The Gooey, Cheesy Goodness of Macaroni and Cheese
It's quite possibly the world's most perfect food.
Who knew macaroni and cheese is a thing in Maine? Like, a big thing. In the South, mac and cheese is found on every meat-and-three diner’s vegetable menu. (Of course mac and cheese is vegetable. Why do you ask?) But in Maine, they put that gooey, cheesy goodness smack dab in the middle of the plate as an entrée.
Stephen and I recently spent ten days in Maine hiking, biking, and eating our way through Maine’s lovely towns and outdoor wonders. Stephen focused on the seafood offerings—lobster, scallops, haddock, halibut, shrimp, salmon—while I focused on macaroni and cheese. At one point he said, “I did not bring you all the way to Maine to eat macaroni and cheese every night!” But, dear reader, it appears that he did.
You may not know this about me, but I am a macaroni and cheese connoisseur. My credentials basically consist of eating a lot of it from a lot of different places. I grew up on Kraft Macaroni and Cheese—the Deluxe version in the blue box with the can of cheese sauce, not the powdered cheese stuff. (No one should eat the powdered cheese stuff unless one is on a deserted island, starving, with nothing else to eat, and even then, I’d think twice about it.) When Velveeta launched their Velveeta Shells and Cheese product in 1984, it was an exciting new option in the not-quite-from-scratch mac and cheese marketplace, but we continued to mostly stay loyal to Kraft.
Around this time, my Aunt Carol started making giant pans of homemade mac and cheese for family gatherings, and lordy, we are blessed that such a cheesy, creamy carb-bomb exists on this earth. She uses rigatoni for the pasta and enough cheese to choke a water buffalo, and it is a heavenly experience.
Homemade macaroni and cheese is hit or miss for me. Ever since Thomas Jefferson brought mac and cheese back to Virginia from France, cooks across the country have been putting their own spin on it, and as simple as the recipe is, that’s easy to do. The base recipe is straightforward—pasta and a cheese sauce. You can switch up pasta shape and variety of cheese, add bread crumbs to the top and bake it in the oven, or mix in an egg and make it more like a casserole. I prefer gooey stovetop mac and cheese that only hits the oven if you want to melt even more cheese on top. The bread crumb topping is too grainy, and the eggy, casserole-y version is too dry. But different strokes for different folks, and there is a mac and cheese style out their for every taste.
The macaroni and cheese I had in Maine was my favorite type: saucy and cheesy. Mainers prefer cavatappi pasta, a spiral shaped noodle with a hole in the center to let in lots of cheese. The first night I ate it in Millinocket I had straight up, old school mac and cheese. The second night was mac and cheese with tomatoes, burrata, and balsamic that was really good. Once we got to Bar Harbor, we found the Side Street Café which offers Create Your Own Mac and Cheese with a list of twenty available toppings, and it was so delightful we ate there again the next night. For the record, the first night I got mac and cheese with jalapenos, mushrooms, and avocado, and the next night I got mac and cheese with jalapenos, black bean salsa, and avocados. (Stephen had the lobster roll one night and lobster quesadilla the next since he’s not as into mac and cheese as I am.)
As a side note, we found a lovely little bar/gift shop near the Side Street Café called Rebel Lobster where we had a quick drink while we waited for our table. If you’re ever in Bar Harbor and visit the Rebel Lobster, tell Darren, the barkeep, we said hi. He’s our new best friend.
Homemade macaroni and cheese is easy to make. You cook your pasta of choice according to the directions on the box. Then you make a white sauce (or béchamel sauce if you’re feeling fancy and Frenchy. It’s the same thing.), melt the cheese in the sauce, and mix the sauce into the pasta. I’ll share my basic recipe below, and you can put your own spin on it however you want to. Knock yourself out.
It’s been trendy for a while for restaurants to use mac and cheese as a base for other stuff. I’ve seen toppings like the ones on the menu of the Side Street Café in Bar Harbor at other restaurants. There is a restaurant in Marietta that used to put hot Nashville chicken and pickled okra on a bed of mac and cheese, and it was fiery, creamy heaven. The last time I was in they had taken that off the menu, and I was crushed. I like to put chopped Granny Smith apples on top of Stouffers mac and cheese from the freezer section. The cold and tart apples on the hot and creamy pasta is delish. Our favorite BBQ joint, Dave Poe’s makes what they call Redneck Lasagna, and it’s a bowl of their mac and cheese topped with Brunswick stew. There are endless directions you can go with it, so have fun!
Macaroni and Cheese
This recipe is based loosely on the one my Aunt Carol uses. I put in way more cheese than the recipe she gave me calls for, and I suspect she does too.
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons all purpose flour
2 cups milk
Pinch salt
16 ounces Velveeta
8-12 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
16 ounces pasta of choice
Cook pasta according to package directions. I like to use large (not jumbo) shells because they really scoop up cheese, but you can use elbow macaroni, ziti, penne, cavatappi, fusilli, rigatoni, whatever.
While the pasta is cooking, melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium high heat. Add flour and stir until smooth. Continue cooking and stirring for a minute or two until the flour is cooked. Add salt. Slowly add milk, and stir until smooth. Cook until thick and bubbly, stirring constantly.
Add Velveeta and cheddar cheese and stir until melted. This is the point where you can get creative. Mix up your cheese types. Don’t like Velveeta? Go straight cheddar. Gruyere makes a really good mac and cheese if you want to get fancy. Add in a little parmesan for added richness. Pepper jack will add some spice. The sauce will accommodate a lot of cheese, so keep going until it tastes just right to you.
Mix the cheese into the pasta. You can serve it off the stovetop, or pour it into a casserole dish, top with more cheddar cheese, and bake at 350 degrees for about 5 minutes until the cheese melts.
This macaroni and cheese recipe reheats really well and even tastes good cold out of the fridge.
Interesting Stuff From the Interwebs
If you live in Marietta, you know about Dave Poe’s BBQ, whom I mentioned above. A few years ago, the AJC ran a copy of their recipe for macaroni and cheese, and you can find it here:
From the menu of ... Dave Poe's BBQ
This is a beautiful piece from the Boston Globe.
“I just learned I only have months to live. This is what I want to say”
The Atlantic has an informative article on Emmett Till—who would have turned 80 years old in July—and the circumstances surrounding his death at the hands of a white lynch mob.
Your body is a castle, and the COVID vaccine has alerted your defenses. Also from The Atlantic.
“Your Vaccinated Immune System Is Ready for Breakthroughs”
If you’ve been following the billionaire space race, this will totally make sense. If not, you need to Google “Jeff Bezos’s rocket.”
Welp. Summer is officially over at the Jacobs house. Daniel started his senior year of high school on Tuesday, and Abby leaves for her sophomore year of college in a little more than a week. This summer has been a good one! We’ve all been on some amazing trips, just not together, so we’ll be packing a whole summer’s worth of family fun into the next week. I hope you all have enjoyed some relaxing time with friends and family as well.
Until next time,
Karla
Oh my goodness - it’s only 7 am and all I can think of is a big bowl of Mac and cheese! 😊