You can never have too many: YET ANOTHER macaroni and cheese recipe

Well, if you read Annalena's last post, on curried cauliflower, you saw some nattering about mac and cheese (by the way, if you read that last post, tell Annalena honestly: did you find the recipe too complicated? Please see the comment she received. Annalena knows not what to do). And indeed, this is ANOTHER recipe for mac and cheese, with, of course a story. Annalena fully believes that, like black cashmere sweaters, and blue blazers, one can never have too many of these. And this one was really born out of one of those "OH MY GOD I HAVE TO MAKE SOMETHING" moments. You know what I mean, yes?

See, Annalena was catering a fundraiser for her favorite Uptown boys, and meatballs were on the menu. For what we would be charging, this was one where supermarket meat would have to do. But for Annalena's boys? Uh, no. So, reaching into the overfilled freezer, she pulled out two meatloaves that had been made with extremely high quality, grass fed, organic meats. All well and good.

Man does not live by meatloaf alone, however, as much as he does not live by bread alone. All things considered, however, Annalena would rather have the bread. The bottom line is, I could not see serving this without a starch. BUT... I did not or could not see my way to making a "true" macaroni and cheese, with the grated cheese, and the bechamel, etc. Scouting around the kitchen, however, I came up with a few things and this resulted.

And if I do say so myself, it's very good. It's more than very good. It is worth making againg. And I shall. So too should you. Here it comes.

I had a one kilo bag of pasta, so that's a bit over 2 pounds. The pasta were cappelletti which, strictly speaking, are stuffed pasta from Modena. "Cappelletti" means "little hats," and I guess these sort of looked like hats. I thought they looked like baby curls, and my Uptown boys did not disappoint with coming up with more erotic interpretations of this dry pasta. However you come out on this, you need a shaped pasta and take this as a reaffirmation that more than one type of pasta may fall under a name in pasta terminology, just as one name may cover more than one type of pasta. It is all ridiculously confusing. Annalena suggests that you simply follow the "categories" of pasta: long, short or soup. Use a "short" one. If you are not sure what constitutes long or short or soup, check the box. Long boxes hold long pasta. Bags, or squat boxes, hold short pasta. Soup pasta is tiny.

You can do that. I know you can. Get two pounds of it. Also get about a pound of fontina cheese.

Now another digression because there is more than one fontina. There is Danish fontina and there is Italian fontina. Annalena understands how THAT happened even less than she understands how cardamom became the leading dessert spice of Scandinavia. In any event, Danish fontina is hard to find, which is probably a good thing, since it's pretty vile (sorry Danes out there). It has a red rind, always. So, if you see fontina with a red rind, avoid it. Your search does not stop there, however, because then you have "young" fontina, which has a brown rind, and "old" fontina (we call it "aged" fontina), which has a pale yellow rind. You COULD use the aged here, but you'd be wasting its qualities. No, get a pound of the young fontina, which may very well be my very favorite melting cheese. Cut away the brown rind, and then cut the cheese into chunks. No need for surgical precision here. And, get about a half to 3/4 cup of heavy cream.

Cook your pasta in a big pot of salted water, while you preheat your oven to 400 degree and butter a 9x13 baking dish, either glass or ceramic. Do NOT cook the pasta to aldente; rather, undercook it. Don't undercook it to the point where it's raw, but if you taste it and you think "three more minutes," or even "five more minutes," you're done. Drain it, and put it back in the pot, with the fire off. Stir in the cheese, and the cream. You will watch the pasta suck up that cream. This is one of the things heavy cream does, which milk and low fat milks do not do: the cream just coats and/or gets sucked up in the pores of the pasta. That, ultimately, is why you need less of it than something else (although it DOES seem like a fair amount of cream. Don't worry though).

Pour the mass into that baking dish, and put it into the oven, for at least 30 minutes. You have to "follow your nose" with this one, because you will begin to get a "cheesy/toasty" smell when it's ready. And when it is, the top will be firm, the mass will look pale, but... the edges will be crisped. And brown. And of course, this is the best part.

You can make this. You can make this with about 20 minutes of work, and then have time to clean up, or choose your outfit, or , heaven knows, to make some meatloaf.

Do make this. Add it to your repertoire of baked pasta and cheese dishes. It will make you very happy. Promesso.