last week i decided it was about time to catch up on my monthly macaroni and made me and my handsome man the mushroom and herb macaroni and cheese. there were a few flaws with this macaroni. they were mainly due to operating errors so i do not blame it on the recipe. i admit that they were all my fault. i am going to go ahead and talk about them right at the beginning so that you can realize that my opinions may be a bit biased due to my mistakes.
mistake #1: i failed to use an appropriate amount of mushrooms. this was not because i did not have enough, but because my pile of mushrooms after chopping was super large and seemed that it would have turned out being a mushrooms and cheese dish instead of the desired macaroni and cheese. i should have thought about the fact that noodles expand quite a bit after they are cooked. everything is always easier after the fact! i dont think that the amount of mushrooms i used made the dish bad, i just wished there were more. i liked them!
mistake #2: i kind of messed up the sauce. i'm not sure if this is really a mistake or not because i may not have liked the sauce had i made it by actually following the recipe. i think in the future i need to figure out the correct way to adjust the recipe so that the sauce turns out better when i choose make alterations. basically, the recipe called for a sauce where flour is used to make it thicker (i cannot for the life of me remember exactly what it is called). i am not the biggest fan of this kind of sauce because i feel that the flavor from the flour is far too overpowering compared to the flavor of the cheese. i dont know about you, but i do not like my macaroni and cheese having any flour flavor at all. i became more passionate about this opinion with the last monthly macaroni where the sauce had great consistency, but not great flavor. at least until i grated nearly an entire 0.5 lbs of parmesan into it. anyway, because of this i only put about half the amount of flour into the sauce that the recipe called for. this caused the sauce to not have an even consistency at all. it was a bit too watery, but then seemed to also have some clumps in it. this description is more related to the reheated lunch version rather than the fresh out of the oven version. the fresh out of the oven version was only a bit more watery than desired, no weird clumps. i really liked the flavor and somewhat the consistency when it was fresh. my recommendation is to only eat it fresh.
mistake #3: i failed to get the sauce to simmer before adding the cheese. maybe it was a laziness factor or maybe it was the fact that i altered the sauce initially, but i waited 15 minutes for the sauce to simmer and it would not simmer no matter how hard i tried. i am just going to blame it on the fact that i accidentally ripped off the knob to that burner a few weeks ago and it may be messed up now. why did i not use another burner then? that would be because that burner happens to be the only semi large one that is on my stove. my pan is so large that there is no way the tiny burners would disperse heat evenly.
other than the errors i made, i really liked the flavor of this macaroni. it was very fresh tasting and exactly what i was in the mood to enjoy. the herbs made it have a bit more of a garden taste that is very uncommon in most macaroni recipes. i love herbs! and melted gruyere cheese is always amazing (i began to get a craving for tracys delicious swiss fondue)! i think this recipe would be very delicious in the summer months because of its light and refreshing flavor. however, the sauce issue needs to be fixed (if i did not need to eat so many leftovers i probably would not feel this way). i hope i figure out how to properly do it next time!
happy macaroni eating!
love.
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