Mac and Cheese

The history of Macaroni and Cheese

Macaroni and cheese, also called "mac and cheese" in American English and Canadian English; "macaroni pie" in Caribbean English; and "macaroni cheese" in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand; is a dish consisting of cooked macaroni pasta and cheese, though it can also incorporate other ingredients, such as bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce and white sauce.

Traditional macaroni and cheese is a casserole baked in the oven; however, it may be prepared in a saucepan on the top of the stove from scratch or using a packaged mix.

Pasta and cheese casseroles have been recorded in cookbooks as early as the 14th century's Liber de Coquin, one of the oldest medieval cookbooks. It is a French dish of parmesan and pasta and was brought to England in the 14th century. A cheese and pasta casserole known asmakerouns was recorded in a the famous medieval French cookbook The Forme Cury, which was written in the 14th century. It was made with fresh, hand-cut pasta which was sandwiched between a mixture of melted butter and cheese. 

The first modern recipe for the dish was included in cookery writer Elizabeth Raffald's 1769 book The Experienced French Housekeeper. Raffald's recipe is for a bechamel sauce with cheddar cheese, which is mixed with macaroni, sprinkled with parmesan and baked until bubbly and golden. The famous British Victorian cookbook Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management included two recipes for the dish. One recipe states that "The macaroni, (which should be "tender but perfectly firm, no part being allowed to melt, and the form entirely preserved" – lest one be tempted to cook it for so long it actually disintegrated) is then topped with more cheese, pepper and breadcrumbs, before receiving a final dose of melted butter for good measure and being placed before a "bright fire" to brown the crumbs, or grilled with a salamander." 

Red Tie Cafe serves a different twist to the Mac and Cheese, by incorporating grilled chicken and adding BBQ sauce to the cheese mixture...

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Bonjour! Shall we start the day with a Croissant?

The origin of the croissant

A croissant (ⁱ/krəˈsɑːnt/ or /ˈkwʌsɒŋ/; French pronunciation: [kʁwa.sɑ̃] ( listen)) is a buttery flaky viennoiserie pastry named for its well known crescent shape. Croissants and other viennoiserie are made of a layered yeast-leavened dough. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry.

Crescent-shaped food breads have been made since the Middle Ages, and crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity.

Croissants have long been a staple of French bakeries and pâtisseries. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor. The croissanterie was explicitly a French response to American-style fast food, and today 30–40% of the croissants sold in French bakeries and patisseries are frozen.

This innovation, along with the croissant's distinctive shape, has made it the most well known item of French food in much of the world. Today, the croissant remains popular in a continental breakfast.

The Kipferl, ancestor of the croissant, has been documented in Austria going back at least as far as the 13th century, in various shapes. The Kipferl can be made plain or with nut or other fillings (some consider the rugelach a form of Kipferl).

The "birth" of the croissant itself – that is, its adaptation from the plainer form of Kipferl, before the invention of Viennoiserie – can be dated with some precision to at latest 1839 (some say 1838), when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery ("Boulangerie Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris. This bakery, which served Viennese specialities including the Kipferl and the Vienna loaf, quickly became popular and inspired French imitators (and the concept, if not the term, viennoiserie, a 20th-century term for supposedly Vienna-style pastries). The French version of the Kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape and has become a identifiable shape across the world.

Red Tie Catering has interesting fillings for their croissants...keep a look out for more variations of fillings coming soon!

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