The macaroni and cheese is one of the most iconic dish of the american cuisine. It is a classic with a very instresting hystory, from very regal origins to flagship dish of Afro American comfort food.
As many Historians have proved, the discorvery of mac n cheese was courtesy of Thomas Jefferson – the third President of the United States. Jefferson, while visiting France, became enamored of fashionable pasta dishes served there. He brought back noodle recipes and a pasta machine, since this foodstuff was unavailable in the Colonies. As president, he served macaroni and cheese at a state dinner in the White House on February 6, 1802.
When macaroni and cheese was served at a plantation’s Big House, or mansion, it was often enslaved African-Americans who did the cooking. There aren’t many historic references to the dish being prepared in slave cabins, however, probably because the ingredients were rare and expensive. In some documented cases plantation slave owners would distribute cheddar wedges on Christmas Day and the Fourth of July, but that was also rare. After Emancipation, macaroni and cheese took on new life and multiple identities within the black community: It became a celebratory dish, a convenient comfort food, and a meal stretcher for impoverished families.
The famous actor Joseph C. Phillips described in brief commentary to NPR what Mac ‘n cheese means to black community:
In the African American kitchen, mac and cheese has attained hallowed status. You may be able to whip up a sumptuous beef Wellington or chicken cordon bleu but in the black community if your macaroni and cheese is not, as the kids say, off the hook, you can’t really cook.
It is very difficult to find a good and complete recipe of Mac ‘n cheese from scratch, but I tried this one with A LOT OF CHEESE from The New York Times and the result was amazing.
Every Pasta tells a story 