Meme’s Macaroni Béchamel
When my friends used to ask me how to describe the French dish I was having for dinner, I would always feel at a loss for words. It was my absolute favorite dish in the world, Macaroni Béchamel. After so many clumsy attempts at describing what it really is, my siblings and I finally came up with the description of “a glorified Macaroni and Cheese.” To characterize it in such a way, to compare it to a food that is both common and ubiquitous in the American culinary landscape, does quite a disservice to what indeed it is. Why? Well, the first and most important step in creating this dish is to master the perfect béchamel sauce, a smooth and velvety sauce made up of milk, butter and flour. This sauce is one of the five “mother sauces,” a term coined by the French culinary Chef Auguste Escoffier in 1907. So, what exactly does that mean? Is it a sauce made only by mothers? Could my father make it?
My Egyptian born, French speaking grandma explained, all french sauces are a derivative of five classic sauces: Béchamel, Espagnole, Tomato, Veloute, and Hollandaise. I still really didn’t understand. She continued: in 1907, Chef Escoffier created the English version of his cookbook, Le Guide Culinaire - or, in English - A guide to modern cookery. In this book, he explains that there are five basic sauces each chef must master, and from there, you can create a multitude of sauces using those as a base. This concept of beginning with one, and creating others from that original, became known as “mother” and “daughter” sauces.
Ok, back to my all-time favorite meal. Macaroni béchamel is a pasta dish made with mostaccioli rigati pasta (by the way, you would never dream of using the unsophisticated elbow macaroni). The rigati, or ridges, are the crucial indents in the pasta allow the sauce to adhere to it. After boiling the pasta, you slowly and carefully make the sauce. The key with making the béchamel is to use very low heat and stir constantly so as not to form a crust on the bottom - that is the key. Finally, you pour the sauce over the pasta, add in all the other ingredients, put it all in a pyrex dish and bake. After an hour, the smells coming from your kitchen will be unbearable to resist. Some points of the pasta will be browned and crusty on top, but connected to the most “gooey” and delicious creamy dish inside.
Ok, now that I’m speaking about it so much, I am desperate to eat some. Let me go see if I can convince my “Mother" to cook it for dinner; after all, it’s a sauce named after her! I’m just the daughter.
Ingredients for Bechamel Sauce
4 cups Low-fat 2% Milk
1/2 stick Fleischmann’s Original Margarine
2 heaping tablespoons of Flour
6 tablespoons Parmesan & Romano Grated Cheese
1 tablespoon Low-fat Cottage Cheese
1 Egg
Table Salt
Preparation
In a large Teflon pot, combine the milk, margarine, flour and salt.
Cook on Medium heat for 15 minutes.
Keep stirring constantly so that the bottom does not burn.
Add a beaten egg, grated cheese and cottage cheese.
Taste for salt.
Start the Béchamel sauce before the pasta to have time to add
the ingredients.
Ingredients for Pasta
1 box Mostaciolli Rigati 86
1 tablespoon Canola Oil
1 cap Lemon
Cooking Salt
Preparation
Fill a regular, non-Teflon pot (the pasta comes out better in
a regular pot) with water, oil, lemon & salt.
Bring to a boil.
Add the pasta and cook on High heat, uncovered, for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Drain in colander, but do not rinse!
Put the pasta back in the same pot.
Add 3/4 of the Béchamel sauce to it and mix lightly.
Spray a rectangular Pyrex pan with Pam.
Pour in the pasta, then add the rest of the Béchamel sauce on top. Sprinkle grated cheese all over the top.
Cover with saran wrap, then foil paper and freeze.
Baking
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and cook the frozen Bechamel for
1 hour to 1 h 10 minutes.
From the freezer to the oven.
Notes
Can prepare 2 weeks before (not longer) and freeze.
Then bake when needed.
