When Lisa and Utari Philpott were dating, there was a big secret between them.
It wasn’t a deal breaker. But until that ring was on her finger, Lisa would not be privy to the Utari’s family’s macaroni and cheese recipe. Utari’s grandmother held it close. No risks.
“A lot of people won’t give out the recipe until you’re part of the family and they know you really well,” Lisa says.
They may even try to throw you off the scent.
“No one will give it to you, but if they do, they will leave out something that’s really important so yours doesn’t taste as good as theirs.”
In Bermuda, food is everything. It binds families, recalls traditions, and centers stories.
And typical for a tropical island, it’s influenced by many cultures. You’ve got your cassava pie, your rum-based fish stew, your cod cakes, peas and rice, and so on.
But there’s something else, something not always thought of as island food. It’s not always written down and may be just a little taken for granted.
That something would be macaroni and cheese.
“You find it in the summer picnics and any kind of event Bermudians are having, be it a party or funeral or wedding. You name it. That’s a staple. It has to be there. If it’s not there, it’s just not right,” says Keith DeShields, Executive Chef at Cambridge Beaches Resort & Spa, who serves a version of his father’s beloved recipe at the resort.
Not right for sure. Bermudians speak possessively and gladly about why macaroni and cheese is a national dish. Their mothers and grandmothers made it, and now daughters, nephews and apparently big name chefs put it out there too.
But how did it end up a national dish here in the middle of the Atlantic? Where there is certainly no home-grown cheese and most definitely no macaroni?
One guess is that the ingredients, although imported, keep well in Bermuda’s food-spoiling humidity. It’s also economical on in island with where groceries are expensive.
It’s easy to put together too. Simple ingredients made simply.
And damn, it’s tasty.
“I don’t even know if you had a choice liking it when you were little,” says Crystal Burgess at a picnic last summer in the Botanical Gardens.
“It just is.”
Macaroni and cheese speaks of childhood, traditions, picnics at the beach, Good Friday and cricket. Church suppers, charity dinners and bake sales.
“At just about any family dinner,” says Dianna Corday, who has three different macaroni and cheese recipes in her rotation, “whatever else there is, there’s always mac and cheese.”
But what makes this well-known dish Bermudian?
Certainly it must be baked. It is typically cuttable and crunchy on top.
And for sure not from a box.
Leave it to the North Americans to spoon out that sloppy mess from a pot and call it supper.
At Personally Yours Catering, macaroni and cheese is a favorite request, says owner Cheryl Kerr.
And that can get a little annoying.
“Sometimes (I will ask), ‘Can we do something different? This is your parents’ 50th anniversary. Let’s do something different from macaroni and cheese and peas and rice.’ But this is very traditional and that’s what they love. They will stick to that for sure,” says Kerr, who gives demonstrations on local food for island visitors.
There’s something personal about macaroni and cheese in Bermuda. It lends itself to tinkering. It’s not fussy.
“Everyone does it different,” Kerr says. “You’ll have some with the stewed tomatoes. You’ll have some with the ketchup on the top. You’ll have some done with cream of mushroom (soup) sauce. You’ll have some done with just a cheese sauce. It varies. It varies. But it will definitely be that baked macaroni and cheese and not the creamy.”
It’s also crazy popular.
SuperMart Fine Foods on Front Street, for example, goes through four to five deep pans (18”x13”) on its luncheon buffet every single day, all year-round.
On Cooking with KIKI — a local Facebook food-sharing group — hardly a week goes by without someone posting a homemade macaroni and cheese dish.
Nakia Smith, who trained in culinary arts at Bermuda College, founded the site, which started out as a recipe exchange between friends and now boasts nearly 1,500 members. She also operates Sip & Savor Bermuda Food Tours in Hamilton.
“People in the United States,” she says, “they do a stovetop macaroni cheese. We bake it. That’s probably one of the biggest differences.
