“He puts some MacAttack Mac & Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won’t be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook.” -George Saunders, awesome American writer/satirist, from his 2006 short story collection In Persuasion Nation

When I began to create RadioGastronomy in my head last spring, I hadn’t yet begun my culinary school odyssey.  Right around that time, I met with a representative in the admissions office of the school to take a tour and talk about what my experience there might be like.  Most of it was, of course, a drawn-out sales pitch, but as soon as I saw a room full of students filleting whole flounder…..as soon as I smelled the hallway outside of the bread kitchen…..well, they had me.  I remember the representative saying to me at one point (with a rather ominous, wicked little smirk on her face, I might add) “Don’t worry.  If you’ve developed any bad habits in your own kitchen, we’re going to break them.”  (She also said “Don’t worry, it’s not like Hell’s Kitchen here or anything,” and then I got Chef X. as my first instructor, which was almost exactly like Hell’s Kitchen, except with a thick French accent.)

After that meeting, I began wondering what would happen to all the recipes I’d been making for years and years.  You know, the ones I could do in my sleep without ever consulting a cookbook or a recipe card.  Would they succumb to French culinary formalities?  And if they did, would it really make them better?  These questions became important ones for me to explore here on RadioGastronomy, because they really speak to the evolution process of becoming a little chef-ling that’s actually ready to take a creative and philosophical stance with regard to food.  It’s sort of like the question I often asked back in art school…..”is a finished drawing ever really better than a sketch?”  Sometimes, too much technique just looks like too much technique.  And so here I am, less than a month away from the tall hat and the whole “Chef Krista” dog and pony show, and I’m revisiting one of those “could-execute-this-in-a-coma” recipes in my arsenal:  good ol’ baked macaroni & cheese.  Can I make mine better after 8 months-and-change of formal culinary school?

No sane person would ever turn their nose up at this stuff, and almost everyone wants the same things out of it.  A gooey, creamy cheese sauce on the inside and a buttery, crispy, crunchy topping on the outside.  Well, if school has taught me anything, it’s to analyze each of the components on their own and really maximize them without compromising the integrity of the ingredients.  This is, of course, sort of ridiculous when we’re talking about something as bourgeois and pedestrian as macaroni and cheese, but I have to admit – this really turned out kind of perfect for me.  What I did here was to evolve the cheese sauce out of a classic Béchamel sauce, and enhance the complexity of the sauce’s flavor by adding gruyére cheese in addition to the standard cheddar.  Second, I really made the topping it’s own entity instead of just some afterthought of store-bought breadcrumbs that you throw on at the end.  I switched to super-crunchy and light panko, and added fresh herbs and parmigiano-reggiano cheese.  (That’s right, the cheese tally is now at three kinds!)  And knowing that one of the most classic combinations ever is tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches, I snuck in some on-the-vine tomato slices for veggie points.  An improvement?  Oh yes.  Big time.

Ingredients:

For the pasta & sauce:

2 tbsp. butter

2 tbsp. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 – 2 1/2 cups milk  (NOTE:  I used 2% milk here with excellent results.)

3/4 lb. gruyére cheese, grated

1/2 lb. white cheddar cheese, grated

Pinch ground nutmeg

Pinch ground cayenne

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

1 large on-the-vine tomato, washed and sliced into rounds roughly 1/8″ thick (optional)

1 lb. box of Cavatappi pasta (NOTE:  I used De Cecco brand, of which I am a loyal fan.)

For the panko topping:

1 tbsp. butter

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

1 tbsp. fresh thyme leaves

1 tbsp. fresh parsley leaves, washed, dried well, and chopped fine

2 tbsp. freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

1.  Bring a large pasta pot full of water to a boil over high heat on the stovetop.  Preheat oven to 350ºF.

2.  First, we’re going to make a roux, and then evolve that into a béchamel sauce.  In a saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter gently.  (If it begins to sizzle, bubble, and turn brown, the heat is too high.)  Just as the last little bit of butter melts, add the flour and whisk the two ingredients together until a nice, smooth paste forms.  Continue cooking and whisking gently for about a minute to get rid of the raw flour taste.  Add about 1/4 cup of milk and whisk together with the roux until smooth, making sure to scrape up any bits of roux that become trapped around the circumference of the saucepan.  You’ll notice that relatively quickly, the sauce will begin to thicken and bubble.  At this point, add some more milk and whisk together again.  Allow to come back up to a bubble, and repeat as needed.  Stop when the mixture bubbles up and is about the consistency of pancake batter or a milkshake.

3.  Remove the pan from the heat, and whisk in the grated gruyére and white cheddar cheeses until they melt into the béchamel sauce.  Add the pinches of ground nutmeg and cayenne pepper, and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Set aside with a lid on top to keep warm while you cook the pasta.

4.  When the pasta water comes up to a rapid boil, add a big handful of kosher salt to the water and then cook the Cavatappi until it is just al dente, probably 2-3 minutes less than the package directions indicate.  (NOTE:  The pasta will continue to cook in the oven, so you don’t want to end up with mushy, texture-less pasta by over-cooking it in the first step.)  Drain pasta and pour it into a rectangular casserole baking pan roughly 13″ x 9″ in size.  Pour the cheese sauce over the pasta and stir gently to make sure all of the pasta is evenly coated with the sauce.  Lay out the tomato slices evenly over the top of the pasta & sauce, if desired.  Set aside while you make the panko topping.

5.  In a medium sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat.  As soon as the butter is just melted, add the panko and stir with a rubber spatula to coat all of the panko with the butter.  Cook gently over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the panko begins to take on a golden-brown color.  Remove from heat, stir in the thyme leaves, parsley, and parmigiano-reggiano, and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Allow the topping mixture to cool enough to handle it without burning yourself.

6.  Sprinkle the topping mixture evenly over the pasta and tomatoes, and then place the baking dish in the oven.  Bake for about 30-35 minutes, until the pasta is warm and bubbly and the top is nice and golden brown.

Yield: 1 casserole dish full of ooey-gooey soulful comfort