My Macaroni & Cheese

Now that the weather is cooler, I feel more like making comfort food.  So I'm going to make a change, and start giving you savory recipes to go along with your sweets.  When the kids were growing up they ate plenty of Kraft dinner, that ubiquitous (and very cheap) faux food.  Really, I think it's mainly chemicals.  Now my grandkids get Annie's organic version.  I think the reason kids like it is that it's soft and fun to eat, and there aren't any sharp flavors.

About 15 years ago, there was a recipe in the New York Times magazine for mac-cheese, and over the years it has morphed into my go-to recipe.  It no longer resembles the original, of course, but it got me started and gave me success experiences to build on.  So hopefully this recipe can do that for you.

Ingredients:  One of the things that has greatly improved the overall quality of my mac-cheese is using high quality pasta.  I prefer penne, but sometimes I use oriechiette or gemelli.  It just needs to be something that has a surface that the cheese sauce can cling to.  For a while I could find Delverde locally, but once that disappeared, I started shopping for pasta on-line.  I still like Delverde, but I like Pasta di Gragnano even better.  You'll see their penne rigate in the photos below.  At the very least, buy whatever Italian imported pasta your grocery carries...it really does make a difference.

Cheese:  This is largely a matter of taste and using a cheese that melts well into a sauce.  I prefer Monterey Jack cheese as my primary cheese (probably 3/4 of the cheese in the recipe), because it melts so smoothly and you don't get a gritty texture in the sauce.  For the rest, I clean out whatever shredded cheese is living in the cheese drawer, usually some sharp cheddar and asiago, both of which give a needed sharpness to the sauce.

Breadcrumbs:  I prefer sourdough bread that has been cut up into 1/8" cubes, or sometimes panko if I don't have any sourdough.  Italian bread would work well, too.

Sauce bechamel:  White sauce is one of the four "mother sauces" that Julia Child made accessible in her landmark cookbooks in the 1960s.  Even though it is a classic French sauce, it is really, really easy if you follow the directions below exactly.

JUDY'S MACARONI & CHEESE

16 oz (1 lb) pasta
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
4 Tablespoons AP flour
4 cups milk, warmed (nuke it in the microwave for about 2 minutes)
4 cups shredded cheese (Monterey Jack, Cheddar, Asiago)
1 teaspoon hot sauce, such as Tabasco or Chipotle
salt
pepper
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs (sourdough or panko or some other firm bread)
1 cup shredded cheese (same mix as above)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter a 9"x13" casserole or pyrex dish.

Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil on the stove in a dutch oven, over high heat.  Add salt (about a Tablespoon or so), then add the pasta.  Once the water has returned to a boil, reduce the heat to medium high and cook it the minimum time on the package.  This is important, because if you cook it until it is all the way done, it will get mushy baking in the sauce, and the sauce won't adhere as well to it.  Drain in a colander.

Return the dutch oven to the stove, turn the heat to low and melt the butter until foamy.

[Note:  Steve had a real challenge photographing this, because I was whisking away like a madwoman.  You'll see a blur or a shadow...that's the whisk]

Whisk in the flour and cook 1 or 2 minutes until it just begins to take on some color, whisking constantly.  This is now a white roux.  This step is important to prevent having a raw flour taste to your sauce.

Gradually whisk in the warm milk

and bring to a simmer and let thicken.

It is important to warm the milk so that it gets quickly and completely incorporated into the sauce, otherwise you'll get those dreaded lumps.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Whisk in the cheeses

and stir until melted.

Add the hot sauce.  Then add the pasta

Stir to evenly distribute the sauce.

Turn it out into the pan.  Or as you can see here, dump it out, then scrape the rest out.

Even out the pasta in the pan.

Mix the bread crumbs with the 1 cup of mixed shredded cheese, then sprinkle it over the top of the pasta.

Sprinkle the top with pepper.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the topping is brown.

Note:  Macaroni and cheese is a great side dish, but you can add things to it to make it even better, and more satisfying as a main dish.  I recommend ham cubes (cut up a thick ham slice into about 3/4" cubes, and sauté in butter until they begin to caramelize), andouille sausage (cut into 3/4" pieces and sautéd until they caramelize), and even buffalo chicken tenders cut up.  I think of the mac-cheese as a good platform for adding something with a stronger flavor, if you like that.