“You always want baked macaroni and cheese. If it’s sitting on the stove in a pot, that means it’s not finished. But baking for sure. It’s what we consider Bermudian. But other than that the ingredients stay the same.”
In Bermuda, these ingredients may include canned tomatoes, evaporated milk, a cream soup, and some form of bread crumbs for that crunchy top.
And please. Bring on the cheese.
“Oh my goodness. A ton,” says Ellen Jane Hollis, who heads local studies at the Bermuda National Library.
“OK, more likely probably a pound to a pound and a half maybe two pounds of New Zealand cheddar cheese. It’s an insane amount of cheese. But it’s good.”
In her house growing up, making macaroni and cheese was a family event, Hollis says. It was the children’s job to grate the cheese block in the days before pre-packaged supermarket cheese.
“It’s a very simple recipe so you really can’t mess it up. So it’s a good way for that sort of community in the kitchen,” says Hollis, who now uses dairy-free cheese and almond milk in her recipe.
And that community doesn’t come from a box. Not in Bermuda anyway.
Dianna Corday adopted different macaroni and cheese recipes in baking for her family. But it was always real.
“I don’t know any Bermudians, who used the package mixed one, where you’ve got dry powdery stuff and where you add the milk and you mix it all up. I would never have used that in my whole life,” says Corday, whose family tree stretches 500 years on the island.
For sure, techniques vary. As do the exact ingredients.
Claire-Anne Raynor took no chances when she traveled to the States for business one Christmas.
She stashed the cheese she likes for her well-loved macaroni and cheese recipe in her luggage, just in case she couldn’t find it in Colorado.
“I went and bought some Anchor New Zealand cheddar from MarketPlace and I froze it,” says Raynor, 46, a long-time island wedding planner now at Destination Wedding Bermuda.
“And I took that along with the cream of cheddar cheese soup and the cream of mushroom soup (I like) .… And I then bought everything else out there.”
Raynor’s family macaroni and cheese recipe was passed down from her grandmother. When her mother took it on, she used whatever cheddar cheese was available at the market.
“But I noticed that the England cheddar was softer than the New Zealand cheddar,” says Raynor, who has two teen-age children. “I prefer the New Zealand cheddar because of the sturdiness of it. Probably tastes the same. Actually it doesn’t. The New Zealand cheddar is a bit sharper.”
Raynor raises a repeated quality of good macaroni and cheese: it is frankly superior and even more delicious the day after.
“Macaroni and cheese tastes better the older it is, for some reason. It settles,” she says. “Once it settles it just tastes better. When you have it fresh, it tastes nice, but it’s just not as good as when you have it after it’s settled by like 24 hours.”
At the Bermy Cuisine lunch counter in Hamilton one afternoon, Eldon Robinson, 51, says his mother would always cook a big batch to last a week.
“It tastes better the day after. There’s nothing like macaroni and cheese the following day. Oh Lord!” he says with a laugh.
Its improvement as a leftover also means it can stretch a budget.
Raynor also remembers her mother making enough macaroni and cheese to eat later.
“We had to cook something that was going to last over a couple of days (growing up) because you didn’t have the money to be baking, cooking every single day,” she says.
Bermudians, she says, like to add a can of cream of mushroom or cream of cheddar soup. Or canned tomatoes. Especially tomatoes.
“Every household is different,” Raynor says. “Like my sister does hers with tomatoes. I don’t. Even though we were taught by the same people. I just do mine differently.”
Corday, 69, who today cooks for her grandchildren, also remembers a pan of macaroni and cheese going a long way growing up.
“You’ve got a box of macaroni that will feed a whole family,” she says. “And back in those days, we didn’t have all these luxury cheeses. That kind of cheese (we used) was dead cheap and you got your protein with your cheese. You’ve got your starch. You put something with it. Could be even just vegetables.
“You didn’t have meat every day. I don’t ever remember not having meat every day, but my husband can. They didn’t have meat every day. So something with cheese in it was your protein and everybody seemed to love it.”
