Macaroni Cheese

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy-bottomed saucepan
• •Large ovenproof dish, roughly 25cm
• •Wooden spoon
• •Box grater

Instructions

1. 1

   Cook the pasta

   Bring a large pan of well-salted water to a rolling boil. Cook the macaroni for a minute or two less than the packet says. You want it firm, still with a bit of bite, because it's going into the oven next and will soften further in the sauce. Drain it, but save a mugful of the starchy cooking water. You may not need it, but it's useful if the sauce wants loosening later.

   Salt the water generously. It should taste like the sea. This is your only chance to season the pasta itself, and unseasoned pasta drags the whole dish down.
2. 2

   Make the white sauce

   Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium heat. When it foams, add the flour and stir it in with a wooden spoon. Cook this paste for a minute or so, stirring constantly, until it smells biscuity and has lost its raw, floury scent. That's the signal. Now start adding the milk, a good splash at a time, stirring firmly after each addition until the sauce is smooth before you pour in more. Drop in the bay leaf. It feels slow at first, but after the first few additions it comes together quickly. Once all the milk is in, let the sauce simmer gently for five minutes, stirring now and then. It should coat the back of a spoon thickly.

   If the sauce goes lumpy, don't panic. Take it off the heat and whisk hard. It nearly always comes smooth. If it doesn't, push it through a sieve and carry on. No one will know.
3. 3

   Add the cheese

   Take the pan off the heat. Fish out the bay leaf. Add the mustard powder, a grating of nutmeg, and most of the cheddar, keeping a small handful back for the top. Stir until the cheese has melted into the sauce completely. It should be glossy and golden and smell like the kind of evening where you don't leave the house. Season with salt and pepper. Taste it. Be honest with yourself. If it needs more salt, add more salt. If it needs more cheese, you know what to do.

4. 4

   Combine and top

   Set the oven to 200C/180C fan. Butter an ovenproof dish, something that will hold everything with a little room to spare. Fold the drained pasta into the cheese sauce until every piece is coated. If it looks thick, add a splash of the reserved pasta water. Pour it into the dish. Mix the breadcrumbs with the remaining cheddar and the Parmesan, if you're using it, and scatter the lot over the top. Don't be neat about it. The uneven bits are the ones that catch and turn golden.

5. 5

   Bake until golden

   Bake for twenty to twenty-five minutes, until the top is deep golden and cracking in places and the sauce is bubbling up at the edges. You'll hear it before you see it. Let it sit for five minutes out of the oven. Not because you need to, but because a spoonful taken too soon will scald the roof of your mouth, and you'll be too impatient to taste anything properly. Serve it straight from the dish, at the table, with a big spoon. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate of this in front of someone on a cold evening.

Chef Tips

• •Use the sharpest cheddar you can find. Something aged, crumbly, with a proper bite to it. Mild cheddar makes a mild sauce, and a mild sauce makes a forgettable dinner. The cheese is doing all the heavy lifting here, so give it something worth lifting.
• •The breadcrumbs want to be coarse and fresh, torn from a day-old loaf and crumbled roughly by hand or pulsed once in a machine. Fine, sandy breadcrumbs give you a uniform crust. Coarse ones give you texture, with some bits golden and crisp and others just catching at the edges. That's what you're after.
• •A splash of the pasta cooking water stirred into the sauce before baking keeps everything loose enough. Macaroni cheese that sets solid in the dish has been made too thick. You want it to flow, just, when you dig in with a spoon.
• •This takes well to variations, though it doesn't need them. A few leaves of cauliflower roasted and folded through. A spoonful of Dijon instead of the mustard powder. A scattering of thyme leaves in the breadcrumb topping. Your kitchen, your rules.

Advance Preparation

• •The cheese sauce can be made a day ahead and refrigerated. It will thicken as it cools. Warm it gently, stirring in a splash of milk, before combining with the pasta.
• •The assembled dish can sit in the fridge for a few hours before baking, covered with a tea towel. Add five minutes to the oven time if baking from cold.
• •Leftovers reheat well in the oven at 180C for fifteen minutes with a splash of milk to loosen the sauce. The microwave will do the job, but the crust won't crisp.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 375g)