Reduced Cabinet Bingo Part 3: Mac'n'Cheese

[miss_s_b]

So yesterday there was actually usable veg in the reduced section.



Yeah. I think I win the "biggest reduction" boasting rights. 55p to 6p is an almost 90% reduction. Beat that! Ahem. Not that I'm competitive or anything. Anyway... Mac'n'Cheese:

Equipment Required:

• Deep lasagne dish or similar.
• Oven AND hob.
• largish saucepan
• Balloon whisk and wooden spoon.
• Measuring jug.
• 1 tbsp, 1 tsp & ½ tsp measuring spoons
• Sharp knife and chopping board
• Cheese grater, unless you bought your cheese ready grated.
• (optional) Frying pan/skillet and tools for flipping things in it and getting things out of it.

Ingredients:

• Some pasta (I like to use penne or rigatoni for this, rather than actual macaroni, which I find too small and bitty; I used wholewheat penne today)
• 2 pints milk
• 4 tbsps custard powder (yes, really)
• Some cheese (today I used Tesco Mature cheddar), grated. I have no idea the amount in weight. You need about 3 times the amount you would use to cover the top of your lasagne dish reasonably thickly, because you're going to do that, and put the other two thirds of the cheese in the sauce.
• 1 tsp mustard powder (the mustard powder I have in at the mo is quite weedy, adjust this to taste)
• ½ tsp Mace
• Garlic granules or freshly minced garlic to taste.
• salt and fresh ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp Henderson's Relish (or Worcestershire sauce if you're a pleb and/or want to make it not-veggie-suitable)
• Spring onions (or chopped red onions, or caramelised onions, but obvs I used Springing ones today) to taste
• Red peppers to taste.
• Optional bacon to taste, although this would obvs make it not-veggie.

Method:

• Pre heat the oven to 180^oc electric/160^oc fan/gas mark 4.
• If you're doing bacon, chop it into lardons and fry it now.
• When it's cooked how you like it (I like it brown and crispy for this) put it on some absorbent paper to drain while you do other stuff.
• Put most of your milk in the saucepan, and start heating it. If you do it too quickly it will burn at the bottom before the top heats through, so do it slowly. There's plenty to be getting on with while it warms.
• Mix the bit of milk you didn't put in the pan (probably about 5 or 6 tablespoons worth) with the custard powder to make a paste. I tend to use a whisky tumbler to do this in, but any glass or ceramic vessel will do. The reason I use custard powder is it is less prone to lumpiness than cornflour, and gives a pleasing delicate yellow colour to the sauce; it's not sweet with no sugar, so don't worry about your sauce actually tasting like custard.
• Put the mace, mustard powder, salt and pepper, and garlic granules in the custard powder/milk mix, and stir it till it's a smooth paste.
• Chop your onions and peppers, and put them in the lasagne dish, along with the raw pasta and the bacon if you're using it. The whole lot wants to fill the lasagne dish about two thirds full. Any more than that and you risk overflows when the pasta expands later.
• Add the custard powder/spices/milk mix to the hot milk in the pan, and mix with your balloon whisk (this further avoids lumps)
• This will thicken quite rapidly, keep stirring, and add about two thirds of the grated cheese.
• While still stirring, add the Henderson's relish. You don't want to add it before this stage, because it will curdle uncooked milk.
• Mix till smooth and uniform in appearance.
• Pour the cheese sauce into the lasagne dish and mix with your wooden spoon till the veg is evenly distributed and the pasta is all besauced. You want enough cheese sauce in the dish so that each bit of pasta is surrounded by and filled with the sauce, but not so much as it is sloppy. You may have to bang the dish on a surface a couple of times to get the sauce to go into the insides of the pasta and get bubbles out.
• Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top.
• Stick it in the oven for 25-40 minutes (depending on oven, depth of lasagne dish, type of pasta, etc) till it's golden brown and crispy on top.
• Eat with a nice light white wine or a G&T.

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

Custard powder! Of course I never thought of that because I'd never buy custard powder because I hate custard. :)

[miss_s_b]

I mean custard powder is mostly cornflour, so you could just use that, but it genuinely does seem to be easier to work with