Dad's Reasonably Awesome Gourmet Mac and Cheese

I've been making a passable multi-cheese mac and cheese for a while, if you're interested in a chow down on a pile of carbs with added protein and reasonably good flavor.  My technique was to cook the noodles, drain, then bung the cut up cheese into the pot and stir until the cheese had melted from the heat of the noodles, adding seasonings as desired.  Recently, I was moved to investigate an upscale version of this lowly dish.  I am not the first to have this idea and a quick Google search lead to many recipes for "Gourmet Mac and Cheese".  Snobby mac and cheese chefs invariably make a separate cheese sauce starting with a rue and adding cheeses, almost universally more than one variety in each recipe.  I tried this and was kinda disappointed with the rue approach:  the butter and flour really did not add anything except empty calories and detracted from the flavor of the cheese, I thought.  I decided to try the separate sauce but without the rue; I eschew the rue, so to speak.

Noodles:  any pasta will do, I suspect (well, I wouldn't try it with angel hair and spaghetti. linguini, etc. would  seem weird to me).  The classic is elbows, of course, but I am kinda partial to spirals and Mom likes large shells. Picking your favorite pasta can be part of the fun.  I know the official position is "au dente", just a little hard in the center, but I like mine cooked through, just soft throughout.  Cook in water with salt, drain, and set aside.

Cheese:  This is the next part of the fun.  Mac and cheese is best with a mixture of cheeses, I think.  Generally, I use whatever we have on hand which would be cheddar, Swiss, American, and any odds-and-ends.  This is a great way to clean out the cheese drawer.  Got an old cheese end with mold on it?  Cut of the mold, chop it up, and throw it on in to the mix.  Got one that got a little dried out?  In it goes; it will still melt and be OK.  Many of the foo-foo recipes call for Gruyere and I have used it when we had an old end hanging around, but it's usually out of my price range.  Our store sometimes sells deli cheese ends for less than $3/lb; you get what they put in but it often gives a selection of cheeses (typically American and Munster) that work great here and the price is right.  And of course, I almost always include some Velveeta.  I know, I know, that's not upscale, that's Kraft Cheesy Mac in a box, but it gives a nice smooth texture to the cheese sauce.  Anyway, clean out your cheese drawer, clean out your deli's cheese ends, or go out and buy Gruyere and Stilton, but have fun choosing a selection of cheeses.

The Method:  I cook the noodles (see above) and make the sauce from melted cheese.  I cut the cheese up into cubes about 1/2" (alternately, shred the cheese).  I use about the same weight of cheese as dry weight of noodles (one pound of cheese for one pound box of mac), mixed variety, as discussed.  I put the cheese into a sauce pan on the store top and heat, stirring pretty much constantly and adding small quantities of water as needed to prevent burning.  Melting with water is what I substitute for melting into a rue.  I like it better; you can make a rue if you want.

Seasoning:  Here is the next piece of fun.  Regular ole mac and cheese is basically just cheese sauce on noodles sometimes with hot dogs cut up into it.  The upscale version goes a lot further.  First, I put in chopped onion and minced garlic.  Then any vegetable such as might be included in quiche.  Most recently I have been using a can of diced tomatoes with jalapenos in both applications.  We're coming into tomato season, so we might soon see one with diced fresh tomatoes.  Those peppers are coming in too, so I expect we'll have some of them in.  Broccoli also works.  For additional flavor, I like dill and celery seed.  In my most recent, I used the leaves and flower head from a stalk of fresh dill and some celery seed, plus a shake of mustard, salt, pepper, a little paprika...just round up all the usual suspects.  I bet you could do a nice one with a basil base but have not tried that yet.

Cooking:  I add the sauce with seasonings and veg to the noodles and mix then turn into a Pyrex baking dish.  Lately, I have topped with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.  You can make a crumb topping of egg, bread crumbs, Parmesan, salt, pepper, etc and spread it over, but I think that tends to come out too dry.  Pop into the oven, temp pretty frangible but I tend to use about 350, and cook 'til done (you'll know; basically you just need to make sure it's hot and the onion are cooked).