before the Dark’s set began, a recording was played over the PA. Although I couldn’t make out all the words, the voice was unmistakable — it was Judy Grunwald, reading something about restraining orders and court-appointed psychiatrists. As the rest of the band took the stage, Roger was wheeled out on a hand cart, strapped in and wearing a straitjacket and face guard a la Hannibal Lecter. He escaped from his confinements, jumped to the stage, launched into “Judy,” and the crowd went wild.
Jace “Hannibal” Wilson (photo by Steve Latham)
Jace Wilson, Roger Greenanwalt (photo by Steve Latham)
All of this came back to me while I was converting the old Dark singles and EPs to MP3s for my iTunes library. Not long after, I learned that Brooklyn-based record producer was embarking on a project to record every Beatles song on ukulele. Who was the producer? Roger Greenawalt.
And Judy? She dumped her boyfriend and married David Minehan of Boston legends the Neighborhoods — he found “The Prettiest Girl.”
Twenty eight years ago I “discovered” The Daily Catch, a restaurant in Boston’s North End. I usually didn’t bother with Italian restaurants — I cooked my own pasta & sauce, and anything more exotic could be supplied by Mon when I visited home. But Mom had one gap in her repertoire: she didn’t cook seafood because she didn’t like the taste. When I learned that there was a storefront-sized place on Hanover Street that served Italian seafood, I had to go.
I soon became a regular at the Catch. For the first few visits I dutifully waited on line outside until a table opened up, but after chatting up Denise, the waitress who managed the line, and tipping well a few times, I discovered her VIP treatment. She’d wave me and my girlfriend in ahead of ten or twenty people — and no one would complain. It was the North End, and it was full of connected people.
I also learned that although the Catch had no liquor license, you could bring in wine purchased at the shop on the corner. If you kept the bottle in a bag under the table, the staff would not only look the other way, they’d give you paper cups (opaque, can’t see the contents) and a corkscrew.
After exhausting all of the calamri dishes, I tried the linguine in white clam sauce, as seen here. This was the dish I fell in love with. I didn’t even have to order it anymore; whenever I showed up, Denise would see me on line and have a pan ready by the time I was seated.
I stopped eating at the Catch around the time I started really cooking for myself. I would make the occasional attemt to cook my own white clam sauce, only to be met with dismal failure. Even Cooks Illustrated let me down — they had a good recipe, but it wasn’t what the Catch served.
About a year ago my local Italian food purveyor, Capone Foods, expanded the line of sauces they stocked in the freezer. There I discovered, tucked next to the alfredo and puttanesca sauces, white clam sauce. I bought a container and some linguine to make for that night’s dinner.
I reheated the sauce according to Al’s (yes, the proprietor of Capone foods is named Al) directions: put the frozen block in a pan top down, that way the clams on the bottom (now the top) won’t overcook as the sauce heats. I mixed it with some al dente linguine and sat down to eat.
In her essay collection Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebovitz describes the difference between a notion and an idea: “linguine” is a notion, “linguine with white clam sauce” is an idea. The first forkful of that pasta was like Proust’s madeline — I had an overpowering flashback of meals at the Daily Catch, eating my favorite dish straight out of the pan. Poor Diane must have thought I’d gone spare, I was staring blankly at the ceiling while I remembered everything about the dish.
I realized it was possible that I’d been so disappointed at my own efforts to make the sacred sauce that any close approximation would seem perfect, so I tried Al’s sauce a few more times. It was always the same: perfect.
A few months ago Al noted that I always bought white clam sauce whenever I came to the store. When I mentioned that it tasted just like the Catch’s version he started laughing. “You’re the first person to notice that,” he explained. “I practically begged them for the recipe, but they refused to tell me. That sauce you like so much is the result of years of my trying to replicate it at home. I think I finally got it right.”
Al hadn’t simply reverse engineered a taste, he’d reverse engineered a memory.
I love cooking short ribs. They’re inexpensive, full of flavor, and the standard cooking method — braising — couldn’t be simpler.
The last time I made these I tried Mark Bittman’s recipe for short ribs with coffee and chiles, but I wanted something less exotic, a final, hearty, end-of-winter meal. I chose a recipe from the only stand-and-stir cooing show I watch on Food Network, Anne Burrell’s Secrets of a Restaurant Chef. Two things attracted me to her recipe: it didn’t call for beef stock, and it had a tomato base.
