How can I stop my macaroni cheese going lumpy?
- Adam Liaw's macaroni, bolognese and cheese recipe
- Rodney Dunn's truffled macaroni and cheese
- Dan Lepard's spinach and rosemary macaroni cheese
- Adam Liaw's Adelaide pastie recipe
My macaroni cheese is curdled and lumpy when I reheat it. P. Larson
That's nothing. I had a mate's mum who made their mac 'n' cheese lumpy. I learned later that she didn't like her son's friends coming over so deliberately made inedible food. Some days her macaroni had no cheese – just flour, salt and water. Anyway, the pasta in mac 'n' cheese continues to absorb water after it has been cooked. It will suck up liquid as it sits in the fridge, bloating the pasta and drying out the sauce. When you reheat the dish the sauce splits because there's proportionally too much fat. To solve this, add a tablespoon of hot milk for every 100 grams as you reheat to give the dish a new lease of life.
What goes into a traditional Cornish pasty? P. Moore
The pasty is a Cornish dish that went feral when it arrived in Australia. Back in Cornwall, a Cornish pasty must be D-shaped with a crimp on the side and a filling of steak, potato, swede and onion. The EU has awarded it Protected Geographical Indication status, the same type of protection that covers Bresse chicken and parmesan cheese. The pastry was generally a short lard pastry strong enough to withstand the journey underground, where it was eaten for lunch by tin miners. The story goes that the crust formed a disposable handle so the miners would not ingest arsenic from their hands. The vegetables were "chipped" by slicing them while being held by hand, the steak, generally skirt, cut into chunks. When the Cornish arrived in South Australia they tried to farm their swedes, which are like hard and slightly bitter turnips, but the climate was too hot. The climate, however, was favourable to pumpkins, which they used instead. Today in Australia you will find anything in a pasty, including sweetcorn, bacon, frozen peas and other hard vegetables. (I once found a curly hair but that is another matter.)
My American cookbook recipe requires a Cornish game hen. What is the equivalent here in Australia? G. Haughton
I remember travelling in the US and introducing myself. "Hello, my name is Richard Cornish," I would say. To which the reply was inevitably, "Oh, as in Cornish game hen?" at which I would give them a bewildered look. Until I learned that a Cornish game hen is a type of chook. It is an immature chicken, 35 days old or younger, with an average weight of 300 to 400 grams. Here, go to a specialty poulterer and ask for a poussin. This is a generous single serve or a shared serve for two with other side dishes. The maximum size of a Cornish game hen is 900 grams, equivalent to a size nine supermarket chook.
Letters and feedback
Recently we discussed the hazards of softening butter in the microwave. M. Blackmore writes that she fills a heatproof bowl "with boiling water for a minute or two, emptying it and placing it upside down over the butter for a few minutes. It is great for softening butter in the middle of winter".
Send your vexing culinary conundrums to brainfood@richardcornish.com.au or tweet to @Foodcornish
