Anna's Ultimate Macaroni and Cheese

Macaroni cheese is perfect for the cold weather. Yes, it’s a big bowl of carbs and calories but it’s also an ultimate comfort food and you can have it from pan to plate in under 15 minutes. I went on holiday to Switzerland in the summer and LOVED the macaroni there: hot with apple sauce and crispy onions, cold in a mustardy mayonnaise-vinaigrette, I ate loads of it...and it’s so cheap in supermarkets- get out there and buy some instead of fusilli!

Unlike the kind of macaroni cheese my mum used to make, this recipe’s a bit more fun. Well, I think it is. Once you know your way around the flavours, you can add anything you think might go nicely with the cheese sauce. I’ve stirred in mashed butternut squash or boiled cauliflower before. Add mushrooms, peas for some colour, even some roasted tomatoes if you fancy getting some of your five a day in there.

The most complicated thing here to make is the cheese sauce. I learnt it in a home economics class when I was eleven, so don’t go thinking you can shy away from this! It’s a real backbone recipe: once you can make this, you’ll have your béchamel sauces for the top of your lasagnes covered, even choux pastry for chocolate éclairs is made similarly, so give it a go.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• Macaroni (150g should be enough for two, but check the packet)
• Knob of butter
• A big chunk of cheddar, preferably extra mature
• Milk
• Ham

Method:

As no harm will come of warming the cheese sauce through later, we’ll start with that and cook the macaroni once it’s prepared.

To make the sauce:

1) In a small to medium sized pan melt a large knob of butter, adding a dessertspoon of flour when the butter has fully melted.

2) Stir quickly with a wooden spoon and what you should get is a paste-like doughy ball forming in the pan.

3) Take the pan off the heat and add a splash of milk to loosen the dough. What will happen is you’ll probably get an even bigger ball of dough, but keep adding splash by splash of milk, loosening the mix, always stirring, until it becomes a sauce. You’ll end up adding about a glassful of milk.

4) Put the pan back on the heat, stirring the sauce. It’ll thicken again, you can add more milk if you want, you know you’ll need enough sauce to cover two portions of macaroni.

5) If the sauce never thickens over the heat and you think it’s too runny, stir in another spoon of flour, careful to mix it really well or else it’ll go lumpy! Alternatively, if you think the sauce is too thick, add more milk.

6) Once you have the sauce at the right consistency (it should cling slightly to the back of a spoon), take it off the heat and stir in two handfuls of grated cheddar. You can add as much or as little cheddar as you like, depending on how cheesy you want your sauce to be.

7) And that’s your basic cheese sauce. Well done.

Now, the macaroni. With the sauce off the heat, you can boil the kettle and get your pasta on, cooking it to the instructions. Or if you think you can handle the cheese sauce, get the pasta on at the same time so there’s no waiting around.

Once the pasta has cooked, drain it well and return it to the pan, pouring over the cheese sauce. Heat everything through on the stove. At this point, I stir in anything else I fancy. In this recipe, chuck in a handful of chopped ham to make an even more substantial dinner.

Serve on its own or as I’ve done, with a big spoon of apple sauce and a sprinkling of crunchy onions. Bon appetit!

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