Anne always says “Brown food tastes good,” which is the operating principle when preparing short ribs. Most of the depth of flavor comes from browning all of the elements. If you’re not using beef stock (a pain to make from scratch and awful when store-bought), the caramelized ingredients in braising liquid serve as an excellent substitute.
Again, a short ingredient list: 12 ounces of tomato paste, a bottle of wine (I used a California pinot noir; less expensive cabernets would be too bitter when reduced), 3 chopped celery ribs, 1 chopped large onion, 2 chopped large carrots, 2 large garlic cloves, 3 1/2 pounds of short ribs (I couldn’t find fewer larger ribs), a bundle of thyme, and 2 bay leaves.
I trimmed some of the silverskin and excess fat off the ribs, salted them generously, then browned them in olive oil over high heat. Here’s where a bit of patience is rewarded: brown the ribs in small batches to keep them from steaming, give them at least 2 minutes per side, and brown at least 4 sides of each rib. Don’t be timid, you want very brown ribs:
While the ribs cooked, I pureed the vegetables and garlic in a food processor until I had a coarse paste.
Once all the ribs were browned, I dumped the oil and fat out of the pot, added a fresh film of olive oil to the pot at medium-high heat, then added the vegetable puree and more salt. I let the puree sit and brown, scraping the browned bits off the bottom every once in a while for about seven minutes. Again, let the food get really brown.
I added the tomato paste and repeated the process, browning and scraping for another 5 minutes.
(Browning the vegetables and tomato paste replicates the steps in a classic beef stock recipe: cover meaty beef bones with tomato paste, then roast in an oven with carrots, onions, and celery. When brown, add everything to a pot of water and simmer for a few hours.)
I added 2 cups of the wine to the sludge and let it cook for a few minutes until thickened. While the wine cooked I set some water to boil.
At this step the recipe tells you to set the ribs in the sludge, then add the water to cover. If you intend to mix the paste and water together, however, the big ribs get in the way of your stirring. I added a cup of water to the paste and mixed it before adding the ribs, then added enough additional water to just cover the ribs. I also tossed in the thyme bundle and bay leaves, then tasted the liquid for seasoning (more salt).
I covered the pot and put it in a 375 degree oven for 3 hours. I checked the level of the liquid in the pot every hour to make sure the ribs were covered. I would have added more water to cover, but I didn’t need to. If I was cooking fewer, larger ribs I would have turned them halfway through the cooking time, but the smaller ribs remained completely submerged.
During the last hour of cooking I made some mashed Yukon Gold potatoes, but you can also try celery root and potato puree. After three hours the ribs were ready:
I removed the ribs from the sauce with a slotted spoon, they were so tender that tongs would have broken the meat apart. After the ribs sat under foil for a few minutes I pulled the bones out. I also removed some of the fat from the sauce and corrected the seasoning one last time. The recipe doesn’t call for pepper at all, but I added some at this step.
I plated the potatoes, set the ribs on top, added the sauce, and put some green beans to the side:
How did they taste? How can you go wrong with fall-off-the-bone, fork-tender beef with the perfect balance of fat and lean? The sauce was the real surprise, much deeper and less tomato-ey than I expected. The brightness of the beans were a perfect counterpoint to the richness of the beef and potatoes.
Bittman said it best: After you’ve eaten a dish like this, chocolate is for wussies.
Before embarking on my fabulous career as a freelancer and obscure blogger, I worked at a multimedia production company at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Newbury Street in Boston. I ate lunch at Steve’s Greek Restaurant at least every other week in order to get my gyro or souvlaki fix. One winter day I tried something different: the avgolemono soup. It became my new winter favorite, even though it was more of a chicken and rice soup with a hint of lemon.
I figured I might be able to make my own version with a more pronounced egg and lemon flavor and considerably less rice. A bit of research turned up a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated, which I have now committed to memory. It’s my go-to soup in cold weather; I make it more than I do chicken noodle. (Dumpling noodle soup is an up-and-coming second place contender.)
It’s a simple recipe with very few ingredients:
2 quarts of chicken stock (I used homemade), 1/2 cup of rice, 2 whole eggs plus 2 more yolks (room temperature), 2 lemons, 4 crushed green cardamom pods, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1/4 teaspoon of saffron, and 1 bay leaf.