Macaroni and cheese is also hard to mess up like some other Bermudian recipes. Cassava pie, for example, with its multiple steps and long cook time, is easy to get wrong.
Not so with macaroni and cheese.
“It’s simple, it’s easy. Almost anyone can do it. And it is warm, nutritious. It satisfies all the feelings of home and comfort food that you can get,” says Hollis.
Maybe because it is so ridiculously easy to make, most family macaroni and cheese recipes were not saved. Only “special stuff gets written down,” Hollis says.
And while it does appear in some island cookbooks, it’s not as often as some other trickier dishes.
It’s more of a tradition.
Chef DeShields sees macaroni and cheese as pretty basic. And that’s a good thing.
“Most of the foods that are very popular now were peasant food and I use the food not negatively,” he says. “In general. And I think that macaroni and cheese is one of those. Easy access. Filling and cheap and economical.
“I think it came from the other islands with the original settlers of the island here. When you come to an environment, you use what you have. And I think that’s where is came from historically. Like the grandmas from Barbados that came here brought a particular recipe with them.”
These mothers and grandmothers — and fathers more recently — passed that recipe down not on a file card, but by spending time in the kitchen, like he does with his daughters.
“It’s oral. Practice I guess. It’s practice,” DeShields says.
Cooking is trial and error. What you remember.
“And I think that’s the same for most Bermudians also. They kind of see it done. And they’ll imitate what they see. Pretty much from family to family. From east end to west end. You’ll see different versions of the same thing.”
No one understands these ties between family and food better than Chef Fred Ming, who trained countless Bermudians to cook, many of whom run kitchens on the island today.
Ming’s cookbooks — including the classic “Bermuda Traditions” — are quintessential studies of island cooking. He taught at Bermuda College for 29 years and earned an MBE in 2007 for his service to his country.
On Saturdays off-season, Ming holds court at the weekly Bermuda Farmers Market, selling his famous fish chowder and, for one visitor, offering a seat and his opinion on macaroni and cheese. (She also left with a gift of hot chowder and a signed cookbook.)
Ming, who started his career on the cruise ship Queen of Bermuda, describes macaroni and cheese as a traditional and nutritious British dish of protein and carbs.
In the day, “every grammy had her own idea” on how to make it, he says. She would whip it up on a Saturday and freeze it to eat all week.
“It used to be a Sunday meal and now you can go to a restaurant anywhere and eat it every day!” says Ming, who pushed to get the dish on hotel menus on the island.
Nowadays, cooks are experimenting, often opting for healthier ingredients like low fat milk. If you want to try something different, Ming suggests using a soft fish, such as lox, in the macaroni and cheese and building it like a lasagna.
“Quite often, you get conditioned from doing something over and over,” Ming says. But just because you grew up making something a certain way, don’t be afraid to be adventurous with those cherished traditions. “I get excited when I come up with something new,” he says.
But do young people still care about these food traditions?
Cheryl Kerr, a/k/a Sista Saute, feels most definitely.
“They are not losing that baked macaroni and cheese tradition,” Kerr says. “I’ve been to functions where they have all kinds of food and somebody’s going to say, ‘Where is the macaroni and cheese? Why don’t we have macaroni and cheese?’ interestingly enough. But it’s just one of those things. They feel like they have to have it.”
Her daughter Racquel, who works in the administrative side of the catering business, is known to throw in some zucchini or artichokes in her homemade macaroni and cheese, much to her mother’s delight. She agrees that it was hard to avoid growing up in Bermuda.
“Every family function, every church pot luck,” Racquel says. “Even if we go out to eat, the buffets and stuff normally have some variation of macaroni and cheese on it. It’s pretty much been a constant my whole life.”
Kerr moved to the United States as a girl — her father was a minister and was called to work there — and boarded in high school. She worked in the school cafeteria and later for a caterer hired when a fire destroyed the kitchen.
She went on to study at the Culinary Institute of America.
