Hi, welcome back to Eat For A Week.
Tonight I'm making a macaroni and cheese with shrimp.
It's based on a recipe that I got from Peregrine over at the Space Adventure forums, who in
turn got it from someone named Narcalon.
I don't know who that is, but they sent me the recipe thinking that I might be able to
use it.
I'm making some liberties with it just because I thought I'd try and make it a little more
interesting.
I have a big pot of salted water boiling right now for the pasta, and I've got the
oven preheating to 350 degrees.
I have a smaller saucepan heating up on medium heat, and I'm going to add about a tablespoon
of butter.
Once the butter is pretty much melted, I'm going to add a cup of milk, and two tablespoons
of flour.
Before I get too much further, I want to make sure that flour gets mixed in pretty well.
The recipe says to whisk it together, but I'm using a non-stick pan, and just in case
you're not aware of that, you should never use a metal utensil in a non-stick pan, as
you can ruin the non-stick finish.
I only have a metal whisk.
In retrospect, I probably should have added the flour before the milk and let it cook
a little bit in the butter, but I don't think it's going to be that big a deal.
The recipe also says if you want, you can add about a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.
I want to, so I'm going to.
And finally, a pound of cheddar cheese.
Might seem like a lot.
I don't know how it's going to turn out, but I'm sure it will be cheesy.
I'm using a mixture of both sharp and medium.
Use whatever you like.
I'm actually going to add this in batches, I think.
My water's come to a boil, so I'm going to go ahead and throw in the pasta, too.
Pasta's going to go for about 10 minutes.
I'm going to keep adding cheese to my sauce.
Be careful not to burn it or scald your sauce, so I've actually reduced my heat from about
medium to about halfway between medium and low.
The sauce is looking really tasty.
I don't know what it's supposed to look like, but this is what mine looks like.
Since I haven't added any seasonings to this, I'm going to go ahead and give it a taste,
see if I think it needs anything.
I could use a little bit of salt and maybe some pepper.
This is why I'm really going to depart from the original recipe.
Because the ingredients were so inexpensive, I felt I had enough money to make it a little
more decadent, as if a pound of cheese wasn't decadent enough.
About three quarters of a pound of a little tiny shrimp.
I'm going to add that to the sauce.
I bought the pre-cooked shrimp just so I don't have to deal with cleaning and all that garbage.
At this point, I've also reduced the heat on the sauce all the way to low, just because
I don't think it needs to cook anymore.
I just want to keep it warm until I'm ready to put it with the noodles.
Pasta is done.
Time to drain it.
Always remember to be careful where you set your pot holders.
For instance, not on the hot burner you just took the pot off of.
Put the cooked pasta into a rectangular baking dish, dump the cheese sauce over it, and you
want to mix that all together, which you may need to do very carefully if you've chosen
a vessel that may be a little bit too small for all the contents, as I have.
And this is what it looks like when it's ready to go into the oven.
Because my dish is awfully full, and I don't want any of this cheese sauce to bubble out
all over the inside of my oven, I'm going to go ahead and put it on a baking sheet.
In fact, a baking sheet lined with foil, because if it does bubble over, guess what?
Get rid of the foil, you don't have to wash the baking sheet.
Get it into the 350 degree oven it goes for about half an hour.
It's been half an hour, time to take out the macaroni.
That looks awesome.
It also looks very, very hot, so I'm going to let it cool for a little bit.
I've given the macaroni about 10-15 minutes to cool off, and I think it looks pretty tasty.
Hope you get a chance to give it a try.
Thanks.
