Improvised Mac & Cheese

The Mac & Cheese you see above was created by yours truly without a recipe. I don't know if you find that impressive, but I'm certainly impressed with myself.

It all started when I made those roasted red peppers you saw in the previous post. The next night, I had those in the fridge and I also had our latest shipment of the Cheese of the Month Club from Murray's Cheese. That shipment contained both cheddar and Emmentaler, both of which I thought might work in a mac & cheese. Since I also had milk and some flour, I knew I could make this happen.

To improvise a mac & cheese, all you need to know is how to make a bechamel. (Or should I say: Béchamel.)

Essentially, it's a white sauce you make with flour, butter and milk. Once you've boiled your pasta in heavily salted water (elbows, penne, ziti, doesn't really matter) and drained it, heat up 4 cups of milk in one pot,

while melting about 4 Tbs of butter in another pot.

To the butter, add 4 Tbs of flour and stir that together over medium heat for about a minute so the raw flour cooks. If you were making a cajun dish, you'd cook that flour and butter on low heat for an hour and it would change colors--from brown to darker brown and then almost to black--but we're not doing that here. In fact, for a Béchamel, you don't want it to change color at all.

After a minute, pour in the hot milk and whisk whisk whisk so everything gets incorporated. Keep whisking and raise the heat a little. You want to cook this until it's nice and thick; it'll coat the back of a spoon when it's ready.

When that happens, season with salt, pepper, a pinch of cayenne and the key ingredient to any excellent Béchamel: freshly grated nutmeg.

I love freshly grated nutmeg so much I get angry when I see people using the pre-ground stuff on TV. If you've never bought whole nutmeg, you have a wonderful treat in store: get some today and use a microplane to grate it into whatever you're making that would benefit from nutmeg. You'll never go back to the sawdust again.

So stir in those spices and then, finally, add a bunch of grated cheese:

I'd say I added about 1/2 a cup of the cheddar and 1/2 a cup of the Emmentaler. Of course, at this point, I tasted it very carefully:

Your mac & cheese will only taste as good as that sauce tastes. I remember I added more salt, a little more cheese, and, of course, more nutmeg.

When it tasted great, I added the cooked pasta (about 1 pound), some sliced roasted red peppers for color and acidity, and tossed it all around and then poured it into a little baking dish. I had the oven pre-heated to 425 and just before it went in, I topped everything with a combo of the grated cheese and some fresh bread crumbs I'd kept in my freezer from the last time I'd made fresh bread crumbs:

That's how it went in and this is how it came out about 20 minutes later (I think it was 20 minutes; just keep watching it and when it's golden brown on top, it's time to come out):

Here it is with some of that salad dressed with the marinade from the roasted red peppers:

As you can see, this entire dinner came down to knowing just one technique: how to make a Béchamel. Once you know that, you can make all kinds of mac & cheeses and lasagnas and cheese sauces. With a little milk, flour and butter, you can conquer the world.