While I waited for the chicken stock to boil, I peeled the zest from 1 1/2 of the lemons with a vegetable peeler, taking care to make a shallow cut so as not to include too much of the bitter white pith.
I added the peel, rice, cardamom, bay leaf, saffron, and salt to the stock, reduced the heat to medium , and let it all simmer.
During the simmer, I juiced 1 1/2 of the lemons, enough to get 1/4 cup of juice. Once 20 minutes passed, I reduced the heat to low and removed the spent peels, cardamom pods, and bay leaf. I whisked the eggs until combined, then whisked in the lemon juice.
The secret to this recipe is tempering the eggs. If you added the egg/lemon mixture directly to the soup, it would curdle from the heat. If, however. you gradually add small amounts of the soup to the eggs, whisking the entire time, you gradually raise the temperature of the mixture, which prevents curdling. The starch which has been released from the rice into the soup also acts to prevent curdling.
(Whisking photos provided by special guest She Who Must Be Obeyed, channeling Doc Edgerton.)
I added the tempered egg mixture back into the soup.
I stirred the soup for about five more minutes over low heat until it thickened. It’s very important not to let the soup come to a simmer, or it will curdle despite all of the precautions. If you stir for too long, the soup thickens to a gravy-like consistency. (My mother-in-law discovered this when reheating some leftover soup. She proceeded to use it as a topping for mashed potatoes.)
You can top the soup with sliced scallions or chopped mint leaves, but I mixed a teaspoon of sweet paprika with 1 1/2 tablespoons of melted butter and swirled it on top.
This is what I always expected the soup to taste like: eggy, but with a pronounced lemon flavor. In addition to deepening the color, the saffron deepened the flavor, as did the cardamom.
I’ve tried other variations of the recipe, substituting 2 whole cloves (or 2 cinnamon sticks and a pinch of cayenne) for the cardamom. You can also add 12 ounces of cubed chicken breast to the simmering stock along with the rest of the spices and rice to make a heartier dish.
Give this one a try. You’ll add it to you “keeper” list immediately.
In his story “Burning Chrome,” William Gibson wrote the now-famous aphorism “The street find its own uses for things.” That observation has always been at its most appropriate in music remix culture. DJs discovered an alternate use for the turntable and a whole new type of music was invented. It became possible to build songs out of pieces — “samples” — of other songs. The technique became automated with the advent of the sampler, an instrument that allowed you to store any sound and play it back with a keyboard or percussion pad.
The high water marks for sample-constructed hip-hop are Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, De La Soul’s Three Feet High and Rising, and the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique — records that could never be made today due to the crippling expense of licensing all of the source material. (For an interesting perspective on one of the most sampled drum breaks in the history of recorded music, check out Nate Harrison’s Can I Get An Amen?) DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… and The Avalanches’ Since I left You are more recent examples of sample-built tunes.
The next logical step — although it wasn’t obvious at the time — was to construct music videos from other videos, a technique pioneered by Emergency Broadcast Network. Their reworking of a George Bush (#41, not #43) speech into “We Will Rock You” became a huge underground hit in 1991, passed around via VHS cassette. The video opened U2’s Zoo TV tour, with EBN providing all the stage visuals. Their 1995 album, Telecommunication Breakdown, featured some of their video songs, including “3:7:8”:
(I’m usually very good at playing “name the sample,” but the only thing I can identify in the video is the singing boy. He’s from Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books, the movie that answers the previously-unasked question: What does Sir John Gielgud look like naked?)
It’s a remarkable feat considering the primitive state of video editing software at the time, and the difficulty involved in locating the right source material. You can forgive them for having to supplement the music with their own beats and fills. EBN dissolved years ago, but what would they have done with a resource like YouTube?
One answer appeared on the net last week. Ophir Kutiel, an Israeli musician who goes by the handle “Kutiman,” released an entire album of music and videos in which every sound is sampled from YouTube videos.The results are nothing short of brilliant:
The amount of work required to make an entire album of these videos is staggering. The “Credits” video gives you just the briefest glimpse of the level of obsession required to assemble a single song. That feat would be enough even if the songs were only average, but Kutiman composed a set of tracks spanning diverse genres: funk, trip-hop, drum ‘n’ bass, gospel, dub — and they’re all great.
