Jimsy Jampots #166 - Mac 'n' cheese
In which I type the words "mac 'n' cheese" so many times I get sick of them
Things I think
One of my most strongly held opinions is that instant coffee, frivolous milk/sugar/coffee concoctions from places like Starbucks, and coffees from proper coffee shops are all as good as each other, and this is because they are three entirely different drinks and should be thought of as such. I love really good coffee with all of my heart, so much so that for my birthday I got a decent coffee machine and have spent the last few months perfecting steaming the milk and researching how to get a decent grind because there are very few places to buy a decent coffee round here and I miss it. However, I wouldn’t dunk a chocolate biscuit in one while watching Taskmaster. A McVitie’s digestive soaked in a cup of Nescafe while sitting on the sofa on a cold evening, though? One of the purest joys of my life. Wouldn’t give it up for the world.
Similarly, the first mocha Frappuccino of the year (ideally consumed on the first hot day of the year, as is “basic bitch millennial” tradition) is a thing of absolute beauty, one of the sweetest and most exhilarating experiences of summer. Swapping in a perfect flat white wouldn’t have the same effect, no matter how carefully the beans were hand-roasted or how pretty the latte art on top was. They’re different drinks for different experiences, in the same way a McDonalds is a different thing entirely to a gourmet steak but both are wonderful additions to your day. By being snobby about any of them you’re depriving yourself of some of life’s pleasures, and why on earth would you do that to yourself?
This long, slightly intense tangent is merely to say that I feel the same way about mac ‘n’ cheese as I do about coffee. There are so many things that call themselves mac ‘n’ cheese, and while they’re all fundamentally the same mix of flour, milk and cheese, they feel like different things entirely.
There’s boxed mac ‘n’ cheese, a staple of American households and childhoods, that people turn to when they need comfort and a reminder of easier times, or the love of a parent. I was incredibly excited to try boxed mac ‘n’ cheese because YA books made it sound so delicious, but I had to throw it in the bin after a few bites. The sauce tasted like cardboard. I could understand pasta that reminded me of cardboard, but the sauce? That’s quite the feat of horribleness. That being said, I spent much of my teens and early 20s adding extra cheese and frozen peas to a Batchelor’s Pasta & Sauce Cheese, Leek and Ham, which is basically the British version of a Kraft Mac ‘n’ Cheese, and feeling like I was feasting like a king, so, who the fuck am I to judge what people enjoy?
Either way, it’s very different to the mac ‘n’ cheese you’d get at a chain pub or restaurant - usually served in individual dishes so hot they’d burn your fingertips off, often with something else sprinkled over the top, like chicken or jalapeños, to try and add any flavour that will cut through the stodgy white sauce the pillow-soft pasta is packed into. It’s not particularly good, but it has its place. Have you had a bad day, a heartbreak, a long and stressful drive, too many things gone wrong to feel happy but not things that are serious enough to get properly upset over? That’s when you want this. Sometimes, a slightly shit pile of pasta and cheese is just what you need to make it better.
And that’s very different to the mac ‘n’ cheese you’d get in a fancier restaurant. This also usually has things added to it - lobster, bacon, chorizo, anything salty or with a strong enough flavour to stop the cheese becoming cloying - but is done really, really well. The kind of thing they’d make on Hell’s Kitchen for an “All-American Classics” challenge, you know? And those are just the mains - if you ever go to a fancy restaurant that does good meat where you can get plain mac ‘n’ cheese as a side, I guarantee you that that’ll be the best mac ‘n’ cheese you’ve ever had. I went to SXSW in Austin years and years ago, right at the start of my career, and a native Texan (who was trying to get a job with my company but my boss couldn’t be arsed to talk to him so sent me in his place) took me for lunch at an off-the-beaten track restaurant and got a side of mac ‘n’ cheese with his steak that he let me share. It was like a religious experience. The guy didn’t get a job, but I did give him a LinkedIn recommendation based purely on how good that mac ‘n’ cheese was. I still dream about it sometimes. Can’t remember the guy’s name, though. That’s probably why he didn’t get a job.
