There are recipes in this life that are impossible to resist. If we add to the equation the good pretty and cheap, and we also season it with the talent and ideas of chef Dani García, mathematics does not fail.
This has been demonstrated on Instagram marking some mac & cheese that the chef himself defines as anthology. Seeing the result and the number of people who echoed the recipe is not for less.
The mac & cheese (or mac’n’cheese, or macaroni and cheese) are still a recipe for pasta with cheese which, in this case, is quite popular in the United States, the cradle of this gastronomic gochism that mixes pasta, handfuls of cheese and bechamel sauce.
Then we see the knack of Dani García to turn the recipe around, making it more complete and also leaving a couple of tricks on how to make this dish that is very easy to solve and that everyone at home loves.
How to make Dani García’s mac & cheese
The chef from Malaga speaks of a recipe for six people, so you can take advantage of a weekend meeting time to mark this great deal. Especially if there are children at home and you want to make the most of your time.
Like is logic, the only ‘complication’ of the dish is to make a bechamel —which you will see that it is resolved in a short time— and, from there, to enjoy.
Garcia starts with 75 grams of butter and 55 grams of flour, making a roux for that bechamel in an oven-safe casserole. When the flour is cooked, add 600ml of milk —of the time, please—, salt and pepper. The chef’s trick in this case comes twice.
First cook the flour very well so that it loses any raw taste and then let the bechamel also cook very well, over low heat, but leave it on the heat for at least 10 minutes.
When it’s finished, add 300 grams of gouda cheese and another 300 grams of grated emmental cheese. If you don’t have these cheeses, you can use other relatively cured cheeses that melt well and have a certain power.
Rooster – Shark No.0 – 250 grs
Stir vigorously and with a rod to melt the cheese, a relatively Herculean job and that the chef from Marbella explains that the result of this mixture will be “a thick and chewy bit”, to which he then adds a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.
When the cheese is ready, boil the pasta (in your case, for six people, 250g of Valfleuri coquillette). If you don’t have this brand, nothing happens, but in any case it is advisable to use short, round and hollow pasta —so that the mixture enters well— like sharks (or coditos).
Cook the pasta in salted water and, trick, Dani García takes out the coquillettes directly from the cooking water to the cheese casserole, which will help make it more fluid and light —as can be seen in the video—.
When everything is well mixed, prepare a crispy layer that is the finishing touch to the dish. Mix 120 grams of grated Parmesan cheese, 120 grams of panko —a thick breadcrumb of Japanese origin, if you don’t have it, you can use traditional breadcrumbs—, 50 grams of melted butter and a teaspoon of sweet paprika, with which you make a layer that will cover the mac & cheese in the oven.
From there it goes into the oven, already preheated and the grill function on, to gratinate this top and form a crust with which to finish off the job. Now, if you have at home at hand, when you serve the dish you can grate black truffle as Dani García does, but without reaching this point it is already a plate like the top of a pine tree.
Images | Danny Garcia
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