Macaroni and Carrots and Cheese
- At August 25, 2009
- By megan
- In carrot, Cheddar Cheese, favorites, pasta
3
This is a must-try for anyone who loves the comfort food of baked macaroni and cheese but cringes at the fat content. My grandmother’s is the best, but it has tons of cheese, milk, and butter. I basically stopped making macaroni and cheese, but then I created this dish and look for excuses to make it again and again.
Ingredients:
- 8 oz whole wheat shells, macaroni, or whatever shape pasta you want
- 1 pound carrots (approximately) peeled and chopped into smaller pieces
- 3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 medium sized onion, sliced into smaller strips (I used a walla-walla onion because it is in season. Otherwise, use a yellow onion.)
- 1 TB olive oil
- 1 pepper, thinly sliced into inch long, super thin strips
- 1.5 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese (I prefer Tillamook)
- sea salt
- fresh ground black pepper
In a large pot, bring water to a boil with the unpeeled garlic and bay leaves. When it reaches a boil, add some salt and then the carrots. Boil them for 30 minutes to make them really soft.
While that is boiling, start to heat the olive oil in a pan. Sauté the onions on medium heat until they are soft, golden brown, and fragrant. Transfer them to another dish and add the sliced pepper to the hot pan. Sauté for a couple minutes and then turn down the heat. These don’t need to be cooked to death, so if they really are thinly sliced, a couple minutes is all they need to soften up and get some flavor from the onion and olive oil.
When the carrots are soft, fetch them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon. I used a large slotted spoon to get all of the carrots, garlic, and bay leaves, and then took 1 cup of this carrot water in a Pyrex measuring cup to be used to help the carrot mashing. I then added more water to the boiling water, brought it back to a boil, and used this to cook the pasta. You could obviously go about this in another way: drain the carrots and re-fill the pot, but it saves water and energy to do it the way I did.
Cook the pasta. Meanwhile, add the onions, carrots, and peeled garlic to a food processor and purée until it looks like baby food. You may need extra water, so this is why I reserved some of the carrot water. Discard the bay leaves.
When the pasta is done and drained, pour it back into the large pot. Then add the carrot purée and mix well. Next, add the pepper strips and grated cheese, mix well, then salt, pepper, and mix again. Transfer into a large Pyrex baking dish and bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. Enjoy.
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