Diane’s reaction to my showing her these songs was “I’m glad you didn’t have that idea first, you’d never leave your computer.” I’m happy just to sit back and see what use the street makes of it; it has a pretty good track record so far.
I didn’t clarify in yesterday’s post that I had not yet eaten the Cafe Mami katsu curry, since I had tried the two different preparations at home. Today was a half day for Miles, so we had lunch at the Cafe. He ordered the tatsu (fried chicken) again, and this time I had the cutlet curry (the actual name on the menu) with a pork cutlet.
You can see some obvious differences in comparison to my recipe. The sauce is much smoother, nothing like the “sludge” in my version. It’s also served to the side instead of directly over the rice. They automatically provide a spoon with the dish, presumably so you can spoon as much sauce as you like over the rice, but why wouldn’t you want it all on the rice?
As for the taste, the sauce is more like a thick pork gravy flavored with curry. There are sliced carrots and onions, as well as bits of shredded pork, probably from a chunk of pork simmered in the sauce. Although the waitress warned me “the curry is spicy,” I found it milder than my version.
This was by no means an inferior curry, just a different regional variation that I was all too happy to eat. As I left, I told the cook “oishkatta desu” (“it was delicious”) — it was a genuine compliment, not merely a polite formality.
The Super 88 may be the best food court in Boston, but in Cambridge that honor goes to the Porter Exchange and its collection of Japanese (and one Korean) eateries. One hole-in-the wall place there stands out from the rest: Cafe Mami. I have never been to the Exchange and seen the Cafe anything but packed full, with additional customers waiting for seats to become available.
Realizing that I’d never get a seat during the dinner rush, I took Miles there for lunch on one of his school half days. Miles ordered the tatsuta (fried chicken), and I ordered the hambaga suteki (hamburger steak with the mysterious wafu sauce), but we noticed all of the Japanese kids were ordering the katsu (pork) curry. Since the cafe specializes in hearty Japanese comfort food, I figured the curry must be the real deal. I resolved to order it on my next visit.
Then I found a New York Times article about katsu curry with a recipe attached, so I thought I’d give it a try myself. It’s a bit ingredient-heavy, but very simple to make.
The setup: 1 pound ground pork, 3 tablesoons flour, 3 tablespoons butter, 1 cup chicken broth, 3 tablespoons curry powder (preferably S&B), 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 2 tablespoons tomato paste (the stuff in the tube is perfect for small amounts), 1 green apple, 1 mango, 3 cloves peeled garlic, 2 inch chunk of ginger, 1 onion, and 1 carrot.
I peeled and chopped the fruit and vegetables into chunks, which went into a food processor along with the tomato paste and Wooster sauce.
I pulsed it until I had a thick puree.
I melted the butter and added the pork, seasoning with salt and pepper. When it was good and browned, I added the flour and curry powder, cooking for five minutes until I had whet the recipe refers to as a “porky roux.” (Porky Roux – isn’t he one of the bartenders that serves hurricanes on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras?)
I added the puree and chicken broth and cooked over low heat for about an hour. As the articles says: “Leave the resulting stew to cook, and then to cook some more. The result should be gooey, though not in a floury way, and sludgelike in only the most complimentary sense.”
Toward the end of the cooking time for the curry/sludge, I prepared the tonkatsu (pork cutlets). I started with thin-sliced cutlets from the market because I didn’t feel like pounding out thicker boneless chops. After seasoning with salt and pepper, I dipped the cutlets one at a time in beaten egg and then in panko bread crumbs. No matter how hard I try to keep one hand for dipping and the other for dredging, I always wind up with batter-covered club hand, which someday I’ll mistake for an extra cutlet. The real cutlets were ready:
Don’t prep them too far ahead of time; if you let them sit the breading will fall off when fried. Since I know the secret of cooking and comedy – timing – my cutlets fried up a treat:
For final assembly I plated some cooked short-grain rice and topped it with a generous helping of the curry sauce. I sliced the cutlets on the bias, laid them on top of the curry, drizzled some tonkatsu sauce over everything, and finally garnished with some cabbage (I only had purple) and scallions.
This is a very hearty dish. The curry has a definite afterburn, not too hot, but a pronounced spice kick. The crunchy cutlet and the cool cabbage work well against the heat. The sweetness provided by the tonkatsu sauce balances the rest of the flavors (and gives you something to sop up with the rice), don’t omit it.