It took 27 years, but Kerr, now 58, returned to Bermuda to raise Racquel and to take care of her parents. She opened a cafe and began her catering business, all promoting vegetarian cooking. She also wrote a cookbook, Soul Food with Sistah Saute, an alias dreamed up by Racquel.
Like other modern Bermudian cooks, Kerr has her own take on macaroni and cheese, respecting the tradition and making it her own.
In one of her favorite interpretations, she mixes three types of cheese: a sharp cheddar, Parmesan and smoked gouda. She uses evaporated milk, salt and pepper and a bit of garlic and onion powders.
“On occasion, I may even put cream mushroom soup in with it or cream of celery soup,” she says. “Now cream of mushroom soup is very traditional with Bermudians. And then I’ll just grate cheese on top of it and put bread crumbs on top and bake it.”
She agrees that in Bermuda, baking is key.
“So even growing up in the States, I would notice for sure that the more northeastern style of macaroni and cheese was that loose creamy (type), but the southern, particularly those (made from cooks) with Caribbean or African roots, It would have that firmness to it.
“How did it get to Bermuda? I would just say it’s through the Caribbean influence and the southern (United States) American influence.”
Then there’s the tomato flavor via canned stewed or even ketchup.
“It used to be THE way to do it,” Kerr say. “When I was little everybody made their macaroni and cheese either with chopped up stewed tomatoes or diced tomatoes and including or with ketchup.
“And now with the ketchup, that’s still very prominent. You’ll find some people who will mix the ketchup in the macaroni and cheese sauce, you know, mix it in with the pasta and the cheese.”
But the most popular way is to drizzle the ketchup over the top, sometimes in little squares.
“When you bake it and it caramelizes it really gives it a wonderful flavor,” Kerr says.
In Bermuda, macaroni and cheese is an oral tradition, passed down by families through repetition and familiarity.
Like so many other Bermudians, Allison Simmons says it was her mother who passed on the tradition.
“My mom, she taught my sister, my brother and myself to do it when we were teenagers,” says Allison, who operates Ariel’s Home Bakery from her Somerset kitchen. “My mother has three sisters and a brother and each of their families make it the same way.
“Macaroni and cheese was summer food. My mother and her siblings, they all owned a boat and in the summer and every Sunday, we would all go out on the boat. They rotated between baked ham or chicken legs or sandwiches, but there was always macaroni and cheese.
“Each week, a different one made it. And it was always the same because they used the same recipe. Whosever’s mother made it got to take the leftovers home. That was lunch for the next couple of days. So it was like a Sunday treat.
For her family, “it was always the mushroom soup, milk, tons of cheese, and a bottle of RAGU sauce to give it the dark orange color,” she says. “And lots of macaroni. Very saucy — my family does not do dry macaroni — and (lots of) cheese.”
Simmons, who family dates to the 17th century, admits that theirs is the rare “not cuttable” mac and cheese in Bermuda, although it still had that traditional crunchy baked top.
She follows her Mom’s recipe today in making macaroni and cheese for her family. “I keep it the same. It’s fine as it is. My brother changed it by adding sautéed onions. He did culinary (arts) at Bermuda College and is definitely more adventurous and willing to change.” But then again, she is more of a baker.
That macaroni and cheese adventuring also appears these days on Bermuda menus.
The Hog Penny Pub in Hamilton offers a small plate of quick-fried “mac and cheese balls” with parmesan, cheddar, asiago and mozzarella. It’s served with a Sriracha mayo dip.
Some offerings are even a little healthy. A Bermuda Heart Association cookbook recipe calls for pureed winter squash, low-fat milk, wheat macaroni, and part-skim ricotta.
“This is a home run recipe, you won’t miss the fat and the family is going to love it,” says the contributor.
Nowadays, macaroni and cheese world-wide can be pretty highfalutin. Whole cookbooks are devoted to it. Restaurants specialize in it. Some are elevating it to something else. Yes, I mean you, lobster macaroni and cheese.
