Is there such a thing as "too much cheese"???

Tonight, is Foodies night. Tonight, we're doin' it big - huge! Tonight, we eat mac 'n cheese, baby! Oh....hot wings, too, but let's get to the star of the show - the beautiful, the glamorous, the sexy, macaroni and cheese. Doesn't saying it just make you feel better?

So, in my opinion, it's virtually impossible to have a GOOD mac 'n cheese without a proper Bechamel.  Bechamel is a French "mother sauce" (whose original roots are actually of Italian origin), which consists of butter and flour (a roux), milk, and a slice of onion, pricked with a clove (onion pique). I usually tend to leave the onion out, when cooking for myself. But....where's the cheese?? Calm down! It's coming, yeesh! At this point in the game, we have a Bechamel - you can use this mother sauce in countless dishes - it's used as the base of Alfredo sauce, the Greeks use it in Moussaka, the French use it to top a decadent Croque Monsieur...it goes on and on. Adding cheese to the Bechamel turns it into a Mornay sauce, which is just a fancy term for....well....cheese sauce!!!  There you have it - a pretty detailed background on something quite simple, but yet so hard to perfect!

Countless ingredients can be added to mac 'n cheese - anywhere from peas, carrots, corn, sausage, jalapenos, lobster, mushrooms, chicken, scallions, crab, bacon - oh my! .....wait....did I just? Yes....yes I did - bacon <drooooooool> - tonight....I use bacon <bows in response to applause>.  I will be making quite a big batch tonight, and usually when making larger batches of anything, it tends to get a bit tricky - let's hope this comes out great! I mean...we have butter, we have cheese, we have pasta, and we have the God of all meats, bacon - how could it NOT be perfect?!

For your reference (or eye candy/entertainment), I've included a video of Chef Gordon Ramsay demonstrating a simple cheese sauce, like the one I've mentioned above. If this doesn't make you want to go home and make this right away, I don't know what will! Bon Appetit!