Food porn: Sexy Mac and Cheese in pictures 13 March 2008 9:06 am
Posted by Tracy in : cheese,cooking,eating,friends,geekery,meta,pictures,vegetarian , trackbackIt’s like Foto Friday only a day early this week, because apparently that’s just how I roll. Also, how did this get to be Picture Week without my noticing it until just now? I digress. So. Last year the fabulous Chiara asked me for (and I quote) “HARDCORE VOODOO LOVE RECIPES” and after a bit of dodging on Valentines’ Day I came through with Sexy Mac and Cheese, a recipe I have been using to seduce people ever since a cheese cooler failure at Sundance provided me with an opportunity to test both the offerings of Julia Moskin’s Macaroni and Lots of Cheese (the New York Times, 4 January 2006) and more besides (we ended up with four different kinds of mac ‘n cheese, including a “crunchy” hippie-friendly wheat-free version and its near-opposite, pre-made from a box with squeeze-on cheese sauce). ANYWAY. Here is a little photo essay of the various stages of that magical recipe.
Raw noodles, milk, cottage and cheddar cheeses, and seasonings, mixed and ready for the oven:
Half an hour later, there’s some signs of cooking:
Stirred and topped with remaining butter and cheese!
Hot out of the oven!
Stirred again, cooled to an edible temperature, and glistening with fatty goodness!
This particular batch of Sexy Mac turned out extra-greasy, perhaps because I used a different kind of cheese than usual: Tillamook Wintage White extra-sharp cheddar, instead of Cabot extra-sharp white cheddar? According to the nutrition information for both cheeses on their respective company websites, they’re almost nutritionally identical: same amounts of fat, saturated fat, and protein, except the Cabot has slightly more sodium and cholesterol (yes, I am an enormous geek). So I still have no idea why the end result was different, just that it was. Clearly, more delicious experimentation is needed.
Yours in food geekery (science rules!),
-Tracy
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Marcy