One of the first to take it to a new level in Bermuda, and where it’s still a big deal today, is the Waterlot Inn, which serves an ultra-rich dish.
The recipe — shared for this story — is not for the weak-hearted.
The secret? Truffle cheese. Add to that 100g of onions, 400g of cheese (truffle, provolone, cheddar, Parmesan), 400g of butter and — wait for it — five wheels of Bourbon —all for a macaroni and cheese that yields 15 portions.
Maybe the quantities are different, but Bermudians are also pushing the limits of macaroni and cheese in their own kitchens.
There’s Dianna Corday, for example, who makes it three different, very filling ways, including the one made by her mother Inez.
“My Mom always made what I like to call a much heavier, richer mac and cheese, which is made with a white sauce, which I think is called a béchamel sauce. She didn’t use those kind of words. She called it a white sauce. So you know the flour-butter-milk sort of thing.
“And then she’d stir in the cheese. Cheddar. And in those days it was what we’d call rat’s cheese. It was the cheese that came in from New Zealand. It was the block cheddar cheese from New Zealand. You didn’t buy it pre-grated or anything. Everyone always had a big block in their kitchen.
“The English one doesn’t have any flavor, in my opinion, so I always used either the New Zealand or the American sharp cheddar. So she would do that and she would then put a layer of cheese on top and then buttered bread crumbs and bake it. It was like a bubbly casserole so when you spooned it out it didn’t stay stuck together. It was more loose.”
Corday also does an egg-and-milk macaroni and cheese she picked up years ago from a friend. That sets like a quic he. Or there’s her sister-in-law Judy’s big-pot method that is a combination of the two recipes and lends itself to freezing. In Judy’s recipe, she leaves out the milk until she’s ready to take it out of the freezer for reheating.
“Now with me,” Corday says, “I always loved those buttered bread crumbs on top. So whichever way I make it now, I put buttered bread crumbs on top. Nothing but fresh bread crumbs. I actually grate them. And then I use melted butter. I put a little bit of cheese in it. It just makes it stick together a bit more and I put it on top and bake it.”
Like so many Bermudian cooks, Corday keeps her recipes in her head. She did, however, work out on paper how to make macaroni and cheese when her granddaughter Jazmyne asked how to make it.
And so it continues.
At the Cambridge Beaches Resort and Spa, Executive Chef Keith DeShields, 47, oversees three restaurants.
You’ll find his interpretation of macaroni and cheese — and other locally sourced and influenced dishes — at Breezes, a seasonal restaurant where you can watch the sun set from your table on Long Bay Beach.
“You see so many different takes on it,” DeShields says. “From the very, very old school to the more updated version. I wouldn’t say updated because that’s kind of saying it was wrong before or made better now. It’s not the case. It’s just done differently as the younger generation gets to know different ingredients and gets used to different ingredients. They add to it because of their particular taste palette, if you will. Some folks love to do it with mushrooms and I’ll find some who do mushroom soup inside of it. Some people say, ‘Heck no i don’t like mushrooms.’”
DeShields studied culinary arts at Bermuda College and later at the Culinary institute of America. Upon graduation, he returned to Bermuda, but left after three years to work at the Grand Hotel Heiligendamm in Germany, where pocketed a Michelin star.
He gave it all up about eight years ago — selling his half of the restaurant to his partner — and returned with the idea of being a role model for Bermuda’s young chefs.
At the resort, he often offers a place for Bermuda College students like himself. “I’m glad I came home for that,” he says.
DeShields’ first teacher was his late father, Arnold Wesley DeShields, who died when he was 15. “I learned so much from him, being around him and watching him.”
His cooking is still an influence. “I would not give up to anyone as his oyster shooter recipe,” he says.
When it comes to macaroni and cheese, “I stay true to my Dad’s recipe,” which is tomato-based using fresh tomato — rustic, chunky, lots of garlic, he says. “Also, in my cheese sauce, I make a really, very strong vegetable stock. Really strong one. I reduce it down. It has a lot of celery, onion, garlic flavor inside of it. I use that stock as a base when I make my roux.
