Oui, Chef

Macaroni and Cheese with Ham

I've been searching for some time for a homemade mac and cheese recipe with which to break Muppet of her addiction to a certain, well known, boxed mac and cheese mix comprised of a tasteless cheese powder and sad little pasta shells.  All prior efforts have failed miserably with the dish either being "too cheesy", "too dry", "too crunchy on top", or "too spicy" due to the incorporation of various seasonings.

The whole "too cheesy" thing makes no sense to me at all (I mean, can there really be such a thing?),  but I have been sympathetic to her other critiques and carried forth in search of a suitable replacement to her favored bowl of cardboard shells and re-hydrated cheese goo.  I am happy to report that finally, with the help of my very talented food-writer friend Melissa Pasanen (long-time correspondent for the Burlington Free Press, as well as a staff writer for Edward Behr's incomparable "The Art of Eating"), and Chef Rick Gencarelli, I have found a mac and cheese recipe that will hopefully serve to banish all boxed versions from my house in the future.

The Birth of a Oui, Chef

The idea behind Oui, Chef came to me about a year ago while I was out on a run.  I had recently read articles by both Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver about their work in trying to improve the school lunch programs here in the States, and in Jamie’s native England.  I had also just been approached by a teacher from a local school who knew of my culinary training and wanted to talk to me about doing some cooking classes for his elementary students.  It sounded like a fun opportunity, so I started to think about what I would want to convey to the kids about food and cooking in the relatively short time-span of a school-day class.

I knew for sure that I wanted it to be a hands-on lesson with the kids, for fear that a demonstration or straight lecture about food would likely render me the target of a pea-shooter attack....I needed the kids engaged and busy having fun.  I was making good progress on plans for a number of sessions focused on cooking some Mexican dishes (the kids were studying Mexico and S. America at the time) when I started to think about how little time I actually spent teaching my own kids how to navigate their way through our own kitchen.  Here I was, a well trained cook, spending a bunch of hours designing a cooking class curriculum (of sorts) for a local school, when I hadn’t taught my own kids, who I cooked for daily, how to make more than a top-notch PB&J.  Such a bad boy.