Paper Palate

Yesterday’s New York Times Dining and Wine section extolled the virtues of the simplest and most warming of comfort foods yesterday with a featured story on the subject of every child’s favorite dish: macaroni and cheese. While a sidebar rating the boxed macaroni and cheeses found on grocery store shelves is included, the main focus of the feature itself was how to make the real deal: elbow macaroni, cheese sauce and lots and lots of shredded cheese, mixed in a casserole dish and thrown into an oven to bake into a crusty, golden, splendidly creamy and satisfying supper for the long cold nights of winter.

While curmudgeonly cookbook author and essayist John Thorne is quoted in the New York Times piece lamenting the fact that macaroni and cheese is most often made with a bechamel-based cheese sauce that is heavy on the milk and flour and light on the cheese, Marlena Spieler, author of the forthcoming book, Macaroni and Cheese, says, “You need a little goo to keep the pasta and cheese together.”

As much as I adore Thorne and despise bechamel in and of itself (milk, no flavoring to speak of, and roux is my idea of hell), I have to come down on the side of Spieler. A little milky, creamy sauce helps smooth the cheese around, in and through the pasta, so that you don’t end up with pasty pasta clumped loosely with gooey, crispy cheese.

However, Thorne is absolutely right when he says that people don’t put enough cheese in macaroni and cheese, that is, when they make it from scratch and don’t reach for that ever-present blue box from Kraft. (Which, I and others argue, shouldn’t really be called macaroni and cheese in the first place, since brilliant orange powder hardly qualifies as cheese, but that is a whole other story.)

So, like the lady who loves macaroni and cheese so much that she wrote a book about it, I use both cheese sauce and plenty of shredded cheese in my unboxed version of macaroni and cheese, though I don’t often use elbow macaroni as she insists upon. I most often use penne, because that is what I have, and unlike purists who only put cheese sauce and cheese in their casseroles, I add various flavor enhancers to make everything even more tasty.

It really does add up to a simple, soul-satisfying dish. And while both of the recipes in the New York Times are fabulous, I like my spiced up version just a wee bit better. As Spieler suggests, you can serve it with a salad for supper, I like mine with a side of garlic-sauteed greens, like kale or chard.

Spicy Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients:

1 pound penne pasta, cooked al dente and drained (do NOT overcook)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large shallot, or small onion, thinly sliced
1/2-1 whole chipotle en adobo, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves
2 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 cup 1% milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1-2 teaspoons adobo sauce
1 pound shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 pound shredded gruyere cheese
1/4 pound shredded domestic parmesan cheese

Method:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

In a skillet, heat olive oil and saute shallot or onion until it is soft, and beginning to turn golden. Add chipotle, garlic, salt and thyme, and continue to cook, stirring, until the garlic softens and all is fragrant.

Sprinkle flour into the pan, and cook, stirring, until the oil and flour form a roux. Cook for about one minute to remove raw flour taste.

Add milk directly into the bubbling roux, while whisking furiously to create a very flavorful bechamel. When it is smooth, add cream and heat through, then add mustard and adobo sauce.

Turn down the heat, and gradually add 1/3 of the cheddar, stirring constantly to create a cheese sauce. Remove from heat.

Butter or oil a 9″ X 13″ casserole dish. Put pasta in dish, and pour cheese sauce over. Stir, fold or otherwise combine pasta with sauce in the dish. Add the rest of the cheddar cheese and the gruyere during the mixing process, reserving a scant handful of each for the topping.

When it is mixed in, slightly flatten the pasta and cheese mixture, then sprinkle the top with the reserved cheeses, then sprinkle the parmesan on top of that. (Parmesan makes the best, most browned and crispy crust, which as far as I am concerned, is the best part of the mac and cheese experience.) Put in the oven and bake until browned and bubbly-hot–about twenty to twenty five minutes. (Check after fifteen, just to be sure. Burnt mac and cheese is a very sad thing.)