This Thanksgiving, for some reason someone wanted macaroni & cheese.
That's not really something I associate with Thanksgiving, but this was
a split effort among three families, so I took on the macaroni & cheese.

I wanted to make it something different than just your average macaroni
& cheese. I didn't have a recipe, and I wanted to use smoked Swiss
cheese, but since I couldn't find any, I decided to use a couple of
cheeses I had not even tried before. Having my phone with me at the
grocery store, I checked the internet for good melting cheeses. I
decided to go with Gouda and smoked Havarti. I was also planning to add
crispy bacon, portobella mushrooms, portobella mushrooms and a white
wine reduction.

So that's what I did. I made a roux...a bit more than I needed for
flexibility, and I poured some of it into a double boiler for melting
the cheese into it. In a saute pan, I cooked chopped mushrooms in a
little olive oil until they were well done (I didn't want slices), then
I removed those, added a bit more olive oil and tossed some diced onions
in right when the oil just started to smoke a little. Once those were
done, I removed those and added 374ml of Chardonnay and reduced it until
it was about a quarter of a cup. I didn't want a bunch of extra liquid
in the cheese sauce, of course. It turned out nice and creamy...not as
creamy as Velveeta would have been, but it was still about what I
expected.

I had already baked three packages of Blue Ribbon brand hickory-smoked
bacon. I probably ate half of a package while cooking <blush>, which is
why I baked three packages. I wanted little bits of bacon in there, so
I tossed it all in the food processor and gave it a few spins. And
since this bacon somehow ended up with some little hard bits, I figured
that it would be good to soften them up a little with the cheese sauce.

So I mixed it all together and to me, it was taste bud ecastasy.

I had to actually make two dishes of it because there was one person who
I knew didn't like mushrooms. So I made a smaller dish just for her.
And her granddaughter and her boyfriend got the macaroni & cheese
without mushrooms, and they passed it to their grandfather. Four of us
ate the one with mushrooms.

One person said with some animation and enthusiasm, that LOOKS so good!
And, of course, the smell of bacon wafted out of the dish, which helped
the enthusiasm.

As it turns out, nobody got seconds, nobody moaned in ecstasy, and
nobody took any home with them, the third of which is fine. I don't
like hauling home leftovers either.

So.... I loved the stuff. I had never made it before and I didn't have
a recipe or anything. I just made it up and I wondered if I'm a victim
of cook's bias, or do you think a dish like this would really be that
bad? Usually, at our get-togethers, if something is good, people moan
and go "Mmmmmmmmm" and comment on how good things are. I didn't want to
just come right out and ask anybody what they thought of it. I figured
the silence was enough.

Note: This is Texas, I might add... and a small town where lots of
people like beans & cornbread, barbecue, chili, and foods like that. And
perhaps some silence was because one family was upset that their oven
had broken down and they had to bring the meat over to finish it off in
the house where we were eating. That also means that the macaroni &
cheese I made sat on the table untouched for about 35-40 minutes or so
before anybody got any.

What do you think? Did I try to get too fancy with macaroni &
cheese? Maybe I should have just gotten a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese and
stuck with that. (Yuck.)

Damaeus