‘Mag’ and Cheese

Hip, hip! Mornay! Getting new gigs is always nice. And for at least the next few months, until we cuss ourselves out of a job, we’ll be acting as recipe columnists for L.A.-based Swindle Magazine. Our first comes out this month in their ‘Icons’ issue, where our French Onion Sammy will sit alongside Peewee Herman and Ice Cube.
Our next assignment was a winter mac & cheese, so we played with cream and pasta shells this weekend to find a suitable replica of the ‘blue box’ original. That meant a classic oozy coating of off-white cheese on tiny morsels, with no chunky secret ingredients to obstruct or confuse. After recent success with porcini powder, our new culinary cocaine, we realized that the nearly invisible flavor was just what we needed to give normal mac-and’ a woodsy, deep and effervescently funky kick. The trick here is to make a near classic Mornay sauce, subbing melty Fontal and smoked goat cheese for the gruyere, and going heavy with it. (Heed our warning, normal roux proportions don’t apply to heavy whipping cream.) We glopped the stuff in small ramequins for cute baked cups. And instead of breadcrumbs and parsley, we coated the tops with Salt and Pepper Kettle Chips and fresh tarragon curls.
Of course, no magazine assignment is complete without a professional photog stopping by to snap the food pics and slurp a sample. Much obliged to Greg B. for granting us the best compliment there is. Video footage of that below…

3 cups small shell pasta
1 Tbs. olive oil
1 stick butter
3 cloves garlic
1/2 white onion, minced
4 Tbs. all-purpose flour
4 tsp. porcini mushroom powder
2 cups half and half
1 cup heavy cream
1 # Fontal cheese, shredded
8 oz. Smoked Chevre
8 oz. Parmesan Reggiano, grated
salt and pepper
1/2 cup Kettle chips
1 whole nutmeg
1/4 cup fresh tarragon
1 tsp. paprika
1. Bring a medium pot of lightly salted water to a rolling boil and drop pasta shells. Let return to a boil, turn down to medium heat and let cook for 5-6 minutes, or until shells are cooked al dente. Remove, drain and rinse with cool water. In a large bowl, toss with olive oil and let sit.
2. Start your sauce in a medium sauce pan on medium heat. Toss in butter and let melt while peeling and mincing garlic and onions. Add both to the pot and cook until onions are see-through, about 5 minutes. Bring heat down to low and roux-ify your sauce by adding flour to the mix, one tablespoon at a time, whisking vigorously until all the flour is incorporated into the butter. Now stir in your porcini powder, still whisking. Cook for an additional minute or two before whisking in the half and half slowly and steadily. When all the half and half is incorporated, add the cream. Don’t let the mixture boil.

3. Now cheese your sauce. Add your Fontal first, small handfuls at a time while stirring until fully mixed in. Next, break off 1-inch chunks of smoked chevre and stir in. Finally, add one-fourth of your grated Parmesan, saving most of it for your mac tops. Let bubble and thicken for a minute or two before removing from heat.
4. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
5. In a large mixing bowl, toss your shells with sauce in small increments until slightly goopier than you think proper. Then season with salt and pepper to taste. Fetch your ramequins and fill nearly to the top with sauced pasta.
6. Prepare your garnishes: Pulse your potato chips in a food processor and chop your tarragon. First top each pasta dish with a dusting of Parmesan. You’ll want to save half for garnish. Next dust the cheese with potato chip crumbs, add tarragon and paprika. Finally sprinkle a last kiss of cheese on top and a quick grate of fresh nutmeg. Put your mac and cheese in the oven and bake for 10 minutes or until tops are browning and crisped.
7. While you’re waiting, complete your garnish arsenal by baking off a Parmesan tuille (shown above). If you have a silpat pan mat, use it. Otherwise, just use baking parchment, or in a pinch, aluminum foil. Each parmesan-cookie will require about 4 Tbs. of parm. Bake alongside mac for about 5 minutes or until sizzly and light tan. Let the tuilles sit for about a minute to firm up and gently remove by carefully running a knife around the edge of the each “cookie.” Remove pasta and eat as is out of the hot ramequin, or dump out and mix for the mushy bowl mac.
Beverage: Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes’ Saint Bon-Chien
Soundtrack: Billy Joel’s Piano Man