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Milanaise
2 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup brown stock 2 tablespoons flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon paprika 1/2 cup strained tomatoes 1 cup cooked macaroni 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese Make a sauce of the first six ingredients; add the macaroni and when that is hot, the cheese. Lift and relift the macaroni until it is thoroughly blended with the mixture.
A chafing-dish sauce built like a small brown roux, finished with macaroni and cheese at the table. The whole thing takes under ten minutes once the pasta is cooked.
- The hinge: cook the roux to blond, not whiteTwo tablespoons each of butter and flour want a minute or two of cooking before any liquid goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw flour. With only a cup of liquid total, this is a thick, clinging sauce by design, not a pourable one.
- Brown stockPeriod usage for a rich stock made from browned beef or veal bones. A good low-sodium beef stock stands in; if it is thin, reduce it by a third first, since the sauce depends on it for most of its flavor.
- Strained tomatoesFresh or canned tomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed — essentially passata. Half a cup of tomato passata or of canned crushed tomatoes pressed through a strainer is the equivalent. Tomato puree from a tube is too concentrated undiluted.
- ParmesanA quarter cup grated, added off direct heat. Cheese stirred into a boiling sauce will turn stringy and weep fat. Pull the pan back before it goes in.
- Lift and reliftAn instruction to fold the macaroni up through the sauce with a spoon or fork rather than stirring it round, which breaks the tubes and clouds the sauce. It is the same motion used for folding beaten eggs.
- Cooked macaroniA cup of cooked pasta, not dry — roughly a scant half cup dry. Old macaroni was often boiled soft; stop it a shade under, since it finishes in the sauce.
- YieldTwo modest servings. With only a cup of cooked macaroni in the pan this is a small dish, better suited to a light course than a main.
Chafing-dish cookery had a long vogue in American homes from the 1890s through the 1920s: a spirit lamp under a shallow pan let a hostess cook in the parlor without servants, and cookbooks of the period carry whole chapters of dishes engineered for one pan and a low flame. In the French repertoire "à la milanaise" covers more than one preparation — a macaroni dish with tomato and Parmesan, but also a Parmesan-and-crumb coating for cutlets; this recipe follows the former. The link to Milan is conventionally explained by the classical habit of naming dishes for an Italian city, though that is tradition rather than documented origin.