Hi, I'm Scott Samuel, here at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone.
Today I'm going to show you how to make a homemade macaroni and cheese with cannellini beans.
So, we're going to make the classic macaroni and cheese, using ingredients we all know. There's a
bacon, there's cheese, there's fresh pasta, and i'm going to incorporate some cooked cannellini beans.
So, these have been cooked simply by soaking overnight, and then the next day, I've boiled them.....
Simmered them with an onion and a bay leaf..... Drain them.... And here we go, with our cannellini beans.
So let's take a look at our ingredients. I'm going to make the base here, with a little bit
of pancetta or bacon, onions, shallot, and garlic sautéed with a little olive oil. And after this
is done, I'm going to add some butter and flour, and this is going to make a roux - a kind of a base of
our macaroni and cheese. We'll add some whole milk, bring it to a simmer, cook it until the roux has
thickened up our milk.... And that will be the base of our macaroni and cheese. I have some whole grain
penne pasta. We can also use fusilli or elbow pasta. I'd like to focus on using a whole grain pasta.
Let's start making this. So, the first step I want to do....
....Is i'll be able to do this all in one pan. So just a touch of oil. And you can use bacon or pancetta,
or you don't have to use this at all. I like it because it adds a little smoky base flavor, and I
think all kids will like bacon. So, we just want to cook this out for a couple minutes, until it starts
to get crispy. And then we're going to add in order.... our onion, our shallot, and our garlic, and cook this
down until it's soft. And then after that, we are going to make - as I said - a roux, adding butter and
flour, and then our milk. So, we want this to go.... I don't know.... three or four minutes, until we have a.....
......little bit of color on the pan and the pancetta has rendered out.
That looks pretty good. So adding our onion....
minced shallot.....
So, this might take a little bit more time than opening a box of supermarket macaroni and cheese,
but I think you'll like the flavor profile of this a little bit better. Okay, so I want to cook
this down for..... oh, three or four minutes, until the onions are soft. We'll add our bay leaves now.
Okay, this is what it should look like. Our onions are soft, they're translucent, the base flavor is
starting to build. Okay, so I'm going to add....for this recipe that serves 12.... a tablespoon of butter....
and three tablespoons of flour, and this is... Basically we're making a roux in the pan
before I add my milk. I'll cook the flour out so that it actually thickens the milk, and then it
will be ready for my cheese, my pasta, and that will be the base of this recipe. Then we'll add
our cannellini beans, and go ahead and bake it. So, let's just cook this out for a couple minutes....
I've cooked out the flour slightly, here, but it's
not going to cook out completely until I add my milk and simmer. So, adding my........
.......milk, I'm going to bring this up to high heat.
Switch to a whisk. Whisk up all the particles off the pan and bring this to a boil. You'll
see, as it starts to simmer, that it will thicken, and that's the flour doing its job.
All right, as we wait for this to boil, let's take a look at our remaining ingredients. When
this comes to a simmer and I've cooked the milk for a few minutes, I'm going to add my cheeses.
I have parmesan, some fontina, some white cheddar, some gruyere, just a mixture of friendly cheeses.....
I could substitute the gruyere for a little bit more of white cheddar or add yellow cheddar....
And then we have our cannellini beans and our cooked penne pasta. We'll be adding all this to the
pot, once our milk is thickened. And then we'll go ahead and bake this....
The milk has had a chance to thicken with our simple roux base.
that's what it should look like. Now, I can turn this down. We're going to add all of
our cheeses, and stir until they're melted. Then we'll add our pasta and our cannellini beans.
All right, so this is what it should look like. We've melted our cheese, let's go ahead and add my
par cooked pasta......
......and our cannellini beans.
I'm going to turn the heat off completely now, and go ahead and kind of stir this to combine.
And our base is almost ready.
Okay, this is what it should look like. The heat's off. We've combined all the beans and the pasta
with our cheese base. Now, what I want to do is.... we'll make a couple individual servings. I
could make this in a three-quart dish, but let me rub these dishes with a touch of olive oil....
and then a sprinkling of bread crumbs.
So, adding our pasta and bean macaroni and cheese.
And as I said, this recipe serves at least 12, maybe even more....
All right, sprinkling with our toasted bread crumbs. And I have the oven preheated at 350 degrees.
I'm gonna pop it in the oven for about 30 minutes to bake it off, and then we'll come back to that.....
So, our macaroni and cheese with cannellini beans
have had a chance to cook, for about a half an hour. We have got great color,
the whole grain penne pasta playing off the creaminess of the cannellini bean.
Let's eat!