All cooking is chemistry, but great macaroni and cheese feels more like the work of alchemy.Ĭrab mac and cheese is hardly the novelty it once was - especially in Western Washington - but in the expert hands of Chambers Bay Grill, their talent elevates the dish to new heights. There are many variations on the basic mac and cheese architecture - elbow macaroni baked in a cheddar cheese sauce - and as many different notions of what the best, truest version is, if such a thing can even be determined. Chambers Bay Grill marks my 33rd mac and cheese dish. My goal is to report on a South Sound mac and cheese dish every week up to the tournament - to spread the cheesy word, ease into tournament research and, obviously, build hype. The competition for March 2015 will pit 64 South Sound restaurants that offer the ultimate comfort food - macaroni and cheese. (For newbie readers, Olympia's Westside Tavern edged out Tacoma's Maxwell's Restaurant in the final seconds of this year's Tournament of Burgers.) Once again we'll host a number of daily games that pit one restaurant against another, leaving it to the readers to decide the final outcomes all the way down to a final four and then a grand championship. So, no excuses.Following on the successful heels of the Weekly Volcano's Tournament of Burgers, our editorial staff will present a new NCAA Basketball tournament-like contest this spring. Kasespatzle is a down home dish with little presence.Īnd for those of you who think that making Kasespatzle sounds too difficult, my friend Nico, a twelve-year-old chef in training, was able to master the method on his first try. Spätzle noodles are by their very nature imperfect, so don’t spend a lot of time worrying about how your finished product will look. Hell, I’ve even seen people use a cheese grater to make spätzle, pushing batter through the holes with a rubber spatula. If all else fails, you can also use a potato ricer or a large-holed colander. This method is particularly effective at giving you long, slender noodles, as opposed to those produced by the hopper contraption, which are shorter and rounder and somewhat resemble scrambled eggs. If you feel like channeling your dearly departed Oma (or someone else’s, in the event you’re not of German descent), you can also make it the old-fashioned way with a board and scraper, also known as a Spätzlebrett und Schaber. It’s an incredibly simple procedure, though you might appreciate a visual spätzle tutorial to give you an idea of how it’s supposed to work. This device is easy enough to use-you simply fill the hopper with batter, then slide it back and forth along a metal grate that is secured over a pot of boiling water. To make spätzle, it helps to have a Spätzlehobel, or spätzle maker.
When made from scratch, Kasespatzle beckons to a simpler time when food didn’t have to be complicated to be delicious. While American renditions of this German dish may add any number of odd spices, such as nutmeg or mustard powder, a basic Kasespatzle consists only of soft, dumpling-like noodles mixed with melty, stretchy cheese and topped with a touch of caramelized onion. Pronounced KAE-zeh-SHPET-zleh, this dish is a great example of simple German comfort food at its finest. Found in many German homes and restaurants, Kasespatzle is just as entrenched in the traditional Deutsch comfort food lexicon as it is in ours. Kasespatzle, AKA Traditional German Macaroni and CheeseĮven the Germans have a macaroni and cheese dish: Kasespatzle (or rather Käsespätzle). The French quite possibly perfected cheese sauce with their lovely Mornay, sister sauce to Our Lady of Béchamel, expanding upon the basic roux and milk combination with a few handfuls of shredded cheese. The Swedes have their makaronipudding, a simple, stoic casserole of macaroni and any number of northern cheeses, such as Gruyère or Emmentaler. The Italians, stalwarts of all things cheese- and pasta-related, combined these two ingredients into many a hearty dish, such as baked ziti and cacio e pepe. They’re surprised when I tell them that most European countries not only have their own versions, but that some of theses recipes appeared on the culinary map long before macaroni and cheese became popular in the United States. Many folks believe that macaroni and cheese is a purely American dish. If you’re looking for a hearty baked mac with crunchy sourdough croutons on top, check out this recipe. I wrote this recipe for my book, Melt: the Art of Macaroni and Cheese. In fact, it’s a traditional German macaroni and cheese recipe. When I say I’m making a Kasespatzle recipe , people look at me funny. Like I’m making up new words out of thin air.
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