Three's Company

Baked Macaroni and Cheese with 2007 Ménage à trois Chardonnay: 4/5

When looking for a quick dinner, I strongly urge you not to grab a box, or a package, or something you will have regretted ingesting the moment you have finished. When looking for a quick dinner, a delicious meal can be whipped up in a few short minutes.

Since I had gone to see Up in the Air, with Rachel, by the time we were finished hanging out it was dinner time. Conveniently, directly across the street from the movie theater was a Dominick’s. So, without looking for a recipe, I decided to enter the store and see what spoke to me.

With quarter sized snow flakes falling from the sky like marshmallows, I was reminded of childhood. The days where mom would not have time to prepare an extravagant meal, yet despite raising two boys, going to school, and working, she was able to whip up something that we could share for dinner.

Many of you, when thinking of mac and cheese, would automatically picture the blue box. And while I am not saying that there was never a blue box meal in our house growing up, there was also something more.

I’m talking about homemade macaroni and cheese, simple, yet some much better than than powdered cheese and orange food coloring found in the tinfoil paper package. There would be the nights where my mom would pull that giant casserole dish out of the oven, seeing the tension in her face from the weight, and I would know that what was in that dish was made with a million times more love than what could come out of any box.

So when walking through the grocery store, with the marshmallow snow flakes falling outside, I was craving my mom’s mac and cheese. But, as any good cook will attest, no matter how hard you try, yours is never going to be as good as mom’s. So with that in mind, I wanted to put my own spin on the dish.

When I got home I thumbed through Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and found his Baked Macaroni and Cheese recipe, http://www.howtocookeverything.tv/recipe.php%3Fnid=27.html, and compared my ingredients. While Bittman described his rendition as macaroni and cheese for “grown-ups”, because of using Emmenthal and parmesan cheeses, I wanted more traditional flavors, with a twist, so I chose cheddar, jack, and ricotta.

Now the thing about ricotta, some people love it, some people hate it. It’s a texture thing. And texture, in my mind, is just as important as smell. Me, personally, I love the texture of ricotta. Michael, on the other hand, does not, but luckily he had not waited for me to make dinner, and wasn’t hungry for my mac and cheese anyways.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with ricotta, it’s the cheese most commonly used in lasagna. It has an almost gritty texture to it, and is used more for the body of a dish rather than the flavor.

While Bittman uses bread crumbs for his recipe, I took the opportunity to again try Panko (japanese bread crumbs), which tend to crisp up a bit more than the traditional crumbs. With the smooth creamy texture of the cheddar and noodles, the slight grittiness of the ricotta, and the crunchiness of the Panko, the textures in the dish were sure to shock my palate.

I have been waiting for an excuse to try the Ménage à trois Chardonnay. The Ménage à trois California Red was one of the first red wines that I was really impressed with. With its upfront fruitiness, medium body, and slight tannin, it was a party for my palate, and since then I have been waiting to try their white, and what better excuse, with three cheeses in my mac and cheese.

The Ménage à trois Chardonnay is described as having citrus aromas from Monterey, tropical flavors from Santa Barbara, and fine structure from Mendocino, a “true ménage à trois”. With an alcohol content of 13.5% the wine’s body would be able to handle the heavy, creamy, textures of the mac and cheese, while the fruitiness and oak would be able to enhance each bite.

After a quick bake, the mac and cheese came out of the oven nice and bubbly, sending the warm smell of cheese and pasta through our apartment. As I corked the bottle and poured a glass, I was immediately over taken with the strong citrus aroma of the wine. After a minute to settle, a fresh swirl led to some more tropical scents of papaya and mango.

The crispy Panko topping of the mac and cheese, as with my mother’s crouton topping, was my favorite part of the dish. In one bite, I was immediately transported to my child hood home, taking a break from homework to sit down with my family and enjoy this heart warming dish. Although I would have liked it more if I had picked up some ham or bacon to include, the simplicity did not become monotonous thanks to the panko and ricotta.

Together the wine and the mac and cheese were made for each other. The body of the Chardonnay was able to stand together with the weight of the dish, without over powering it. The fruitiness and stronger acidity was able to break through the fat from the cheese, while cleansing the palate for a fresh bite.

The thing about it, and this is why I am beginning to despise boxed and prepackaged food, is the whole recipe only took about a half an hour to make. I mean it’s basically boiling some water, melting some cheese, and baking for 15 minutes. So the next time you don’t think you have time to make a meal, just think about it for a moment, there may just be a perfect pair a half an hour away.