Béchamel Gravy

When you watch enough Food Network and Cooking Channel, you get the courage to try what you see.

Case in point: béchamel.

I decided to try to make a béchamel based mac & cheese. The final product would include Italian sausage and frozen mixed veggies. The full list of ingredients included:

Large elbow macaroni, cooked (I don't know how much, but I have more than half a box left),

Shredded cheese (I used a gruyere from the $5 or less bin at my local supermarket),

2 ½ links of Italian sausage, cut into bite size pieces and cooked (Basically half of a 5-link pack),

A regular sized package of frozen mixed vegetables, and

The Béchamel sauce.

I get a lot of recipes from a cookbook so old¹, its recipe for baked custard recommends scalding unpasteurized milk, as if unpasteurized milk was easily accessible and available.

Their recipe for a basic béchamel called for

2 tablespoons of butter which you melt in a skillet, to which you add

2 tablespoons of floor and whisk until well mixed, to which you add

1 cup of milk and continue whisking until it thickens.

What I did was start with the skillet in which I had cooked my Italian sausage. After pouring out the excess grease, I added

2 tablespoons of butter, melting it in the pan, to which I added

2 tablespoons of flour, whisking until well mixed, to which I added

1 cup of milk, whisking as it thickened

Which is when I realized I'd just made gravy.

béchamel + meat drippings = gravy

Oops.

Soldiering on, I added the cheese, whisking until it was melted.

Now I had cheesy gravy. Delightful.

I put the noodles in a dish, added the sausage, poured in my cheesy gravy, mixed it up, put the dish into the pre-heated to 350^oF oven, remembered the mixed veggies, pulled the dish out of the oven, added the mixed veggies, mixed it up, added a little bit of milk to help the veggies cook, and put the dish back into the oven for 30 minutes or so.

Ain't no shame. Ain't no shame at all.

1. Rombauer, Irma S. and Marion Rombauer Becker. Joy of Cooking. New York: Plume, 1973. Print

Grease Live! – A Review

Grease Live!, Fox's first foray into the live staging of classic musicals, is more edgy than NBC's offerings, an excellent fit for the network.

Mind you, I very much dislike the basic story in Grease. I expected to cringe and groan and be irked by the enterprise, but

Surprise! I was entertained.

The script had me giggling – Patty & Eugene arguing over space for the Rocket Club flyer; Coach's pep rally speech; anything the Principal said over the PA system.

There was good acting – Vanessa Hudgens inhabited Rizzo; it's always a pleasure to see Wendell Pierce (Coach Calhoun); props to Jordan Fischer (Doody), Kether Donohue (Jan), and Ana Gasteyer (Principal McGee). Loved loved loved Haneefah Wood (Blanche), who made me laugh every time she was on screen.

Using both soundstages and a backlot, Fox did a nice job of combining the good of theatre with the good of television. I gave a small scream of delight when the end-of-show bows started (a theatre thing) – very happy to see the ensemble get their due.

The addition of the live audience energized many of the scenes (especially the dance off), and getting peeks of the behind-the-scenes scurrying didn't make the production any less magical.

Those peeks were often hosted by Mario Lopez, who, unfortunately, was unimpressive as Vince Fontaine. There's more to being the charismatic but skeezy bandstand host than competently speaking set of rapid-fire lines.

Overall it was a fun time. The songs are catchy, the drama sufficient, and there's no floating car at the end. I'd call it PG-13, where parents should probably have a conversation with their children in the aftermath (or during commercial breaks). What does he mean when he says, "Did she put up a fight"? Talking to your kids is not a bad thing.

A few other notes as I was watching:

·         Boyz II Men doing a little bit of Motown Philly during the title song. Yeeessss.

·         Commercial: It's a German luxury sedan. But it's still an Audi
Wha? (Audi's are German luxury cars.)

·         I love Didi Conn. Can I just say?

·         More Boyz II Men, please. Temptations/Pips moves and all.

·         I like how Vince Fontaine was shut down by Marty (I believe in the movie, the two end up making out).

·         No, Mario Lopez does not look old. We look the same age, right? Which is not old.

·         Joe Jonas – that's the middle one, right?

·         And no attempt to make his band look like they fit into 1959. <shrug> okay.