BRING BACK THE OL' PIE DAYS

after getting some requests, i realized “is true! dis bachy blog have no macaroni pie! with two pie jumbies like baidawi and myself, how is that even possible?” so i decided to make one. the first way i learned to make it.

yuh see, over the years i took a lot of things out of my pie because i discovered this cream of mushroom soup. it started as something to add for a little twist, but eventually it just took over. before long i was using this as a base instead of milk and eggs (which i avoid as often as i could). but i thought i’d take it back to the old school for this one. that presented one problem. milk. i forgot what milk i included in my pie all together. and the milk aisle offered no help.

hear nah! skimmed milk, high-calcium milk, fibre-enriched milk, omega-3 enriched

milk, probiotic-enriched milk, flavoured milks, what de hell?! well at least those terms are straight forward enough. but then you have all the pasteurized, ultra-pasteurized, uht, reconstituted. come nah man!

not wanting my ole school throwback pie to be bland, i turned to the university of youtube to give me some guidance. turns out there wasn’t much to be afraid of. pasteurization is just heating the milk up to take out the bacteria. and ultra-pasteurization is actually uht which stands for ultra high temperature treatment. anti climatic ent? yeah.

anyway, during the process i remembered. evaporated milk! but of course! so i picked up a pack not expecting to see anything much. boom! the evaporated milk too. recombined, which i found out is the same as reconstituted, meaning they broke it down to powder, shipped it to wherever, then stretched it back with water and whatever else to add back the nutrients and the taste. you’ll find mostly that on the shelves here as opposed to fresh milk or made from fresh, which as the name implies is as close to the natural thing as it gets. it stays liquid or made from liquid, just pasteurized to take out the germs and daz it. something people are actually looking for these days because of the health benefits. but back to my pie, what concerned me was the low fat tag. fat is flavour. what allyuh doin?! well... i guess i’ll just have to make it work then!

so step one, obviously, boil the macaroni. some water. a lil salt. some oil in the water too. they say that keeps the pasta from sticking together. meh... i do it jus because. let the water come to a boil first, then boil the pasta for about 8 to 10 mins. i use a big pot so i could throw the macaroni back into it to mix in the other ingredients without dirtying another bowl. hate washing dishes.

while that is going on, take the opportunity to chop up some onion...

grate some cheese...

and gather whatever you want to throw in. i used some black pepper, a lil more salt, paprika, a lil italian seasoning just a little of the cream of mushroom soup because i really love the flavor of it and this time... 2 eggs.

i have a routine when the time is up. i switch off the stove, set the oven to 250, then strain the pasta. then it’s back into the pot to mix. yuh just want to dump all that in and mix it all up. see? big pot... one less thing to wash.

so you're looking for a rich mixture. by the way, this point is like last call. this is the time to fix stuff. taste it. see if it needs a little more whatever. last chance to make sure at least you can eat it.

when i tasted at this point i felt for a little more tang. a lil kick. so i added a little bit of honey mustard.

next, get your vessel. you want to just take a lil bit of butter, or cooking spray or oil just to grease the pan. i use this metal pan because it’s the biggest thing i have to bake in and when pie makin in these parts, we going big because we can’t go home. we already home yo! (ok, shooting with left, greasing with right... real hard!)

get that mixture into the pan. spoon it in... pour it in... however you get it in is fine. as long as it gets in. take your spoon and smoothen it out, make sure it fills the corners etc.

next, top dat pie. if you want, when you’re done topping it with the cheese, you can put a layer of biscuit crumbs on top. a nice vibe, but i prefer it plain. or sometimes i might shake a lil italian seasoning in the cheese on top too.

pop that bad boy into the oven. and turn the heat up to 300... 350 anywhere around there. fire below. bake until brown on top.

 next step is to let it cool. if you cut it while very hot, it will crumble. plus yuh need to swag like yuh know what's goin on and yuh accustom doin dat. play it off like no big deal. yeah, jus hold on... it would be aight.

and daz it. in the morning i’ll decide what to eat with this. maybe some lentils and stew chicken. or some stew pigieon peas and geera pork. i’ll see how it goes. but for now, i’ll just take a little sample. try it out!