Night 3

Recipe 7

Smoky Chipotle Mac-n-Cheddar with Tomato and Chorizo

Matt rating *****

Ingredients used:

Coarse salt

Elbow macaroni

EVOO

Unsalted butter

Onion

Flour

Cayenne pepper

Paprika

Whole milk

Chicken stock

Smoked Cheddar

Dijon mustard

Freshly ground black pepper

Chorizo

Canned diced fire-roasted tomatoes

As you can see, we all have the majority of these ingredients on hand, so once again this was a very easy recipe. It is definitely a grown-up version of mac-n-cheese...not for the timid taste buds! It had a great kick to it but not so much that it made our noses run.

I always have a problem making home-made cheese sauce and it never turns out thick enough. I think that if there would have been a little less milk or chicken stock in the sauce that it would have been a little thicker. I ended up using about 3/4 of the cheese sauce along with the chorizo and tomatoes to be mixed with the macaroni. Matt had a great idea to use the rest of the cheese sauce as a dip later on, so I'll end up freezing it for that purpose. Matt actually agreed to eat this as leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and I'll freeze the rest of the macaroni for maybe a Saturday lunch sometime.

A note on the chorizo, the recipe calls for a chorizo with casings that you would remove and dice, but I've only ever been able to find ground chorizo sausage which melts in the pan almost into a sauce. It turned out great in the recipe so I'm not complaining. If you've seen the other kind locally, drop me a note so I know where to look!

One other thing to mention - although I won't list an entire recipe on my blog (again, due to copyright rules), I'm pretty sure that you would be able to find these recipes on the Food Network website or Rachael Ray's website. Or, you could just go get the cookbook :)!

Mandy Rae

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