Face it, most of us never really grow up, and whether you do or not, you always wish you could go back and eat some of your favorite childhood meals. Well, Kristen let me pick this one. I never ate this variation, but a more basic recipe. I learned this from a fellow in Arizona named Alan Altruz.
What we made is called Octopus Stew!
What I would eat growing up is macaroni and cheese out of a box, and we'd cook hot dogs, chop them up, and mix them into the macaroni. Kristen isn't a fan of boxed macaroni, a little too spooky, I suppose, so she made her own delicious kind. If you're making this for kids, a box will be perfect. (It'd be perfect for me too) So this is how we started, Kristen made her macaroni and cheese, starting with the sauce.
She made some concoction of flour or something and something else...I don't know.
Then she mixed it into some butter she melted.
Added some leche...milk for those of you that don't "habla español"...(like me), stirring it into the pasty blend of whatever it was she made.
Then you mix in the cheese...lots and lots of cheese, until it gets all gooey and grossly delicious.
Here's where I step in. I get to boil the pasta. Ladies...make sure you give your husband a job to do if you want him to hang out. Preferably something a little more hard-core than boiling water, which I get to do in a minute. We'll show some snacks your husbands can make for themselves some other time, but teamwork is good for now.
We ran out of regular elbow macaroni so we threw in some rotini to make it a bit more squiggly and Halloween-ish.
You mix the pasta and sauce, and this is a baked recipe...so you put it in the oven(the place under the stove where you hide your extra pots and pans. Make sure you clear those out before you turn it on).
Here's where it gets fun. All the rest of that can be skipped if you are making the blue box special, and you just pick up right here. Get some hot dogs. You're going to cut the hot dogs lengthwise, not all the way, but about two-thirds.
You do that until you have a few "tentacles" for your octopus. Eight is the right way, but if you can't handle that, you can do fewer, I don't think anyone's going to count them and judge you for being wrong. Don't do more than eight because that's unnatural. Oh, and the more you do, the thinner they are, which increases their risk of breaking...it's a proven statistical fact.
Poke little eye-holes for them, too.
Then...you murder the little guys. People always say you shouldn't stay in a hot tub too long. This is why--you'll boil to death and become an octopus.
When these little guys are toast, you let them drip off and you stick them right on top of the Mac 'n Cheese, and Voilà(Not a viola)!! You've got some Octopus Stew!!
Which is awesome! Thanks for treating us.
ReplyDeleteLove this!! Let me tell you our version of octopus stew. Package of Ramon noodles cooked with seasoning add drop or 2 of green food coloring. Drain the liquid before you add the food coloring. Place on plate. Add your cooked octopus on top of the "seaweed". My dad used to make this for my girls when they were little. Your homemade mac and cheese looked delicious Kristen. Good job on the noodles Nathaniel!!!
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