Macaroni and Cheese

Boil the pasta.
Drain
Add the butter
Then the milk
Then the cheese powder. 







Its mac & Cheese time!

Well, not exactly like that.  Tonight for dinner we had pasta with a cheese sauce.  Two kinds of cheese made up the sauce.  Salty and hard Pecorino Romano, and creamy mascarpone.  I'm sure there are supposed to be accent marks and possibly an umlaut or two in those names. Please forgive me!

Rather than use elbows, I used rotini.  The tight spiral shape held on to the sauce really well.  I put a big pot of water on to boil.  In the mean time, I put about 1/4 cup of olive oil into a pan.  Since the oil is going to be a contributing flavor to the sauce, extra virgin olive oil is best. 

"What is the difference between extra virgin olive oil and plain ol' olive oil" you may ask. 

The oil hiding in olives isn't always easy to get to, and we've invented many ways to get to the oil.  Putting the olives in a press and squeezing them gets out some of the oil.  The oil that comes from this first press is extra virgin.  It retains the essential oils of the olive and tastes fruity.  Different regions of the world produce different tastes, and if you're lucky enough to have a specialty store around, they will let you sample.  You get to go in and just do shots of olive oil, and it is delicious!

There's still oil to be had in those pesky little buggers.  If you heat them and chop them up, you can get more of the oil out.  Heating them, however, destroys some of the flavor compounds in the oil and produces a less complex oil. 

So anyway, where were we.  Oh yes.  Olive oil in pan.  Also into the pan go 2 big cloves of garlic flattened with the side of a knife.  We'll be taking them out later, so no pressing, chopping or grating is needed.

Once the pasta water is boiling, salt it.  This is the only way to get flavor into the pasta.  Use a lot of salt.  The pros will tell you that your pasta water should taste like sea water.  I always burn myself trying to find out. 

The pasta cooked most of the way while in the other pan, the garlic got evacuated after it started to brown.  Now we have hot garlic oil in the pan.  The garlic oil was used to saute a mix of spinach and arugula.  Once that was wilted, a cup and a half of shredded pecorino romano and about 1 teaspoon of freshly cracked black pepper joined the fun. 

I reserved about 3/4 cup of the pasta water and drained the rotini.  In a medium bowl, I whisked the pasta water and the masacrpone to make a sauce.  The pasta, the sauce and a pinch of salt (about a teaspoon) all jumped into the fray with the greens and pecorino.  The pasta finished cooking while tossing in the sauce. 

The end result was delicious, and honestly did not take much longer than the Big Blue Box.

 

Ingredients:

1 lb rotini pasta

8 oz mascarpone cheese

6 oz pecorino romano, grated

5 oz spinach and arugula mix

1-2 teaspoons cracked black pepper

Salt