American as…Mac & Cheese! (Berkshire Eagle Column)
For years and years I resisted making homemade mac & cheese. As much as I love cooking projects, I hated having to boil the elbows and make a roux and then a cheese sauce before putting the casserole dish in the oven. Then people started cooking pasta in just enough liquid (such as with the pasta cooked in red wine I wrote about previously).
Now, this recipe from last week’s Berkshire Eagle column is our to-go with ribs, with fried chicken, with so many different dinner possibilities!
MAC & CHEESE – NOT FROM A BOX!
by Elizabeth Baer
One of the last things I did at work before I retired last month was to plan and manage a weeklong visit in the Berkshires with a group of eleven Italian students and their two chaperones. Almost three decades ago, the Latin teacher before me began this exchange with a school in Gubbio, Umbria, Italy.
This was a phenomenal visit, and I like to say that our guests arrived thinking their favorite part of the trip was going to be seeing iconic American sights, and they left having realized that being part of American high school culture for a week was the most meaningful.
In addition to the day trips to Boston and New York City, and visits to places up and down Berkshire County, we hosted a typical potluck cookout one evening for all the Italians and their host families. Someone brought mac and cheese as a side dish, and one of the chaperones liked it so much that she decided on more mac and cheese for lunch the next day at Quincy Market!
As many times as I have run these exchanges, I have never, ever made pasta for any of my Italian friends. It’s much too daunting! But I would say that mac and cheese is decidedly not pasta as much as it is an American casserole.
For most of us, mac and cheese means opening a box and following the stovetop or microwave directions. And I get it. That’s just so fast and easy. I openly admit that when my kids were young, they went through a phase of eating only hot dogs and mac and cheese. I would alternate days, and, at the time, Annie’s was still a small company, so I would order cases direct from them in the days before online shopping.
Now, however, I have happily figured out a way to make an easy homemade mac and cheese
with several time-savers compared to many other recipes. You don’t cook the pasta first, and you don’t make a roux. I usually shred bricks of cheese myself, but pre-shredded, while not quite as good, will be just fine. Once I had a lot of cheese leftover from a cocktail party – hard cheeses cut in cubes – and I put a pound of it into the food processor with the chopping blade, and it was still good!
This recipe uses half of most standard containers of ricotta or cottage cheese. And for this type of preparation, if you don’t want to make it a second batch right away, you can freeze the remaining ricotta or cottage cheese. And speaking of that, this recipe freezes well! If it looks like we’re not going to finish it, I have cut wedges, wrapped them, and put them in the freezer to be defrosted later and warmed in the microwave for a last-minute side dish or work lunch.
EASY HOMEMADE MAC & CHEESE
Serves 6-8 as a side
INGREDIENTS:
½ pound elbow pasta, about 2 cups (really measure this out, otherwise there’s not enough liquid for the pasta)
1 pound cheese (I like 8 ounces Cheddar and 8 ounces Monterey Jack)
2 cups milk (low-fat or whole, NOT skim)
1 cup ricotta or cottage cheese (low-fat or whole, NOT fat-free)
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper (white, if possible)
1 teaspoon dry mustard
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper, optional, or to taste
Optional:
½ cup panko crumbs
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a casserole dish (lidded or not) with cooking spray or butter. (This will make clean up easier later.) Place the pasta in a large bowl.
Use the shredding disk with large holes on your food processor or a box shredder to shred the cheese. If you are using the optional breadcrumbs, set aside about ¼-⅓ cup of cheese shreds in a small bowl. Put remaining cheese, or all the cheese, into the bowl with the uncooked pasta.
Remove the shredding disk and insert the chopping blade. Add the milk, ricotta or cottage cheese, salt, pepper, dry mustard, nutmeg, and cayenne. Process for 30-45 seconds. (You can use a blender or an immersion blender in a large bowl, or even a whisk if you don’t have a food processor.)
Add the milk mixture to the cheese and pasta. Mix with a large spoon to combine. Pour into the prepared casserole dish and level the top. Cover tightly with the lid or foil and cook for 30 minutes.
During this period of baking, for the optional crumb topping, melt butter in a small skillet and add panko crumbs. Toast, stirring constantly, until light brown, and remove from the heat. Depending on your pan, if it retains a lot of heat, the crumbs may continue to brown for a little bit even off the heat so keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.
After the first 30 minutes of baking remove the lid or foil. If you have reserved ¼-⅓ cup of cheese shreds, spread that over the top now and then add the optional toasted crumbs. Return to the oven uncovered for another 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool 15 minutes before serving.