Of Mac'n'Cheese and Culinary Curiosities...

Everybody claims that they have a recipe that they make better than anyone else in the world.  My friend Krissi makes a salsa that is directly descended from God, while Rebecca makes enchiladas that make you want to smack your mama, they're so good.  We've all got one in our wheelhouse, the recipe that we pull out when we want to wow.

I'm a pretty good cook, my specialty being anything in the carbohydrate family.  My ancestry is Italian and Portuguese, and food has always played a huge role in our get-togethers. My Portuguese family does not hold "family reunions" they hold "eat-a-thons," which are exactly what you would gather from the nomenclature.  They start early, preferably at a state park large enough to hold all of our coolers and barbecues, and as we sit around in a circle of plastic folding lawn chairs, we eat our way through a bizarre cultural hybrid of Portuguese/Italian/Mid-Western fare.  The deviled eggs (of which my Aunt Bea, may she rest in peace, made the best you've ever eaten - see what I mean?) sat comfortably next to the oxtail stew, which was perched next to a bowl of homemade taralli.

A word about my family and taralli - for the unfamiliar, taralli is a traditional Italian snack food, kind of a cracker/pretzel/bagel hybrid.  You boil the dough before you bake it, and then dip the resulting cracker in red wine to soften it for consumption (it may not be traditional, but my family's taralli was always hard enough to crack a tooth.).  Now, the majority of my family struggles with adult onset diabetes, and because of this they insisted that red wine was a no-go for them.  How did they consume their taralli, then?  By dipping it in Pepsi, of course.

There are several problems with this, not the least of which is...have you ever tried fennel seeds with Pepsi?  It is not appetizing, by any stretch of the imagination.  And I'm not sure how the sugar of Pepsi was better for the diabetics, but...there are many things about my family I don't question, and this is but one.

Be that as it may, the only purpose of these events were to catch up and consume approximately eight metric tons of food.  Hiking and nature walks were only encouraged as a way to burn off space for further munchies. At the end of the day, after the cheeks had been pinched and we'd been told we were too skinny, after we had listened to the stories that we had already heard years previously ("Now what year did Mabel and Ed get married?  1956?  No, it was 1959, because they got married the year that we sold the Edsel and bought that fridge that looked like an avocado..."), we would roll down the hill back to our abodes, where we proceeded to not eat for the next month and a half.

All of this is to say that I grew up with a bizarre mashup of culinary influences, which probably explain my two money dishes.  One is my stuffing/dressing, which I bust out every Thanksgiving.  I have a pathological aversion to StoveTop and commercial stuffings, as I believe the ingredient list is secretly something like this:

Stove Top Stuffing
Three kitchen sponges
Crap you sweep up from the floor after you've prepared the rest of your Thanksgiving fare
Chicken broth
Directions: Cut sponges into tiny cubes.  Toss with crap from the floor.  Wet with chicken broth, and bake.

Seriously, it's the devil.

So I found a recipe that I love, and befitting the Italian in me, it contains sausage and parmesan cheese, and it's basically the most delicious stuffing you will ever eat.  My sister is allowed her beloved StoveTop, just not in my presence.  And I think our table is the better for it.

The other is not so much a "Wow!" dish, but it is my ultimate comfort food, and again reflects the Mid-west/Italian roots of so much of my upbringing.  My grandmother has made a tomato-based macaroni and cheese for as long as I can remember, and it is savory and delicious in a way that almost no other mac'n'cheese is.  It is also super simple to make, requires four ingredients, and can be made with one implement (two, if you decide to grate your own cheese). We loved it as kids because the mozzarella makes the most delightful "strings" when you scoop it from the bowl.  There was always an unspoken competition to see whose strings would be the longest. 

Grandma's Stringy Mac'n'Cheese
Boil one package of the macaroni of your choice according to package directions.  Drain and return to the same pot.  Add two eight-ounce cans of tomato sauce and stir.  Then add sixteen ounces of grated sharp cheddar cheese and sixteen ounces of grated mozzarella cheese.  Stir to combine - you know it's ready when the cheese is melted and is extremely gooey.  Plop in a bowl/on a plate/stand at the stove over the pot with a fork and enjoy.

That's it.  You can adjust the amounts of cheese to suit your taste, and add a little salt'n'pepper for a kick.  The best side-dish is a wedge of iceberg lettuce with ranch or blue cheese dressing, just so you can die of sodium overload. I always use shell macaroni, because then you get delightful little explosions of cheese in your mouth, but any kind of macaroni works.  All it takes is one bowl of this, and I'm back in the yellow-linoleum kitchen of my childhood, convinced that all is right with the world.

And for just a little while, it is.