Truffled Mac & Cheese with Peppered Bacon

Get ready for the BEST mac & cheese recipe ever. And we mean the BEST. But hold tight because we want to show how we were inspired to make this fabulous dish.

We have just returned from our annual Washington Wine tasting trip taken with dear friends in the Columbia Valley. This year we went over a little later in the season than usual. Which meant for some different views of Eastern Washington that late fall brings.

We rented a great house smack dab in the middle of Corvus Vineyards. A perfect location. 

We can't wait to return to this same house again next year a bit earlier in the season so we can sit outside and enjoy the fab deck and views from the perfectly positioned airondondak chairs. 

This year was a bit soggy in Eastern Washington and most of the weekend was almost at freezing temperatures. Which actually made this group of skiers say "bring it on."

Davenlore Vineyard

Which really was fine just not the usual for our annual visit.

Milbrandt Vineyards

Our trip started out perfect, leisurely and with great wine at Milbrandt Vineyards. 

Martinez & Martinez Cellars

Some great wines, some great food and as always some great fun was had by our group, also deemed as the "bubble coat" group at one of the tasting rooms.

Goose Ridge Winery

The Columbia Valley not only has fantastic wine,

 it also has some beautiful tasting rooms and breathtaking landscapes. We love this annual trip with this great group of friends.

Sally Porkchop even had her first opportunity to play in snow. It was a great weekend indeed had by all.

A traditional stop on this annual road trip is to Alexandria Nicole winery, which happens to be the 2012 Washington Winery of the year. For this years visit a local Chef Magana had published some holiday recipes paired with their wines. As soon as we read the recipe for Bacon Mac & Cheese we knew it was a recipe we needed to make.

And that we did the very next night we could. We decided to jazz the recipe up a bit with some Truffle cheese that we had left over from our wine weekend and some peppered bacon.

This truffle cheese was so good. Those little black specks are little bits of truffle goodness. 

We also coated the bread crumbs for the topping with White Truffle Oil that we had picked up on  a different Columbia Valley wine trip we made. 

All of this goodness together made the best mac & cheese ever made. We are pretty sure it must actually be the very best.

Since the recipe made far more than we knew we would eat at one meal we decided to make them in individual ramekins to help prevent them from getting too dry when we ate them as lunch and a leftover dinner one  for another meal during the week.

We paired our mac & cheese with the 2009 Quarry Butte as suggested by Chef Magana. Perfectly balanced for this very rich and scrumptious dish.

RECIPE:

Truffled Mac & Cheese with Peppered Bacon (a recipe inspired by Alexandria Nicole Cellars and Chef 

Magana)

½ lb Peppered Bacon (cooked & chopped)

1 lb Elbow Macaroni

2 Tablespoon Flour

2 Tablespoon Butter

4 Cups Heavy Cream

1 lb Shredded White Cheddar and Monterey Jack Cheese

1/2 Cup Shredded truffle cheese

1 Cup Parmesan Cheese

½ Onion, diced

6 Garlic Cloves, minced

¼ Cup Green Onions (chopped)

1 Tablespoon Chives (chopped)

Pinch of Salt

Topping:
2 Tablespoon White Truffle Oil
1 Cup Bread Crumbs

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350’F.
Boil noodles in salted water for 8-10 minutes. Drain and toss with a Tbsp of olive oil.
While noodles are boiling, melt butter and stir in flour over medium heat, cook for 4-5 minutes.
Add onions, garlic and cream and cook for 10 minutes. Fold in cooked noodles, bacon, chives,
green onions and cheese. Dump mixture into baking dish. Mix bread crumbs and olive oil
together and sprinkle over baking dish evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes