Comfort food hasn't changed much, it seems. If not the prettiest of dishes, it's oddly satisfying, in an intensely cheesy, gloopy, buttery sort of way. The macaroni, (which should be "tender but perfectly firm, no part being allowed to melt, and the form entirely preserved" – lest one be tempted to cook it for so long it actually disintegrated) is then topped with more cheese, pepper and breadcrumbs, before receiving a final dose of melted butter for good measure and being placed before a "bright fire" to brown the crumbs, or grilled with a salamander ("more expeditious" apparently, but I make do with an electric grill). After a mere hour at a "quick boil", my pan boils dry, and I'm forced to move on to the next stage of the recipe, tipping the gluey mass into a dish, and sprinkling with a quite impressive amount of parmesan cheese and butter. It has little in common with anything I've made so far, but ticks a fair few boxes in the iSpy book of Victorian cooking cliches by instructing me to cook the macaroni, in a pan of milk and water, for 1½ to 1¾ hours, until "quite tender". It makes sense then, to turn to my trusty Mrs Beeton for a recipe, and she doesn't disappoint, with directions for macaroni "as usually served with the cheese course", as well as as distinctly less pleasant sounding sweet milk pudding made with the stuff. It's all very refined, down to the parmesan topping, but I miss the velvety texture of the plain white sauce, and find the onion too bullyingly dominant: macaroni cheese should be something one could happily eat in bed, should opportunity call, and alliums and pillows should never mix. Bolder still, they suggest chucking in some sliced onion or leeks, softened in a little butter, along with a small bunch of chopped chives along with the sauce and pasta. This means infusing the milk with a bay leaf and black pepper before making the white sauce, and then adding a mature Lancashire cheese, as well as a slug of double cream. The other is, that because "almost all the joy of eating Macaroni Cheese comes from its creamy sauce", it's worth "going to town" on the seasoning and an "assertively flavoured" cheese. A few pointers, they insist, "will help to make this familiar yet sometimes disappointing dish into superior comfort food." Photograph: Felicity CloakeĪfter pointing out that there's "very little to get wrong here", Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham deliver a googly in The Prawn Cocktail Years by calling for penne, rather than macaroni "because the cheese sauce is better able to flow inside this larger-sized pasta". Serve with a green salad.Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham recipe macaroni cheese. Put the breadcrumbs and parsley in a bowl, drizzle with the olive oil and toss to combine. Spoon the pasta into a greased 2.25 litre (80 fl oz/9 cup) ovenproof dish, measuring about 18 x 30 x 6 cm (7 x 12 x 2½ inches). Stir in the pasta and season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper.Ĥ. Stand for 5 minutes to cool slightly then stir in the cheese until smooth. Remove from the heat and whisk in the mustard and egg yolk. Return to the heat and cook, stirring, until the mixture starts to boil and thicken. Remove from the heat and slowly stir in the milk until smooth.
When the butter starts to sizzle, stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for 1 minute, or until pale and bubbly. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Process the bread into coarse crumbs by pulsing it in a food processor.ģ. Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water, following the packet instructions, until al dente.