Comfort Food --- Macaroni and Three Cheeses

This is one of my favorite all time dishes. When I was a kid the first week we got the Indian Commodities always meant Macaroni and Government Cheese. All you can eat babies. This was inspired by a Question of the Day over at Shake's Place written by the litbrit about favorite comment threads that have been provoked there. One of the better threads was about Comfort Foods. I've been downcast and mopey a bit lately. Some of it's my normal gloomy take on human nature, some of it's probably depression. The President gleefully signed the Torture Bill into law and I wonder where the hell that will lead us. I can't imagine anywhere good.

But enough of that. This is about comfort food. I should find comfort in knowing that I'm not a half-breed kid on the rez anymore. We don't live from gig to gig, handout to handout anymore. Still something like Macaroni and Cheese brings me back to good things. You can do this with any cheese that takes your fancy. Since I am in a whole other tax bracket from Government Cheese I will tell you what I use.

All ingredient amounts are relative. You can play with this one all you want. But like everything else, the better the ingredients the better stuff you'll end up with.

So pick your cheeses and away we go.


1 pound sharp (or even extra sharp) cheddar cheese
1 pound Swiss or Jarlsburg (Dublin cheese if you can get it is good here too)
1 good wedge Parmesiano Reggiano
1/4 cup butter (1 stick)
Milk
flour
salt
pepper
Bread Crumbs
Seasoning meat (optional)

Elbow macaroni (or any pasta that will hold sauce well like rigatoni or zitti)

Boil the pasta in a shitload of heavily salted water until al dente, drain and set aside.

Grate the cheddar and swiss cheese, separate each cheese into halves. Melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. When it's completely melted add the flour (a cupped handfull of flour for me works out to a little more than a 1/4 cup) and whisk well. Cook the roux (that's what you just made flour+fat=roux) about two minutes. You want to cook out the pasty flour taste, but you don't want to toast it brown or anything radical. Add salt and pepper to taste (if you're using a ham or sausage for a seasoning meat you can hold off on the salt). Now splash in the milk. You want to get a fairly thin base sauce here, as you cook it more, it will thicken. When the sauce is just below bubbling start adding in the grated cheeses. Whisking away and making sure not to scorch anything. You should in a very short time end up with a wonderfully glossy, cheese sauce.

One of my favorite seasoning meats to use is andouille sausage. When I was a kid it was the canned ham that always came with the boxes of food from the government. Ham Hocks, Polish Sausage, anything your heart desires will do here. This is about comfort food. Please yourself. To use andouille, I slice and slightly brown it, draining well on paper towel.

Now the pasta, sauce, and meat all go into a big oven safe bowl or casserole dish. Add about 2/3's of the remaining grated cheeses and stir through so that there are threads of pure cheese mixed well through the dish. With the remaining grated cheese, bread crumbs (seasoned or not doesn't matter) and some fresh grated parmesiano spead over the top of the dish. This will make that heavenly, cheese crust.

Bake at 350° for an hour or so, until the cheese crust is nice and brown. Your house will smell great. Your kids will pick up their rooms before dinner. Serve with garlic bread and a green salad.

That's a little bit of comfort from El Rancho Harpo (i feel better already)

crossposted at bigbrassblog