Pandemic Kitchen #2 Macaroni and Cheese
I hope you are all hanging in there! Easter has come and gone, and the lockdown seems to be working. The weather is also getting cooler (finally) which means we can get away with cooking more stodgy, cockle-warming comfort food. None more so than a casserole dish of baked macaroni and cheese.
I made macaroni and cheese recently for more reasons than just trying to drown my COVID-19 sorrows in cheese and carbs. I’ve had the better part of a full packet of full-fat milk powder sitting in my cupboard for at least a year now. It was purchased in order to make Christina Tosi’s Compost Cookies (which are, in my humble opinion, the best cookies in the world) but I hadn’t managed to put it into more things, until now. Any excuse not to visit a supermarket at the moment is one I’ll make (I can feel my pulse rise every time I step into the line the snakes across the carpark). This is not a time, I think, to be popping down to the shops just for some milk. Which is where my milk powder comes in. At the start of the lockdown I mixed myself up a litre of milk from powder for the first time, and guys, it's kind of like milk, but on steroids. But as we rolled into the second week of lockdown, I still had the better part of that litre left in my fridge (I’m not a big milk drinker you see, just a dribble in my coffee and tea here and there mostly). How to use up that much milk in one go? Béchamel. But without any ham, or decent bread, my thoughts of making Croque Monsieur quickly turned to that of making macaroni and cheese.
I’m not a fan of the straight from the stove-type mac n cheeses. The beauty of mac n cheese is in the crispy breadcrumb topping, and the crusty brown bits around the sides of the oven dish. Bon Appetit’s Best Macaroni and Cheese was my inspiration. In these waste not, want not times, I slipped in a lonesome zucchini I had sitting around in the fridge to make me feel less guilty about what I was eating (in more ways than one). If you do the same, make sure you squeeze as much water as you can out of your grated zucchini (or whatever vegetable you fancy) so as not to ruin the overall effect.
This recipe was adapted from Bon Appetit’s Best Macaroni and Cheese recipe
Directions:
Preheat oven to 180°C. Melt 2 Tbsp. butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add panko crumbs and cook, stirring, until crumbs are golden brown, 6–8 minutes (make sure to get them golden brown as they won’t darken much during baking). Transfer to a small bowl and toss with Parmesan, thyme leaves, and ¼ tsp. salt.
Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, and remove from heat and minute or two before the instructions on the packet (the pasta will continue to cook in oven later). Drain pasta and let cool while you make the sauce.
Bring milk to a bare simmer in a small saucepan and then keep warm. Melt remaining 2 Tbsp. butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring, until onions are fragrant and beginning to soften, about 2 minutes. Sprinkle flour over and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture starts to stick to bottom of saucepan, about 1 minute. Add a bit of warm milk and whisk until homogenous. Keep adding the milk a bit at a time and whisking to combine after each addition.
Bring béchamel sauce to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring, until sauce is thickened and doesn’t feel grainy when a little bit is rubbed between your fingers, 6–8 minutes (cooking the flour thoroughly at this stage ensures a creamy sauce). Add cheese, mustard powder, cayenne, and ¾ tsp. salt and stir until cheeses are melted and sauce is smooth. Remove from heat and mix in pasta and grated zucchini; transfer to a 2L capacity baking dish (or multiple if you don’t have one that big).
Bake for 10 minutes. Top with Parmesan breadcrumbs and bake until sauce is bubbling around the edges, 8–10 minutes longer. Let cool in pan 15 minutes (or as long as you can stand it) before serving.
Ingredients:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, divided
¾ cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
¼ cup Parmesan (or something stinky, hard and Italian), finely grated
2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided, plus more
250 g dried macaroni or other short curly pasta
2 ½ cups whole milk
½ small onion, grated
1 garlic clove, finely grated
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups of whatever cheese you have (BA uses a cup each of Fontina, Gruyère and cheddar but you don’t have to; all I had was tasty cheddar and pecorino so in they went!)
½ teaspoon mustard powder
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 lonely zucchini, grated. Wring out excess water in a clean tea towel