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Classic Macaroni and Cheese

This is the kind of macaroni and cheese that my mother made with a creamy cheese sauce. She started by making a white sauce, that wonderful French “mother sauce” named after the Marquis de Béchemel. I never heard her say she was making a Béchemel sauce, but that is what she was doing.

In fact she was making an American version of Mornay sauce, which is Béchemel sauce with cheese added. It is that creamy cheese sauce that makes macaroni and cheese one of the most popular foods in the United States.

Mornay sauce is traditionally made with Gruyère and Parmesan cheeses, but people from Wisconsin know that the best macaroni and cheese is made with good aged Wisconsin Cheddar.

When you make macaroni and cheese from scratch, you may find that the cheese sauce is not as yellow as what you usually get when preparing a batch from a box. That’s because the manufacturers add artificial color or annatto to produce that bright yellow. I suppose you could do the same, but a good sharp Cheddar gives a lovely soft yellow that contrasts nicely with a barbecued rib on your plate.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
4 T butter
4 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper
Dash of freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. ground mustard
1/4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 cups whole milk
2 cups shredded medium or sharp Cheddar cheese
Dash of hot sauce (optional)

PROCEDURE:

Start heating the water for the macaroni and preheat the oven to 350º. Grate the cheese. Heat the milk to about 140º in a saucepan or microwavable dish.

Cook the macaroni according to instructions on the package just to al dente. Do not overcook it as it will continue to cook in the oven. Drain the macaroni and return it to the cooking pot.

Melt the butter in a three-quart saucepan over medium low heat. Blend the flour, salt, peppers, mustard and Worcestershire sauce into the butter. You are making a white roux. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon and cook until you have a smooth bubbly mixture. Once the roux is bubbling, cook it for a minute then add the hot milk and heat it to boiling. The sauce will thicken as the roux cooks.

After the sauce has thickened and is bubbling again, keep stirring for another minute or so. Reduce the heat to very low and stir in the cheese until you have a smooth sauce.

Pour the sauce over the macaroni and mix it gently with the pasta. Put the mixture into an ungreased two-quart casserole and bake uncovered for about twenty minutes until it begins to bubble.

NOTES: If you wish, feel free to use a little more cheese. You also might want to add a dash of hot sauce once you have stirred the cheese into the sauce. It adds complexity to the flavor, and at least to our taste, does not make it too spicy.

Macaroni and cheese has been around for a long time. At least 700 years ago, Italian cooks were layering pasta and cheese and baking it into a tasty casserole. By the time Thomas Jefferson settled down for some good eating and drinking in Paris as the Minister to France representing the newly founded United States, French chefs had perfected a recipe for macaroni and cheese.

Clearly Jefferson enjoyed it, for he sketched the pasta and described the extrusion process used to make it. He bought a machine for making it and later imported both macaroni and Parmesan cheese, which was the cheese used for the recipe at that time. In 1802, when he was President, Jefferson served a “macaroni pie” at a state dinner.

Early in the 19th century, Jefferson’s young granddaughter, Virginia Randolph, copied the recipes Jefferson brought back from France along with many of those he enjoyed at Monticello and in the White House. In the late 1930‘s this handwritten book was given to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation by Jefferson’s great-great granddaughter. The foundation gave permission to the historian Marie Kimball to publish the collection as Thomas Jefferson’s Cookbook.

The cookbook includes a recipe for “Macaroni” and another for “Macaroni Pudding.” Here is the one simply called “Macaroni.” If the quantities were increased to serve the ten or twelve guests usually invited to such affairs, this may well be the dish served at the state dinner.

“Break macaroni in small pieces, there should be 2 cupfuls, and boil in salted water until tender. Grate 1/4 pound of cheese and mix with the same amount of butter. Stir into macaroni and bake like polenta.” (The polenta recipe says to “Bake in a moderate oven until the cheese is thoroughly melted.”) This recipe, which does not use any sauce, is like the one for Gus Gauch’s Macaroni and Cheese.

Jefferson was clearly fond of dessert puddings, as there are dozens in the cookbook. “Macaroni Pudding” is one of them.

“Cook macaroni in milk until tender. Two ounces to a pint of milk will make a good-sized pudding. Add five eggs, 3/4 cup of sugar, flavor with lemon or rose water and bake one hour.”

Jerri says it sounds good. I am not sure, but I would be willing to try it.

We bought our copy of Thomas Jefferson’s Cookbook years ago in Virginia, but your local bookseller can get you a copy in case you want to explore the cuisine of one of our greatest Presidents.

