Cooking: Saturday Night Supper

I think I confided that the husband and I don't go out to a restaurant unless it's a meal that I could not re-create at home. One staple I cook is a porcine main with a starchy side:  pork belly adobo and rice, Porchetta sandwich, Pernil and Arroz con Gandules, and American barbecue spare ribs and macaroni and cheese.

Patrick especially loves his mother's macaroni and cheese that I've also come to enjoy even though it was not a dish I grew up eating and initially found disgusting as a child.  Her recipe calls for making a roux with a tablespoon of butter and a couple tablespoons of flour followed by two cups of milk, grated cheese and boiled macaroni.  Super easy and a dish I can cook fairly quickly. Recently, I viewed on Food 52, Baking Sheet Macaroni and Cheese and wanted to try Amanda Hesser's recipe and technique.  However, when Patrick viewed the cooking video, he said, no roux?  no way!  The recipe calls for pouring the milk directly on to the macaroni along with a sprinkle of cayenne--also a thumbs down from the hubs.  I'm always wanting to revamp, and so I did decide to make as usual but bake in a different vehicle.  Also as usual, I needed to use up leftover cheese blocks:  Cheddar, Swiss, and Monterey Jack.

I love pork as a mainstay with mac 'n cheese, and in this case, I boiled a bunch of spareribs for an hour on the stovetop and then laid them out on another quarter sheet pan slathered with bottled barbecue sauce.  Yes, I've made homemade barbecue sauce, but the commercially prepared is equally delicious and so easy--Heinz brown sugar hickory and Kikkoman teriyaki--sound strange but hey both really meld deliciously.

I had cooked my macaroni and cheese as usual, with roux sprinkled with a bit of nutmeg and a squirt of yellow mustard, and then whisked it more with milk and grated cheese into a cream sauce before combining with precooked macaroni pasta (boiled 2 minutes less than the recommended shortest cooking time) and poured it into the sheet pan.  I also reserved some of my grated cheese for topping.  I was so happy that I had made just enough to not overflow the pan.

I had grated way too much cheese and saved the extra for a quesadilla.  And the side dish already looked scrumptious.

I then popped my ribs and mac 'n cheese into a 375 degree oven and set the timer for 40 to 45 minutes.

I've become a fan of sheet pan dinners. I made Patrick cook the vegetable--swiss chard sautéed in olive oil with garlic.

I worried that the spare ribs would become dry.  Nope, they were fall off the bone tender and moist despite what I thought was overcooking.

And I especially enjoyed how the macaroni and cheese baked in a sheet pan turned out.  More surface area for browning than my usual glass casserole baking dish resulted in a still tender, creamy and cheesy noodles with more crust and crispy bits than usual.

 Gorgeous greens.  Enough said.

Yummy leftovers for the work week even if we polished off all the Swiss chard.  However, we've more organic vegetable harvests to supplement the ribs and pasta leftovers.