Fills a large, round clay casserole dish.
Actual dimensions I use: 10.5" wide at the top, 6.5" wide at the bottom (it has sloped sides), and 4" high.
Yield: 8 - 24 servings
(depends on how big you like your servings)
This can be frozen.
Reheat on a carbon steel frying pan (although a microwave works in an emergency, it gets too mushy).
(Last modified:
20240314.1234:
20240208.1227:
20221002.1718:
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The clay casserole has been found to provide a superior bake due to it evenly drying out the mixture during baking, preventing a soupy texture.
- 2lb small macaroni shells / elbows / cellentani, etc...
- 1T Hot pepper suace (Louisiana style)
- Lots of freshly ground pepper
- 1-½ Freshly ground whole corriander or ¾t corriander powder
- ¾t Chili powder
- ¼t Turmeric powder
- ½t Ginger powder
- ⅜t Cardomom powder
- ¾t Paprika powder
- ¼t Mustard powder
- ¼t Mint leaves, chopped finely
- ½t Black cumin
- 1t Olive or avocado oil
- 2T Cognac
- 1t vinegar
- 9oz .. 1-½lb White extra sharp cheddar cheese. 11-¼oz chess is a good amount; it was a little bit less cheesy with less than 10oz of cheese, but still quite good.
- Approximately 4 - 5 cups whole milk (= 1qt = 4C); you may substitute up to a cup of soy milk (we use Silk™ original, unsweetened) for the cow's milk. (I couldn't even taste the difference with the soy milk.)
- Put uncooked macaroni and enough water to come up level with the noodles in to a large pressure cooker.
- Stir once to unstick noodles from each other and the pot.
- Bring to steam, remove from heat, wait 30 seconds, then quick release pressure.
- Noodles should not be mushy; hopefully somewhat al dente.
- Stir to get noodles unstuck and drain macaroni.
- Put about ¼ gallon of milk into large clay casserole dish.
- Put ingredients except macaroni and cheese into casserole dish; stir well.
- Add one half of the macaroni to casserole dish and stir well.
- Add rest of the macaroni to casserole dish and stir as best as you can.
- Add rest of milk; this should come up to about 1" below the level of the noodles.
- Cut cheese into wedge shaped slices and insert into noodles as evenly spaced as possible.
- Bake in 420F / 215C convection oven for 70 minutes (assuming cold start), or until the liquid is gone (check the bottom of the casserole dish to see if any milk remains).
Notes: