So, I was coming home from work late one night and boy, was I hungry. So Jeremy came to see me on my way out and we kind of morphed my mother’s 5-can casserole into a midnight macaroni. Her recipe is a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of peas, a can of tuna, a can of cheddar soup and another can of crispy onion bits for the top. But when it’s late at night, you don’t have the time or will to bake up a whole casserole. You want fast food sans guilt. If it was a hard day, you need a soft landing. This is why we have comfort food.
First of all, in our opinion, the ULTIMATE comfort food is macaroni and cheese. It’s an easy one pot dinner almost if you synchronize everything just right. We’re not there yet, so Lauren boiled the macaroni. Shells are a nice vessel for the cheese. The bigger the better, but small ones work well too, as do elbows, rigatoni, or whatever shape suits your fancy. I mean, just LOOK at this gallery of shapes…Voila!
We wanted to be healthy and since I can’t go 2 days without fish, (Sorry Bruce, but fish are friends ’til they’re dead. Then they’re food!) we used a can of tuna fish, not the pre-seasoned packages because you can just as easily play with the seasonings on any plain fish. Combinations can range from sweet to spicy, seasonal, herbal, citrus…Anything you want. The spice pantry is a great place to use your imagination, make mistakes and experiment like a true culinary scientist. Really, try it out! It’s fun! If you aren’t a tuna person, you can find a bag of tiny shrimp in the frozen section, or calamari, mussels out of the shells or even scrap the fish and add chicken. It’s your meal, so you decide what protein goes into it, even leftover bean mix if you want.
Remember that bechamel from a few weeks ago? We added some velveeta cheese to it and gave it a cheesy twist. The tricky part for me is the issue of lumping. When I add the flour first at an estimated lump, (1 cup turns the milk into glue and patties.) I find more lumps than a case of Hidradenitis. My best secret is to pour in your milk first, add the flour gradually and then melt in the cheese. You REALLY want to have as much control as you can over this part in the process. Some say it’s 1:1 ratio, but that’s not always right as far as we’ve seen. Besides, some people prefer imperfect too thin or too thick sauces compared to what the books say.
I am a huge connoisseur of spice. I’ve tried everything I can get my hands on from mild salsa to this one little bottle in the Pepper Palace called “The End”. (We’ll discuss that when we go to Quincy Market. It’s a tad embarrassing.) But anyway, I saw some jalapenos in the vegetable stands and thought, “why not?”. It would wake us up a little. We weren’t scared of the capsaicin because dairy products like cheese sauces have fat which takes the heat down a notch more effectively than water.
Vegetables and accents are yours to decide. We chopped up and threw in some vitamin B rich broccoli crowns nice and tiny. When they cook through, they aren’t as hard but it’s so stocky they never become soggy, a notorious disappointment with zucchini. We piled on some minced mushrooms for the top. My mother likes to use crunchy onion bits. Sometime soon, we’ll show you Lauren’s new rice cooker and try out the cute little steamer basket that comes with it. Nobody said you can’t steam your vegetables on the side and fold in gently. We decorated ours with minced mushrooms all over the top.
Overall, this dish is a total artist’s canvas for any and all kinds of flavors and textures. I can clearly see this working on “Worst Cooks in America” as a base-line challenge as a 1st time creative assignment. We love this dish and will gladly keep it in our repertoire.
There is however one thing that we didn’t do that REALLY would have tied it all together for movie-buffs like us, <sigh> but we’re not alcohol drinkers.
Do you mean…
Yup, Midnight Margaritas! https://youtu.be/FarMiGXytwo?t=12