Everyone liked this dish, even our guest for the evening:
A confession
This version of katsu curry is the second recipe I tried. The first recipe skips all of the preliminary prep work involved in making the curry, relying on a not-so-secret ingredient:
In addition to curry powder, S&B makes a curry sauce mix. After browning the pork along with a sliced onion, you break up the sauce block – which resembles a chocolate bar – into the pork and add 2 1/2 cups of water. From that point on the recipe is the same: cook until sludgy, fry cutlets, etc.
The curry made from the mix was pretty good, but a little one-dimensional. If you think you’ll be making this dish often, it’s worth having a box of the sauce mix on hand. It doesn’t cut down on the cooking time, but it saves a lot of prep work if you want a start-and-forget meal.
But I urge you to try the more authentic recipe first.
I haven’t posted anything in a week, the week from hell, in which I had to launch two web sites. The relative ease of working with one of my clients made the experience with my other client (actually, my other client’s designer) all the more unbearable.
Despite the hellish working conditions and 12-hour work days, I did manage to cook a few meals. Comfort food made the week more tolerable, and what better comfort food is there than homemade macaroni and cheese?
I’ve tried a lot of mac ‘n’ cheese recipes, looking for that ideal combination of creamy cheese sauce, pasta, and breadcrumb topping. Alton Brown’s recipe works in a pinch, but it’s based on an egg custard, which can get heavy and grainy. The recipe I finally settled on is from Cook’s Illustrated.
The recipe couldn’t be simpler: add cooked elbow macaroni to a Mornay sauce, top with buttered breadcrumbs, and toast under a broiler.Expanded from the shorthand, it’s still very simple.
The ingredients: 1 pound of elbow macaroni, 5 tablespoons of unsalted butter, 6 tablespoons of flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of powdered mustard, 5 cups of milk (whole, low-fat, and skim (ick) all work), 8 ounces each of Monterey Jack and cheddar cheese, and 12 ounces of bacon (optional, but why exclude it?). Not shown is 6 ounces of good quality white sandwich bread and another 3 ounces of butter.
I tore the bread into chunks and pulsed in in a food processor with the 3 ounces of butter until I had fine crumbs:
I cooked the macaroni in four quarts of boiling salted water until just past the al dente stage. This is critical: the macaroni has to be tender. It’s better to err on the side of overcooking. I drained the macaroni and set it aside in a colander.
While the water came to a boil and the macaroni cooked, I chopped the bacon slices into one-inch pieces and cooked until crisp. I put the cooked bacon on a paper towel-covered plate, exercising extraordinary willpower in not snitching bacon pieces as I continued.
In the now-empty pot I heated the 5 ounces of butter over medium-high heat until foaming. I added the flour and mustard and whisked to combine, cooking an additional minute until the mixture became straw-colored. This was a basic roux:
I gradually whisked in the milk and brought the mixture to a boil, whisking constantly. Once boiling, I reduced the heat on the mixture to medium and simmered, whisking occasionally, until it thickened to the consistency of heavy cream. The result was a basic bechamel sauce.
While the bechamel simmered, I shredded the cheese on a box grater.
I turned off the heat on the bechamel and whisked in the cheese: voila, sauce Mornay! I added the macaroni and stirred constantly over low heat for about 6 minutes. I added the bacon at the end.
I dumped everything into a 13 x 9 inch baking dish and covered it with the bread crumbs.
The dish went under the broiler for about three minutes, until the crumbs were well toasted.
After cooling for five minutes, it was time to serve.
Creamy, crunchy, cheesy, bacon-y: what more can you ask from a meal? This really hit the spot. He Who Will Not Be Ignored complained that it wasn’t orange, but he wolfed it down just the same. (You can use orange cheddar, but since there’s no orange Monterey Jack, the end result is more of a golden yellow.)
This recipe also works well with leftover ham (I always make it right after Easter for just that reason), and I am told that there is a heretical alternative that omits the pork products and adds a cup of frozen peas to the sauce along with the macaroni.
Make this one soon, you’ll thank me for it.
Leftovers? Cut the still-cold mac ‘n’ cheese into rectangles, dredge in breadcrumbs, and pan-fry in a little butter for a perfect snack.
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