Cook. Better. recipe, review and giveaway
December 18, 2017 by Jenny
Cook. Better. by Nikki Werner and Brandon De Kock is not a book covering the basics. It is a book devoted to seasoning, knife cuts, techniques, tricks and tips to make everything we cook from the basics to more complex dishes – better.
For instance, the Macaroni cheese recipe we’re sharing today recommends that we rinse our boiled macaroni for a more defined macaroni and cheese. I’ve been doing that for a decade and when I wrote that in a recipe folks thought I was clueless. As the unofficial queen of macaroni and cheese, I have made variations of this dish hundreds of times and through years of experimenting I found that by rinsing the pasta it provided two things 1) it stopped the cooking process because no one likes mushy pasta and 2) it keeps the sauce from clinging to the pasta and becoming what I technically refer to as gloopy. This book shares tips such as this one so that others don’t have to experiment for years to find perfection, they can cook better now.
The secrets to delicious food from obtaining the maillard
reaction to the various stages of cooking a sofrito for maximum
flavor are covered. When I first began making bolognese, I
inadvertently rushed it. Now just cooking the sofrito can take up
to thirty minutes, adding the tomato paste another ten minutes –
all that time cooking to a perfect dark hue adds infinite flavor.
This is the type of information you will find in Cook.
Better. Broken down by technique and ingredient from Garlic to
Tenderness to Heat to Chocolate, each chapter delivers all the
facts we need to make the best tomato sauce to the perfect mashed
potatoes with myriad photographs including step-by-step photos to
assist with technique.
Special thanks to the publisher, Sieeking Verlag, for sharing the
recipe for Macaroni cheese and for providing two copies of this
guide to better cooking to our members worldwide. Scroll to the
bottom of this page to enter our contest.
Macaroni cheese:
A maccie cheese to feed an army. It’s very cheesy and very
rich.
Add this recipe to your Bookshelf (click the blue +Bookshelf button).
need to know
- Undercook in the beginning: Undercook the macaroni so it can still absorb some of the sauce and cook during baking without becoming flabby.
- Don’t overcook at the end: Don’t bake the macaroni cheese for too long or at too high a heat or the cheese sauce will look curdled.
- I like to use a pale Cheddar in the sauce and a yellow one on top, but that’s just me! – N
Ingredients
- 100 g (3½ oz/½ cup) butter
- 100 g (3½ oz/1 cup) flour
- 1.4 (47 fl oz/5 cups) litres fresh full-cream milk
- 500 g (1 lb 2 oz/4½ cups) mature Cheddar cheese, grated
- sea salt and white pepper
- 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) macaroni
1. Preheat the oven to 190˚C (370˚F).
2. Make a white sauce (page 118) in a large pot, using the quantities of butter, flour and milk listed above, and boil for 5 minutes. Adjust the heat and stir to prevent it scorching or sticking to the bottom of the pot while boiling.
3. Take the sauce off the heat and stir in 320 g (11 oz/3 cups) of cheese until it’s all melted. Season well and set aside.
4. Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil, add the macaroni, bring back to the boil and cook for 5 to 6 minutes-it should be slightly underdone.
5. Tip into a colander and drain well. Return the pasta to the pot and fold through the sauce.
6. Tip the mixture into a baking dish (we use one that measures 25 x 25 cm/10 x 10 inches, and 5 cm/2 inches deep), smooth out so it’s even and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese.
7. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 15 minutes, then briefly switch to grill until the top is golden brown and bubbling. Feeds 6
If you like your maccie cheese noodles defined, rinse your macaroni! Earlier we said don’t rinse pasta, but in this case cold water stops cooking pronto and prevents the pasta from bonding with the sauce.
My friend Woz reckons maccie cheese ain’t maccie cheese unless it has bacon inside and tomato on top. If you agree (and I sometimes do), fold your fried, chopped bacon bits through the macaroni with the sauce (step 5) and lay thin slices of tomato over the cheese topping just before baking. – B
Hmmm … total nostalgia: my mom used to add a sprinkling of dried basil to the tomato
The publisher is offering two copies of this book to EYB Members worldwide. One of the entry options is to answer the following question in the comments section of this blog post.
Which recipe in the index would you like to perfectf?
Please note that you must be logged into the Rafflecopter contest before posting or your entry won’t be counted. For more information on this process, please see our step-by-step help post. Be sure to check your spam filters to receive our email notifications. Prizes can take up to 6 weeks to arrive from the publishers. If you are not already a Member, you can join at no cost. The contest ends at midnight on January 27th, 2018.
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