Comfort Food - Mac & Cheese Carbonara

A good friend of mine played nurse for her mom recently. To help make their weekend easier, I made a dish of ulta-comfort food - mac and cheese! But not just any mac and cheese, grown-up mac and cheese with garlic and pancetta. YUM. I got the recipe from Throwdown with Bobby Flay. Here is the full recipe.

I've got a few comments for the recipe... first, one food network website user said it cost them $80 to make this recipe. Yikes. Don't do that. Buy the cheeses that you like and that are in your budget. Lots of assortments of cheese will give you a great flavor for way less than $80.

Second. Temper the eggs before you pour it into the milk/flour mixture. (You temper by first adding a small amount of the hot liquid to the eggs stirring constantly. Do this two or three times until the eggs themselves have warmed up a bit. Then you can steadily pour the egg mixture into the large pot of milk/flour. If you pour the eggs straight into the hot liquid without tempering, you'll end up with sort of scrambled eggs in your liquid.)

Third. The cheeses. Like I said before, buy the ones you like or use what you have on hand. I happened to have sharp white cheddar, smoked mozzarella, and parmesan in the fridge. I picked up a small block of mild cheddar and had enough for the amount of cheese in the recipe.

Lastly, it took my mixture 12-15 minutes to thicken to the point of being a sauce... much longer than the recipe called for. Just be patient... my arm is totally sore today from stirring but it was well worth it!

So back to the story. I made Mike and I a really small dish so we could eat a little of the mac and cheese and I packed the majority of it in a foil container and gave it to my friend for the weekend with her mom. I had my bowl with a green salad... the mac is RICH so just pair it with something a bit lighter for a great meal. This dish has great taste. The garlic really made the dish for me. Here are a few pictures!

garlic cooking

the cheeses



pre-baking

the dish i made for mike and i.

we must have a mouse ;)

a mouse named katie... don't judge