Road food comes home

By Paul Briand

For the last couple of weeks, wife Jane and I have been on the road, vacating and eating our way through various parts of Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey.

Eating good food is a big part of any vacation.

We had crab of just about every kind, including a Blue Crab Salsa.

Some of what we had was so good I wanted to try to figure out the recipe to create the dish to eat at home.

That's my current challenge with the Orecchiette Mac & Cheese (pictured) we had at the Fuze restaurant in Avalon, N.J.

Drinking one night at Fuze the bar -- which had a very, very expensive bottle of Louis XIII bottle of cognac in a lighted display -- we overheard the talk about the mac and cheese dish and how popular it was.

A couple of nights later, when we had it ourselves as an appetizer, it was clear the dish was worth the raves -- rich, creamy, full of flavor.

So my question was: How do I recreate this at home?

I had a few hints from the menu to go on: "crispy speck, oven roasted tomato compote, chive, Wisconsin bechamel, herb bread crumb."

My ingredients will include a Orecchiette pasta, béchamel, Wisconsin cheddar cheese, oven roasted tomato, bread crumbs and chive.

But this is going to take some forensics to reverse engineer to get the correct balance of those ingredients.

I'll report back next week.