Liveblogging: Macaroni & Cheese from Scratch, Pt. 1

by Sarah J. Gim, Posted Dec 25th 2005 @ 6:03PM

macaroni and cheese, boiling penne pasta On this day when most of us are probably nowhere near a computer with an Internet connection (except those of us who choose to escape from Holiday family hell with excuses of "waiting for an important email. Uh, from Santa"), I'm going to take advantage of the break to liveblog my potentially embarassing failure at homemade macaroni and cheese. If it comes out great, expect lots of links tomorrow.

If it comes out badly, I'll try to bury it in the archives.

This is my first time making macaroni and cheese from super scratch. That means aside from the pasta already being made, I've got a hunk of cheese that I have to shred myself. (I've made "semi-homemade" macaroni cheese using processed cheeses before.)

What will make this most interesting is the fact that I'm also sort of winging the recipe as I go along. I have my kitchen bible, the Joy of Cooking, as a guide, with a few printouts from epicurious and the foodnetwork (Alton Brown, to be exact), but mostly I will just be going off feeling. You read right. We cook on the edge here at slashfood.

I'm boiling 1 pound of penne pasta right now, which will be just barely al dente at about 10 minutes. Alton recommends going with nothing but the original, elbow, but really, I just feeling like cooking outside the blue box tonight.

Filed Under: Vegetarian, Ingredients, How To, Methods
Tags: baking, boiling, cheese, dairy, dinner, grains, lunch, west coast