Mac and Cheese is a Caribbean staple, often known by its old British name of "macaroni pie."
Let's watch as this dish is transformed in the hands of Chef Bill Moore
into fried ackee and macaroni and cheese spring rolls.
[Chef Bill Moore] Well, Steve, we saw ackee and saltfish done in a very classical way,
and that's eaten all over Jamaica, especially for breakfast. Usually, with some boiled banana and dumpling and so forth, and....
It was a fairly easy thing to recreate, but we put our spin on it, here.
So, one of my favorite dishes - I'm very big into sort of taking road food into comfort food
and macaroni and cheese is everybody's comfort food.
So, to sort of introduce them to ackee, something that they're not so familiar with, we do an ackee macaroni cheese spring roll.
Fry it. So we're getting all of those things.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] Whole buncha stuff. [Chef Bill Moore] Exactly. Cholesterol heaven right there.
Okay, so we take our macaroni. Just it's been boiled - normal macaroni - put that in the bowl.
Then we take our Mornay Sauce. This is a Béchamel made with ....traditional.....a little egg yolk....
And make that.... put that in there....enough to sort of bind it up.
We want.....the Béchamel will make it really thick, so I usually ramp up the roux a little bit, so it's nice and firm.
And then, some shaved parmesan.
And then, we've already got some Scotch bonnet in there, but we like to pick - make it - you know, really spicy,
because it's something you're not going to eat too much of, so we put a little - the hot pepper sauce in - which we uh....
So you really know what you're eating when you get there. That's..... [laughing]
And then we take our ackee and saltfish that we made before, in a traditional way, and we just add that to that.
And then really, we're just going to blend all that together, so that we've got a nice cohesive mixture, yeah.
Okay, we're gonna take our egg roll skins. Keep it covered with.... with a damp cloth
while we're working with it, so they don't dry out, as you know, you want them to keep nice and supple.
I'm gonna lay it out on our board diamond-style, like a baseball diamond.
Take a little water. Just wet up the edges. It absorbs the water very quickly. So....
Pick about an ounce - a big good-sized desert spoon full.
Place it at the pitcher's mound on our baseball diamond. So we want it longer, rather than square. And we're just going to bring in the two ends first.....
Just make sure that's so....
I'm gonna damp this down again, and we're just gonna bring that over and tuck that right in there.
And then, we're going to....yeah....roll it nice and tight, and get plenty of water on the end there, so that we get a nice seal.
So that when we fry it, it'll stay closed.
I like to fry them in a basket because it's always nice. You can keep the sides down, make sure that they don't open up on you.
But some will. Hope for the best, you know?
Okay, so we fried these for about a minute. Just get a nice brown. Nice and crispy. I say about 375.
I can cut them a variety of ways. You can just cut them in in half. They get very crispy so.....
And you wanna get that cut nicely,
so we can lay them down crossways like this.
Or, you know, sometimes I just cut the end off, and then just trim that end,
and let them stand up, and put the other one in front. So...
A couple of different presentations, you know.
A little bit of microgreens......
just to pretty up the plate. And then a little bit of the cilantro oil. Sometimes you serve it with Tamarind Oil.
And a very simple appetizer, great for a cocktail party.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] It's very cost effective, too. [Chef Bill Moore] Oh, exactly.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] Well, you know, that's important to people. [Chef Bill Moore] Exactly.
And people enjoy it, you know, it's something different. And they say, "well I've had ackee, but you know, the mac and cheese carries it through."
It's a fun dish.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] It's fantastic, Bill. [Chef Bill Moore] Great. Pleasure.