Transcription
Most mac and cheese is stodgy, dense, and one-dimensional. This version from a three Michelin star chef solves all those issues.
So, we're going to start with macaroni, just lightly salted. And then we're just going to cook this until it's par boiled. Chicken stock, which is going to add a really nice depth. This is classic H. This is served at his Michelin star restaurant called the Hines Head adjacent to the fat duck. We're going to infuse it with rosemary, small amount of thyme, and then some black pepperc corns just for about 25 minutes. Macaroni has only been on the boil for around about 5 minutes. Pass this off. Then add that back into your pan. And then just touch of olive oil.
The next stage is to reduce some of our white wine. Any sort of white wine will do. Continue to reduce it until you have something that's a little bit sweet and a little bit acidic. And that'll help balance out the mac and cheese. You get intensity and depth from the stock. You get a little bit of acidity here. And then to be quite honest, you get a bit of trash because we're going to use American cheese as well. Wine is reduced. Going with your chicken stock. And this might look a bit strange at this stage, but bear with me. It all makes sense in the end.
In terms of cheese, little bit of gruer. I prefer to use grria than cheddar because you get a bit more meltiness. This we're going to grate American cheese. We're going to shifard and then we're going to mix in at the end some cream cheese. Really nice hack rather than using bashimal because it's got a really good amount of acidity and cream cheese and that kind of cuts through all the fat from this cheese as well. You mix it with your corn flour. So this is going to thicken the sauce. It gives it a more velvety texture.
Okay, so our stock is nice and warm. I'm just going to bring it back up to about 80°. It doesn't need to be boiling. And I'm going to add in some cheese. And you'll see it just slowly start to melt and slowly start to thicken. You can already see the gloss and the sheen that you get from corn flour. Continue to cook the corn flour out on a very very gentle heat while stirring for around about 4 or 5 minutes.
Whilst that's cooking, just a little bit of butter going in there. >> Is it essential? >> You is that too much? I'll just do a little bit less. A little bit of sage and some thyme. We're just going to toast a little bit of panco breadrumbs. You can use other breadrumbs.
Take out small portion of the sauce. Then add in our cream cheese. If you skip this stage, what will essentially happen is you'll get lots of little tiny micro lumps of cream cheese in your sauce. I always like to add a little bit of Dijon. For me, I always think that it really nicely balances out a mac and cheese again. So, you've got this basically you get this really nice sort of what we call it a slurry. And then we're going to add that back in in stages into our sauce base before we sort of check and adjust the seasoning of the sauce.
Always a good idea to add the sauce to the pasta first. So, the pasta has already been seasoned slightly because we used the salt in the liquid when we cooked it. And then just bring the whole thing together. Almost want it to be over moist at this stage because it will definitely thicken up as the starch in the pasta continues to cook whilst it bakes. My last kind of trick is a little bit more of the grera. A really nice dice. These little nubbins of cheese are going to add in the perfect cheese pull. So going into a dish, tiny bit more salt on top before it goes in. And then it's going to go in the oven 180° for around about 15 to 20 minutes. It should be loose enough the sauce to bubble and kind of like trying to edge its way over that pangraata.
Right there she be. You can taste all the herbs. Nice bit of acidity, nice and sweet, slightly different technique. It takes about the same amount of time as to make a normal mac and cheese. It's not overly complicated.