Anyway. The mac ‘n’ cheese I’m talking about today is hopefully somewhere between the three. Homemade mac ‘n’ cheese (god, I’m so sick of typing mac ‘n’ cheese) should have all the fond nostalgia of boxed, all of the comfort of one you’d get in shit-pub, but all the deliciousness of something you’d find in a fancy restaurant. The sauce should be plentiful, the cheese strongly flavoured enough to not feel like you’re eating wallpaper paste, the pasta al dente, the top crispy enough to give you a contrast in texture. You should be able to serve it with a peppery salad (rocket, red onion, cherry tomatoes and balsamic dressing is good) or a shit garlic baguette, and it taste great either way. Kids should like it because it’s pasta and cheese, but adults should appreciate it because it’s really fucking good pasta and cheese.
More than anything though, it should be fun to make. I love making a white sauce. I love the moment where you pour in the first splash of milk and the melted butter and flour suddenly transform into a paste, almost like frangipane, and I love then slowly stretching that out into a thick, creamy sauce by adding more and more splashes of milk and whisking it in…I’ve written before about how I love cooking that feels like alchemy, and white sauce is a perfect example of it. Making mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner is a long process, sure, but it’s a joy every time. It’s cooking that makes me happy, and a dinner that gives me and the people I love comfort. It’s everything I love about food in one.
Mac ‘n’ Cheese - Comfortably serves 4 as a main
Ingredients
250g macaroni
50g breadcrumbs
6 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of flour
750ml of milk
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
A teaspoon of mustard powder
A teaspoon of garlic powder/granules
250g of grated cheddar cheese
A ball of mozzarella
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/180 Fan
Boil the pasta in salted for a minute less than the packet says, until it’s al dente
While the pasta is boiling, make the topping and sauce. Take two tablespoons of the butter and melt it, before pouring it over the breadcrumbs along with a generous pinch of salt. Stir to combine, then set aside
Add the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter to a large saucepan, and melt it. Add the flour and whisk constantly for a minute or so. Then add a splash of milk and whisk to combine it into a paste. Add generous splashes of milk and whisk until everything is the same texture and there are no lumps. Repeat until all the milk is gone - it should loosen bit by bit until you get a smooth sauce. Add the pepper, mustard powder and garlic powder
Cook the sauce, continually whisking, until it’s the thickness of double cream. When you dip a spoon in it and take it out, you should be able to draw a line in it with your finger and the sauce is thick enough to hold and keep the line visible
Remove from the heat and add the cheese. Stir the cheese through until well combined - don’t worry if it doesn’t all melt, it will in the oven. Taste and add salt/pepper/more of any other seasonings as desired
When the pasta is cooked, drain it and add it to the sauce. Stir until well combined
Tip half of the pasta into the baking dish, flatten, then rip the ball of mozzarella into pieces and spread it evenly across the top. Add the rest of the pasta on top of the mozzarella and smooth
Sprinkle the breadcrumbs evenly over the top and bake in the hot oven for 25 minutes. Let it cool for 5 minutes or so before serving, because that cheese gets hot
Notes
During lockdown, because Garry was extremely clinically vulnerable and for a long time we couldn’t leave the house, we got food parcels from the government. These included spirali pasta, and it’s since become my preferred pasta for mac ‘n’ cheese. Holds it’s firmness a bit better, doesn’t get so overwhelmed by the sauce, stops it being a big pile o’ gloop, lovely stuff
Use any breadcrumbs you want. Golden, white, panko, a slice of bread blitzed up in a blender, it doesn’t matter
You don’t have to use cheddar cheese. I usually have cheddar in the fridge so reach for that, but I’ve also used Red Leicester, gruyere, gouda, flavoured cheese, or a mix of the above. I like to sometimes swap 50g of cheddar for 50g of parmesan