“And from there I add milk or cream to make my cream sauce. The cheese sauce itself has a hugs-around-flavor to it. I add my tomato confit, which is like my tomato sauce per se, and again, has a lot of herbs inside of it. And I’ll blend that together and then I add my macaroni and fold it under.
“Once I’ve reached that stage, then I’ll add the extra layer of cheese on top of it. (Cheddar?) Sharp cheddar. There are different types of cheddar and I like the old English sharp cheddar because that again is how I learned it and how I like to have it.”
As you grow as a cook, you try different things, he says. You might find a recipe that has a layer to it, which you like, and you add it to your recipe. “I’m always looking for ways (to improve a recipe). Always.”
DeShields worked for in St. Kitts several years ago, helping out at a hotel ravaged by a hurricane. While walking the food stalls at night, he discovered macaroni pie.
“There was one lady who sold it, she made it with cod fish inside,” he says. “I found that fascinating! I’ve done it here a few times to mixed reviews because Bermudians like their classic macaroni and cheese. Some people liked it. Really, really liked it. Some people found it OK, and some were like, ‘No. I don’t want any cod in my macaroni and cheese,’” he says. “So obviously I went back to the one the majority liked.”
He also found a type of macaroni pie in Antiqua, suggesting macaroni and cheese may have arrived in Bermuda via the Caribbean.
“We all know Bermuda is built up of a lot different Caribbean influences,” he says. “A lot of people from Bermuda have relatives directly from Barbados, directly from St. Kitts, directly from Antiqua also, and obviously Jamaica … and I would think they brought a lot of the stuff with them.”
For DeShields, the passing on takes place when his daughters come home to visit, gathering in the kitchen.
“For them, the biggest treat is for us to do a cooking session together,” he says. “And we get into the kitchen and they choose what to cook and we then just go at it.”
Macaroni and cheese is nestled in that place in Bermuda. Look at all categories it fits: love food, charity food, beach food, and yes, comfort food.
It’s easy and adaptable, good in bulk, and travels well.
How does that gooey, cheesy macaroni and cheese make it from the steamy kitchen to the even steamier beach?
Easily, Cheryl Kerr says.
“Let me tell you something. They will bake that thing. And they will bring that pan to the beach. They will lay it out on the blanket. It may not be what everyone does, but if somebody brings macaroni and cheese to the beach in Bermuda, nobody’s surprised or like, ‘What are you doing?’ Not at all!”
“Back in the day, (you would) wrap that bad boy in a towel and put it in a brown paper bag and it will keep warm,” Kerr says. And while cooks these days may use thermal containers,
“you still see a lot of people do that to this day.”
Most things about macaroni and cheese are decidedly uncomplicated.
It can handle ketchup, both mixed in or on top. Crushed corn flakes make a nice crunchy top as does wheat germ if you’re feeling a little healthier. Or even those little orange fish crackers, the key ingredient for one father setting up at Horseshoe Bay one Good Friday.
On a spring day at the Botanical Gardens, another family celebrated a picnic with macaroni and cheese cooked in muffin trays, something different and easy to tote.
You get the idea.
For sure, once you get the macaroni-and-cheese basics down, it’s OK to mess with it.
Nakia Smith is a Bermudian food ambassador. Through her food tours and Facebook group, she promotes good cooking and island cuisine.
When it comes to macaroni and cheese, she is also open to many interpretations.
Her grandmother, Smith was told, was a great cook and made macaroni and cheese all the time. Her mother, on the other hand, was just a throw-it-all-together kind of cook.
“I remember one time, she knew I liked ketchup in my mac and cheese to get a nice kind of sweet flavor to it. And she didn’t have any ketchup on hand and used barbecue sauce. And I was like, ‘Oh my god! what am I eating? This is terrible.’
