For The Love Of Port

For lunch today I made macaroni and cheese, but instead of our usual Kraft boxed variety I made it from scratch. (We were out of the boxed kind. I know, it's sad.)

Looking in the fridge we had a good 6-7 different kinds of cheese, so I checked my Mac & Cheese cookbook for ideas but nothing matched exactly. One recipe was pretty simple, though, and I figured I could make it work.

8 oz dried pasta
4 oz cheddar
4 oz soft cheese like mimolette
2 oz hard gratable cheese like gruyere or parmesan reggiano
8 oz cooked pasta
4 oz heavy cream
1 clove minced garlic
bread crumbs

I had cheddar and some cave aged gruyere. I didn't have enough gruyere, but I had some cotija that I thought might mimic the saltiness of parmesan. Then for the creamy cheese I had two choices: a norwegian style bergenost cheese or... some leftover Serra da Estrela. You can guess which one I used.

I probably had close to 2 oz of gruyere and then I probably used about an ounce or possibly a little more of cotija, but otherwise I stuck to the recipe. Cook the pasta, drain (retain 1-2 Tbsp of the water), add the cream and garlic, and carefully melt in the cheese over low heat. Once melted, transfer to a baking dish, top with bread crumbs, and bake at 425 for 12 minutes or until the bread crumbs start to brown and the cheese is bubbly. Let stand a few minutes before serving.

It was delicious! Quite a bit better than I expected, actually, so I'm going to have to make it again.

Um, .... so what did you do with the couple of CCs of reserved water? (Just so you know that people are really reading these posts.)

The reserved water stays in with the noodles and so is mixed in with the cream, etc, from the beginning. It helps thin the cream without making it less creamy because of all the starch in it from boiling the noodles.

Retained pasta water is quite commonly used (added to sauce when cooking pasta with sauce at the end).

Uh, so the most important question....what type of Port or Douro wine would pair the best with this dish?

Andy Velebil wrote:Uh, so the most important question....what type of Port or Douro wine would pair the best with this dish?

A tawny, obviously, considering who the chef was!

Glenn E. wrote:

Andy Velebil wrote:Uh, so the most important question....what type of Port or Douro wine would pair the best with this dish?

A tawny, obviously, considering who the chef was!

figured as much

In all honesty, I have never found that Port works well with a red tomato-based sauce except as an ingredient to add flavor to the sauce. But whether Douro wine or Tawny or Ruby style of Ports, at least for my palate, they don't complement one another at all, as a beverage.

a young tannic port works well with a tomato based sauce that usually could do with some sugar.

try this recipe Roy,

fresh crushed tomatoes, basil, salt, pepper, garlic, touch of sugar, butter

color should be reddish orange.

place over pasta, serve with young tannic port.