There is a show that comes on Food Network Canada with two sisters who try to redo recipes to be healthier. One of them is brown haired and flaky and the other one is blond haired and bitchy and I always want to smack her. Anyways, I digress. This recipe comes from that show (the original is here) and is their take on macaroni and cheese. While I love a good straight up macaroni and cheese this version, full of veggies and turkey bacon is actually pretty good.
This recipe is a good way to sneak vegetables onto the plates of small children or spouses that still eat like small children. I have one of those and this dish works on him. There are mushrooms, petit pois and onions. I always use petit pois instead of peas since we both find peas way too starchy. Since I didn’t feel like grating my cheese I just cut it up into cubes.
While there is butter in the cheese sauce it is mostly made with evaporated milk and flour which allows it to get a thick consistency but be a lot lighter than a traditional béchamel. The recipe calls for dried mustard but I always chuck in a generous amount hot English mustard instead.
The finished result. I always put macaroni and cheese in the oven to broil in order to get a crunchy top.
I actually like this recipe better than run of the mill mac and cheese recipes since it has more things in it. The mushrooms and turkey bacon go really well together and the extra veggies make it more of a main course rather than a side.
