Elevated mac'n'cheese with roast chicken

0:00Forget everything you know about mac and cheese. We are taking it to the next level with roast chicken, leek, pan cheddar and a seriously cheesy sauce all topped with a golden crunchy sourdough crumb. Yep, this is mac and cheese all grown up to show us how we see you and editor of dish magazine, Sarah. I could have you with us again. This smells ridiculously delicious this morning. Take us through the base of this dish. Sure, look I mean it is for something that ends up tasting like quite complex and you know absolutely delicious. It's really basic so you just start with some pan cheddar and a pan. Just add some leeks and onion and cook that together until it softens and from there it's just adding a few aromatics and putting it together honestly it could not be easier. Okay and for the good stuff we then turn it into sort of a creamy chicken filling. Yeah absolutely so first up I'm just going to add some herbs and some garlic so I've got sage that you could use sage or tarragon and a little bit of white wine goes in as well.

1:05I've got too much. No, not too much. I mean to be honest if you want a looser sauce just chuck in a bit more wine and we'll taste it. Make it a looser now just chuck in a bit more wine. Absolutely right. And then yeah look on the surface how easy it is it's just a matter of construction after that. Pre-cooked pasta. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if you cook it day before and this is. What is that? This white sauce. This is a white sauce. I mean cheese sauce. We kind of called it a beshamel which we have Italians kind of grabbing at their pearls because it's not really a beshamel because it's got the cheese in it so it's like a white cheese sauce. Like you used to make cauliflower chips. Yes totally. Absolutely and I mean it's fairly loaded with cheese. What sort of cheese are you using? So for this one I used some cheddar and some gruyere. Okay. But if you can't get gruyere I mean don't stress about it you can also use a Yardsburg or you can just leave it out it doesn't really matter. Just cheddar will do the trick. And then really you just.

2:05Also you're whacking that in. Stick it all together. Right. Oh this is easy isn't it? It is so easy and honestly it feeds a huge amount of people as you can see. And really basic ingredients. Yeah. And then this is just cooked chicken that. Yeah. Bachelor's hand bag. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Easy. That's what I used. Or the off cuts from the night before or whatever. Yeah. I mean you could use other things in there as well. But a roast chug is pretty easy and you don't used to have to use the whole roast chug either you can just whatever leftovers you've got. It would go a long way or even if you've got some ham left or something you could put it in there. Yeah. And if you want to amp up the veggies you could do that too. Okay. Yeah like you're roasted but it's a cauliflower and some other. That looks fantastic as it is but it's this crumb that you do. Yeah. Which top. What do we need for that? Which I may have already started on. Yeah well I'm so glad you did because the well you talk on. Yeah. The crumb is one of my favourite things about it because you know I always used to do like a pan with tartar style crumb and I would chop up the bed and I'd better at first and then

3:06I'd you know great the cheese. But now I just chuckle on the food processor. So into the food processor just goes some grated cheese, some sourdough and some butter as well so butter is the bread crumbs for you. Does it have to be style? No it does have to be style. I mean she's whatever you got. Yeah absolutely. And it's not pretty cool. That's just gone into the food processor. That's just gone into the food processor. It's not crunchy before hand. It's not crunchy before hand but you can put it in a lovely big thick layer and it kind of as you will see if you have a have a taste. Oh okay then. You've got a really lovely crunchy kind of. I'm just eating it all the way through. I'm eating it in the ad break as well. Yeah may have. I'm going to do a big scoop. That's amazing. And so how long do you cook that for? So it's about 30 to 35 minutes and like we were saying before you can also freeze it too. So it's a great kind of one if you're going away and you want to take something with you and like to a batch or something that you can freeze it and take it with you or for sick friends or you know anything kind of. If you're not doing a Barbie for the grand final this weekend maybe you could cook something

4:07like this. Or have a big one fat when you've got family coming around over you know holiday period. Yeah exactly. This is so good. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to say that's why I've been eating it the whole day. Do you know what the thing like you think of something like this and you think oh it's going to be dense and kind of heavy. Yeah. Unconscious that sort of thing. It's actually really light and delicious. Yeah. Wow. Okay baby thank you so much. You can find the full recipe over on our Instagram page at cooking on seven and for more great ideas make sure to check out the latest edition of dish magazine. The bang for your buck issue is out now and who doesn't want a bit of bang for our