“For my personal macaroni and cheese, it depends on the mood that I’m in,” she says. “If I want traditional, I’ll just do the cheese sauce and break up Ritz (crackers) and sprinkle them on top.”
If she wants to go fancy, Smith uses many different white cheeses for a “very, very, very, very, very rich” macaroni and cheese, she says. There’s cream cheese, provolone, Muenster cheese, mozzarella, and Gruyere. She adds mustard to intensify the flavor.
Once you get the basic Bearnaise sauce down, you can start dressing it up, Smith says. Some cooks add mashed pumpkin, vegan cheese and almond milk to their macaroni and cheese. Others are going to richer extremes.
“TV and internet has improved,” she says. “People are watching a lot of cooking shows. You’ll see mac and cheese with lobster and all kinds of fancy stuff. People are trying more things. People are more adventurous in tasting certain things. And the palette is changing. They’re now venturing out to say ‘Oh truffle macaroni and cheese. Wow truffle oil. That’s fancy. Let me try it.’ So people are trying more and are stepping outside the tradition.”
That doesn’t mean the old standard is disappearing.
The Paraquet Restaurant in Paget has been serving down-home Bermudian cooking since 1959. This includes its famous macaroni and cheese.
Advertised as one of the few true diners in Bermuda, it’s not uncommon for customers to line up out the door for pick-up orders on holidays, notably the popular hot-cross buns over Easter.
Jonathan Correia is the third generation of his family to run Paraquet. He took over when his father Allan died nine years ago.
One of his earliest memories is being in the restaurant kitchen with his grandmother asking for french fries.
Correia studied at Johnson and Wales University before joining the business full-time. That doesn’t mean he had things easy. He started as a cashier. Did some on-the-line cooking. “I didn’t just walk in here out of college and into the office,” he says.
His dad, he says, liked good wholesome food. (Read: traditional.) Correia fought to get things like wraps on the menu. (Today’s menu has six.)
Paraquet’s popular macaroni and cheese is the result of a supply mishap and quick thinking.
In his day, Allan Correia bought the restaurant’s macaroni and cheese from an outside vendor.
“My chef and I were in the kitchen one day (after Allan had died), and actually the vendor we got it from was out of stock. We didn’t have macaroni and cheese for two or three days. And we said we could make it. Let’s try it.”
Instead of going with some of the traditional Bermudian add-ins like stewed tomatoes or cream of mushroom soup, they decided to keep it simple.
“Let’s do just a basic mac and cheese — bread crumbs on top for presentation —and crispiness (we decided). And it just took off from there,” Correia says.
What’s in the Paraquet macaroni and cheese?
“If I tell you, I would give away the recipe,” he says. It’s very basic: cheese, milk, salt and pepper. “There are a couple of other things we throw in there.” Secret ingredients? “I guess secret ingredients.”
However you make it, macaroni and cheese is a thing to be passed on. In Bermuda, that usually comes from gathering in a kitchen.
Teneika Eve is another Bermudian chef who has fierce memories of making macaroni and cheese growing up.
For Eve, 43, a senior lecturer in culinary arts at Bermuda College, it’s embracing the way her mother Mavis Eve prepared it — delicious, straightforward, economical — and adding her own signature ingredients.
“When I think of my mom, she had the macaroni, she had the cheddar cheese, and then she had eggs and (Carnation) cream in a can … and it was so simple,” says Eve, who also attended Johnson and Wales. “And salt and pepper. That’s what I remember. As opposed to mixing everything together or creating a roux, which is the way that I would do it.
“She boiled the macaroni, she put down her layer of cheese in the bottom. That would be followed by boiled macaroni, salt and pepper, another layer of cheese, and then she would repeat the layers over and over, finishing it with a layer of cheese. And then she’d take the Carnation Cream and a few eggs, mix them together, and pour over it over — almost like a quick custard — and let it bake. And that’s how I grew up with mac and cheese. Very simple. But very delicious.”
