Another Way to Serve Macaroni Cheese...

....Or this weeks Presto Pasta entry.

I have yet to meet someone who dislikes Macaroni Cheese. However, it can be a little bland, a little too sloppy, a little too dry, not enough cheese etc.
My husband makes a great Mac and Cheese, which I allude entirely to his secret cheese sauce recipe. I know his secret ingredient but I’m not spilling the beans....yet.
When I make Macaroni Cheese, I am never quite satisfied with the results, so I am on a permanent perfect pasta quest. Luckily there is lots of inspiration available online, through other food bloggers and in cookbooks. It would appear that Mac and Cheese captures our imagination in a way that can only be rivalled by Hamburgers.
My mum recalls a story about when I was very young. She would feed me macaroni cheese and I would suck all the sauce from the tubes which I would then feed to our black Labrador, Monty.
This isn’t the only Macaroni Cheese (from here onwards referred to as MC) story. Another time, my cousin Stuart poured a whole container of salt onto my MC and dared me to eat it. Bravely or stupidly (I favour the latter), I ate quite a substantial amount and then promptly regurgitated it, Linda Blair style.
Fortunately for those around me, my table manners have improved considerably, as has my intake of salt, but I still love the soft, gentle creaminess of MC. It is one of the first ‘solid' foods that many of us eat, along with sweetcorn, and for this reason I think we hold it close to our hearts – and even closer to our stomachs. Our first baby steps towards eating true, grown up foods.

Whilst surfing the UKTVFood website looking for ways to use up my cauliflower (and here's what I did with the rest of it), I came across this recipe for a posh version of MC. Now, this seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. Of all things, MC is not posh. It is homely, cosy, comforting, simple...but it is not posh or sophisticated or edgy.

However, there was something in the recipe that grabbed me. It wasn't that it was served in filo cups - pointless and frou frou. Nor was it the final sprinkling of chilli and coriander - seems like an afterthought to me. In fact it was the simple addition of some boiled cauliflower and a non-roux based sauce that won my heart. I had very few of the ingredients required so I reworked the whole dish, and stealing inspiration from Ina Garten's recipe for Chicken with Biscuits, used up some homemade puff pastry ("What??? You made homemade puff pastry? Why haven't we been informed of this development in your ongoing cooking skills?" All in good time is all I have to say right now) and came up with this Macaroni Cheese with Cauliflower and Puff Pastry. (Oh, and I do realise that biscuits aren't made with puff pastry - it's a visual thing).

It is a great way to use up any leftover cauliflower (and you could use other vegetables too, carrots, broccoli, green beans), scraps of pastry (which I always freeze for occasions such as this) and if you find you don't quite have enough pasta. In fact, I used small and large Macaroni tubes. Furthermore, the original recipe requires a melting cheese like Gruyere as the base for the sauce, I completely ignored this and used dried up nub ends of Cheddar, White Leicester and some Parmesan. I would think that you could use almost any combination of cheeses, or even stir in some cream cheese to make it extra unctuous.

So, if you find yourself stuck with all the above ingredients and nowhere to go, try this:

MACARONI CHEESE WITH CAULIFLOWER AND PUFF PASTRY - serves 2-4 (depending on if you serve extra veg with it)
Ingredients:

300g Macaroni or similar tube pasta, cooked as per packet instructions, drained

100g Cauliflower, cooked, drained

150g Grated Cheese which a good melting texture, any combination, Gruyere, Cheddar, White Leicester, Emmental, Edam, etc. Blue cheese would be fabulous too!

50g Grated Parmesan

6 Egg Yolks (freeze the egg whites for meringue)

Some Scraps of Puff Pastry (of course, frozen is fine) or Shortcrust Pastry (optional)

Worcestershire Sauce

Cayenne Pepper

Salt, Pepper

Squeeze Fresh Lemon Juice

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 180c.

If your pasta and cauliflower isn't leftovers, cook it all together in a large pan with plenty of salted water, until al dente.
In a large saucepan over very gentle heat, whisk together the egg yolks and cheeses until melted together (don't do as I did and place the eggs over a high heat because the hot plate doesn't cool down quickly enough and end up with partially cooked egg yolks before the cheese has even touched it. Don't worry, I just about managed to bring it back again, with lots of frantic whisking). If you find that the sauce seems to be a bit lumpy, add some milk or cream to thin it down slightly and make it smoother.

Add a dash of Worcestershire Sauce, Salt, Pepper and Cayenne Pepper to taste.

Add the cauliflower and macaroni to the sauce, mix well and pour into a ovenproof dish.
Roll out the pastry and cut out large circles to resemble biscuits. I thought afterwards that it would be cute to do little star cut-outs too but it was too late at this point.
Sprinkle over some grated Parmesan and bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden.
Serve with some green vegetables and enjoy!