Spicy Mac (Montage, Portland OR)
I got a hankering today.
I craved the spicy mac from Montage. The flagship location sadly shuttered during the pandemic but there are glimpses of hope via satellite food carts around town. I have been fortunate to eat at the BG Food cart location in Beaverton to satiate my longing.
But… it was really early in the day still, no regular person craves Cajun at 10 AM. Needless to say after running errands, hunger pangs followed suit and an early dinner quickly approached.
I work Sundays now and start my wind-down routine around 7. So having an easy, one-pan recipe, especially one I can do in the Lodge skillet in my back pocket is key. When I “develop” a recipe it’s not like in the sense of a trained chef. Because I’m not. There are flavors and textures I haphazardly attain in a short amount of time.
That said, knowing who and what I know about this town it wasn’t hard to throw a rock and find someone who’s worked in many of PDX kitchen trenches to bend their ear a little about a hunch I had about this recipe. I found it online and asked if it was correct. They responded with a shrugging .gif immediately followed by a winky face, so I can only assume much like any of my Portland copy-cat recipes it’s somewhat in the ballpark.
Enough to get by. Which… Funny enough, is a Portland motto.
Montage Spicy Mac
Ingredients
- 4 Chicken breasts, Large boneless (i used two and some andouille sausage I needed to use up)
- 4 cloves Garlic
- 2 Roma tomatoes
- 1 Yellow onion
- Pasta of choice. I used bow ties.
- Cajun seasoning
- 1/4 tsp Pepper, fresh cracked
- 1 tsp Salt
- Olive oil
- 4 tbsp Butter
- 1-pint of Heavy cream
- 1 cup Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup Pepper-jack cheese
- 1 large jalapeño chopped
Instructions
- Boil/Drain pasta and rinse in cold water, set aside. (Reserve a cup if needed to thin the sauce)
- Chop your chicken and sausages into bites in a bowl, coat with enough cajun season pepper and salt to be what one would consider dry-rubbed. To a pan add butter and half of the garlic, turn the heat to medium to let the garlic cook for 2 minutes, add chopped meats. Allow meat to cook through and brown/blacken to your preferred taste, remove from heat and set aside when cooked through.
- In the same pan add more butter, garlic, half of the jalapeños, and onion. On medium-high heat continually stir until onions and garlic have become translucent and picked up all the pan bits, add half of the chopped tomatoes, and season with more cajun seasoning. Stir and cook for another minute or two, turn down to medium-low, and pour in the heavy cream or preferred cream base (I actually used 2 cups of skim with 2 tbs of cornstarch mixed in because its what I had), keep stirring until gently boiling and starting to thicken up, add your cheeses and turn the heat off. Whisk until cheeses have melted in and the sauce is rich and glossy, stir in pasta and meats. (Add a little of the reserved pasta water if the sauce is too thick.)
- Voila! Top with toms and some more parm.