Speaking of, a couple of tablespoons of parmesan mixed in with the breadcrumbs is very nice. Don’t add the salt if you do this
You can also add some herbs to the breadcrumbs. Thyme, parsley (especially with minced garlic), oregano, sage, anything. Fresh are best but dried work too
You can skip the garlic powder, mustard powder and black pepper if you have to, but it tastes much better with. The black pepper at the very least is essential
The thing I like about mac ‘n’ cheese is that you can really play around with it. Want more vegetables in your diet? Roast or shallow-fry some peppers and onions and stir those through the sauce along with the pasta. Or parboil/grill broccoli and add that to the middle alongside the mozzarella. Or add a layer of sautéed leek! Prefer heat in your food? Add your favourite chilli, or stir through siracha before cooking. I like to fry cooking chorizo or grill bacon until it’s crispy and add that to the top after the breadcrumbs. Honestly, the possibilities are endless - if it goes well with cheese, it’ll probably go will with this
The mozzarella layer tip comes from Daisy - we made a video years and years ago on how to make mac ‘n’ cheese and she added it in, and I thought it was genius so adopted it immediately. Fair warning, it’s not a great video because I was still learning how to make them at this point, but the recipe itself is top notch
I have made so many different versions of this over the years, and in researching for this post I found one of my original recipes from 2012 for chorizo mac ‘n’ cheese. It’s bonkers. You know that episode of Peep Show where Mark is trying to seduce April and ends up having to make pasta bake for six using whatever is left in the flat which is hummus, lettuce, baked beans and eggs? It’s a step up from that. Macaroni, chorizo, onion, red and green pepper, chilli, cheese, baked beans and sweetcorn. Absolutely nuts. But also, as I recall, absolutely delicious? I’m going to make it again and see. Also, if you follow that link, please enjoy the early styling of my food blog. Orange and red was a choice. I love it. Gah, I miss those days.
Things I liked
I stayed at Lyzzick Hall with my friend Cat on the weekend, and had an amazing time. It’s in the Lakes, near Keswick, and has an incredible view of the mountains. It also has an excellent restaurant where we had both a very good dinner and a very good breakfast, a tiramisu espresso martini on the cocktail menu, and the fluffiest, softest bath towels I’ve ever experienced. Would be perfect for a weekend away, if you’re looking for one.
The New York Times recently did a list of the Best 100 Books of the 21st Century, immediately followed by a Readers’ Pick for the Best 100 books of the 21st Century because of the outcry from their former list. I had read 8 of the former and 14 of the latter, which is pretty crap, so I’m making it a long-term project to fill in the gaps - starting with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
When was the last time you got yourself some new stationery? I bought myself some highlighters a few weeks ago and it’s making writing my daily to-do list slightly more colourful, and generally slightly more pleasing.
Awkward end note
I’ve had a few people over the last few weeks ask how they can support my newsletter/if I have a Patreon etc etc. I don’t have Patreon and I’m never going to do a paid-for Substack strand, but I used to have a Ko-Fi so I’ve resurrected it here. But honestly, you don’t need to pay anything for this nonsense. I’m just happy to have you here.
Thanks for reading. Have you done something new to your hair? It looks great. See you next week.
Love, Amy xxx
Mac & cheese! OMG brings back memories of school cooking lessons and making the magic that is a roux! Add the milk and it gets thicker, add some more and it gets thicker still, persevere though and that truly is alchemy!
Afraid to say I still like the stuff from a tin. Oops, sorry! Lol!
My mum makes a mac 'n' cheese with leeks which means cheesy leeks (a delicious dish on its own merits) plus pasta. I make a mac 'n' cheese with 3 different cheeses, pancetta and the thickest cheese and butter sauce (no flour, no milk, lots of violent stirring) which will put you in a food coma but has always been very well received.
I tried that Kraft boxed abomination once, it was grim. But then so is most cheese in America.