“And I understand from a necessity point, having to feed six kids, a husband and herself, there weren’t a whole lot of ingredients, but it was a delicious meal. It was like you could feel her love transcend that meal. She was my first teacher. She showed me how you don’t have to have the most extravagant ingredients, but if you put in the effort and handle them accordingly, you can have a fantastic meal that is satisfying and very enjoyable to many different people.
“And then I take a snapshot, let’s say, 15 or 20 years down the road, and I look at myself as a professional chef and I want to start with a roux that has flour — what is a roux? — I’m going to tell you. Equal part portions of fat and flour. And my choice is some sort butter. Full-fat butter. Anchor Butter, Kerrygold Butter.
“And then I take that all-purpose Robin Hood Flour and I toss them together. I’m trying not to complicate it. I like to start if with a roux because it adds richness. To this roux, you add in heavy cream and milk and you get this beautiful béchamel sauce, which is like the traditional béchamel sauce. So I’m like ‘whoa I can make this béchamel, add cheese to it, turn it into a mornay sauce, because the béchamel is a mother sauce’. You add in the cheese and it becomes a cheese sauce, or as the French call it Mornay — M-o-r-n-a-y —
“So this is pretty good. I think I like this. But how can I make this better? So that’s what I like about the macaroni and cheese story in my family, from my mom’s generation to my generation. My mom’s macaroni and cheese is still pretty fantastic. Absolutely. Simple. Fantastic. And then I get my hands on it and I’m like, ‘How can I manipulate this?’
“I start the roux, I get that same good butter. I put in some onions, finely diced. I might put in a little bit of garlic and then I might put in a little splash of white wine just because I can! And I’m developing these layers of flavor. And add to that I put in the flour so I can have that nice thick paste and then I add in the heavy cream and the milk.
“And then my cheese of choice, unlike my mother’s, which was the standard New Zealand block of cheddar cheese. I want to have the cheddar cheese that’s sharp. Cracker Barrel does a great one. And how about putting in a little bit of Gruyere cheese for a little bit of nuttiness and depth? And wait! How about some mozzarella cheese for some stringiness? So when you’re picking up the macaroni in a spoonful, it’s just globules of cheesy stringiness and just gorgeousness. And I’m tasting this macaroni and it’s delicious. It’s got a lot of depth. But I can’t help but remember, my mother’s macaroni. Simple. Delicious. And still fits the bill.
“I’ve just taken it and I just played with it a bit. And I think that’s what any good chef does. You don’t even have to be a good chef. Any person. And I tell people, ’Take my recipe and make it your recipe.’ So I would say I’ve taken what I’ve learned from my mother and my grandmother and I’ve made it my own.”
Her mother could not cook before she got married, Eve says.
“And along the way she evolved into this great chef in my eyes. So I have the most fond memories of macaroni and cheese. And it’s been able to transcend generations.”
As her mother grew older, Eve took on more of the family cooking.
“I see the baton of food. The tradition is passed down to me. And so I should pick up the mantle, you know what I mean? So although it’s my macaroni and cheese at Christmas, you still feel the years of tradition and love and it exudes. It comes, it permeates from the food that I cook. You can feel it.”
What’s next in the family macaroni-and-cheese story? Where does it go from here? Who gets that knowledge?
“Now I have a nephew who is nine years old,” Eve says, “who calls me on the phone. ‘Auntie. I love your mac and cheese. Can you please make some for me?’ So it’s like a baton that’s just being passed on now.”
And he will have those memories too.
“You know what? Just sitting here I just had this eureka moment. I think it’s time to bring him in the kitchen with me. Say hey, you know what? I have a standing order every two weeks or three weeks for macaroni and cheese. I kid you not. And I asked him, ‘Aren’t you tired of my mac and cheese?’ ‘I love it. It’s delicious, (he says).’ So it’s a great opportunity for me to say, ‘Hey you know what, Marcus? You like macaroni and cheese? I think it’s time for you to come help auntie make it.’”
Like a baton.