Mom’s Hot Cocoa

One of the pleasures of taking a walk after a good snowstorm is the chance to observe the status of snow art and architecture in the neighborhood. The quantity and quality, as I judge it, varies from year to year, but there is clear evidence of creative urges in some children today.

Besides conventional snowmen, there are sometimes snowwomen and even snow families. I once saw a family of snow people complete with scarves, mittens and caps. The biggest one wore a beret, which made me think that it might be the Neige family visiting from France.

Snow monsters with strange faces, ears and protuberances have impressed me too, and I have marveled at how kids managed to sneak enough food coloring out of the house to turn their creations into red, blue or green individuals braving the whiteness of winter. With my first digital camera I took a photo of a snowman with an orange head, green jacket and blue bottom. Somehow the artists (there were lots of tracks around it) had also managed to trace a brownish stripe down the front. It looked something like a zipper.

I have been pleased to note that the construction of snow forts continues to this day, though none I have seen match the elaborate structures we built as kids, some designed after illustrations of medieval castles complete with moats, towers, keeps and dungeons. A couple of years ago, three ambitious youngsters built a good-sized fort with ramparts constructed of snow blocks quarried along the street and two access tunnels. Incidentally, the tunnels served their purpose: Neither I nor any other adult could get inside to attack the defenders. It was an impressive job that undoubtedly kept them out of their mother’s hair for a day or two.

Our mother encouraged us to build forts in the woods behind the house in summer and snow forts across the road where there were hard drifts along the snow fence. In fact, though modern mothers may disapprove, Mom sometimes ordered us to get dressed in snowsuits, boots, caps and mittens and go outside and play, even if it was below zero. Like eskimos we were taught how to live with cold, and we never ended up with any permanent damage.

One exception may be my ears, which are still very sensitive to below zero temperatures. That wasn’t my mother’s fault, however. She knitted me a warm stocking cap each year to fit her growing boy and told me to pull it down over my ears so they wouldn’t freeze when I walked to school. However, she couldn’t make me do that, because all us boys knew that only sissies pulled their caps down over their ears.

The teacher didn’t even tell on us when we froze our ears, since nearly every boy did it. She didn’t have much sympathy for us, either. “It’s your own fault.” she would say. “I’m sure your mothers told you to cover your ears. Just hold your hands on them and they’ll stop hurting after awhile.”

I think she told us not to do it again, too. Not that we followed her advice either, though many of us began pulling our caps down when we didn’t think anyone could see us. If you weren’t carrying books, you could cover your ears with your mittens. That was a pretty good technique because you could pretend to be adjusting your hat when you met someone.

Besides building snow forts we pulled our toboggan to a hill along the Namakagon River where we zipped down the slope and tried to keep from getting too scratched up in the blackberry bushes and thornapple trees at the bottom of the hill. We hiked or skied to a pond on the north forty of our property where we shoveled snow to make a skating rink, and of course we made snow angels, had snowball battles and in general enjoyed a time of year when, as a promoter of Bayfield, Wisconsin once wrote, there is no rain or mud or mosquitoes.

As much fun as those activities were, the best part was what awaited us after we had swept the snow off each other and gone inside. I can still smell and taste the cookies or cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa. In later years my mother began using chocolate milk mixes, but until I was nearly out of high school she bought cocoa powder in large tins for cakes, frostings, cookies and hot cocoa.

She made a syrup and stirred in milk. Then she put the pan on the back of the stove so the cocoa would be ready for us when we came in from the cold. She used real milk, but you can make it with low fat milk if you want. Speaking as an experienced consumer of hot cocoa, however, I assure you that adding a little cream or half and half improves the taste and texture.

INGREDIENTS:

2 T cocoa powder
2 T sugar
Dash of salt
3 T cold water
2 cups milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

PROCEDURE:

Mix the cocoa, sugar and salt together in a saucepan. Stir in the water and bring the mixture to a boil over moderate heat. Use a fork to blend the solids into the water so you have a smooth liquid.

Whisk the milk into the chocolate with the fork and continue heating. Stir in the vanilla extract and stir the cocoa occasionally until it is steaming. If you want, you can top each cup with marshmallows.

NOTE: This recipe makes two cups of cocoa. Use your trusty calculator or a piece of paper and a pencil to increase the ingredients for the number of servings you need.

Once you try it, I think that you will agree that real cocoa powder, sugar and real vanilla with no ingredients added to extend shelf life or make it easier to stir the powder directly into the milk give this hot cocoa a richer flavor than anything from a mix.