Cheese and broccoli casserole

I'd been dreaming of cheesy broccoli with chicken for a few days (I occasionally, by which I mean all of the time, crave and obsess about certain foods), so Brian and I experimented a little making dinner yesterday. All we knew was that our dinner needed to include chicken, broccoli, lots of cheese, and garlic. And what do you know? Our made-up recipe was tasty! Now if only I could figure out why my carrot cake turned out bright yellow instead of its usual brown.

Cheese and broccoli, etc., casserole:

8 oz cheddar cheese
1/2 pack egg noodles
2 chicken breasts, thawed
2 cloves garlic
frozen broccoli in sprigs (florets? not sure...)
8 oz. milk
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
pepper
mushrooms (optional)

Prep:
Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces. Mince the garlic. Grate the cheddar cheese. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

This part is slightly complicated because you have to do several things at once.

1. Boil the noodles only until they are chewy (not all of the way done). Drain and toss with a little olive oil to keep them from sticking together.
2. Saute the chicken with the garlic (and mushrooms). Do Not Overcook.
3. Put the broccoli into your large casserole dish, enough to cover the bottom, and put half a centimeter of water in the dish. Microwave for about 1.5 minutes, then drain the water, leaving the half-cooked broccoli in the dish.

Mix up these ingredients in your casserole dish with about half of the cheese.

4. Make the sauce. This requires concentration and constant stirring. First, microwave the milk for about a minute to warm it up. Then melt the butter in a saucepan. Once it is completely melted, add the flour and stir like crazy until it is smoothly blended. With the heat on medium, add the warm milk and stir forever for it to blend well with the butter/flour mixture. As soon as this is well mixed and slightly thickened and bubbly, add about half of the cheese and continue to stir. Add pepper and paprika. Once the cheese is completely blended, pour it into the casserole dish and stir a little just to make sure that everything is coated.

Bake at 350 for half an hour. Yum!

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