Pasta with Five Cheeses and Pancetta

This is not your kids mac and cheese but they will love it too. You can adjust quantities according to your personal taste.

You will need:
Parmesan Cheese – shredded – 1/2 cup
Mozzarella Cheese – 1/2 cup (use fresh not smoked)
Asiago Cheese – shredded – 1/2 cup
Fontina Cheese – shredded – 1/2 cup
Gorgonzola Cheese – 1/4 cup
Whole Milk – 4 qts – heated
All purpose Flour – 8 TBS
Butter – 8 TBS
Fresh nutmeg
Pancetta – 1/4 inch thick slice – 1 or 2 depending on taste
Good quality Italian/french bread (use food processor to crumb) – approximately 1/2 cup
Salt/pepper – to taste (if you want a cleaner sauce use white pepper)
Olive Oil
Tubular or shaped pasta such as penne rigate, radiatore, farfalle, cavatappi or conchiglie – 1 pound

Prepare pasta by bringing large pot of salted water to a rapid boil, add pasta and cook until just below al dente. In a dutch oven or pot large enough to hold cooked pasta plus one quart liquid heat one tablespoon olive oil. Cut pancetta into 1/4 inch dice, when oil is heated add pancetta. Cook pancetta until crisp, remove from pot with slotted spoon and reserve. Pour off any fat left from pancetta add butter and flour and cook until combined scraping up brown bits from pan. Slowly pour heated milk into pot stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Bring milk to a fast simmer then add Parmesan, Asiago and Fontina cheeses stirring well to allow cheeses to melt. Add salt and pepper to taste and 4 or 5 scrapes of the nutmeg, stir well. Remove from heat, fold in cooked pasta until well coated, crumble gorgonzola cheese into mixture, combine well, cut mozzerella cheese into 1/2 inch chunks then fold into mixture

Butter a 9 x 13 oven proof dish, pour cheese and pasta mixture into pan and level top, combine bread crumbs with parmesan cheese and cover top. Bake in a 350° F oven until top is golden brown. This works well as a side dish or main course.

You will need:

Beef Filet (approximately 4 oz. /person)
Small button mushrooms or medium/large cut into quarters
Pearl onion (I used frozen par-cooked) 4 or 5/per person
Carrot (I used bagged baby carrots) 4 or 5/per person
Red wine (I used a good Merlot instead of Burgundy) approximately 1/2 cup/person
Salt/Pepper
Beef broth (no salt) approximately 1/4 cup/person
Egg Noodles approximately 4 oz. /person
Fresh Thyme
Butter and Olive Oil

Cut filet(s) into one-inch pieces, set aside. Defrost pearl onions. Clean mushrooms, if using larger mushrooms quarter them at this point, set aside. Fill a small saucepot with water and carrots; cook until the carrots are fork tender. Put approximately 1 tablespoon each of oil and butter in a sauté pan heat until butter starts to bubble. Sauté beef cubes until just seared, do not crowd pan, sauté in batches if necessary remove as the beef browns and place in a bowl. Deglaze sauté pan with the wine scraping brown bits (fond in culinary terms) on bottom of pan. Add one or two twigs of thyme, there is no need to strip the leaves, as it will be remove later. Continue to cook wine and thyme until wine is reduced by half, remove thyme set aside in bowl.

Place approximately one tablespoon each of olive oil and butter in sauté pan Sauté mushrooms, carrots and onions until caramelized (salt and pepper the vegetables to taste). Put wine reduction, beef broth and vegetables in a sauce pot bring to a rolling simmer (at this time you should prepare noodles according to package directions). Add beef filet cubes with any accumulated juices to sauce pot turn off heat (the beef will warm through with the residual heat in the pot, caution do not overcook beef).
Place cooked noodles on a serving plate, ladle beef, the vegetables and stock over noodles. Garnish with chopped parsley.