GUIDE TO LIFE ARCHIVE GUIDE TO LIFE ⇒

Productive Living: The Rapid Preparation of Simple Meals:
Macaroni Cheese

I always make macaroni cheese in the same way. I always use the same seasonings - black pepper, chicken stock and curry powder. They're the same seasonings I use in kedgeree except that there I also add soy sauce as it doesn't have the cheese in it to give it extra flavour.

I start by putting water on to boil for the macaroni and then in another saucepan I fry some chopped onions in butter or margarine, doing it slowly so they go soft and not brown. It needs lots of butter or margarine as when the onions are fried I add the flour straight on top to start the sauce.

Before I add the flour I add curry powder to the onions and stir it around. I don't use very much and I use mild western type curry powder as I just like the flavour, I don't really want to make curry. I add the curry powder at this point because I have some idea that curry spices have to be fried, which for real curry might be true, but there's not really any reason for me to do it here.

I usually add a bit of chicken stock and the pepper now too while I think of it, although it’s really better to do it later as the stock tends to stick to the bottom of the saucepan.

Then I add the flour on top and stir it to get the lumps out. It's probably a bad way to do it as the lumps of flour could be mistaken for pieces of onion and missed but it takes too long doing it all separately. Quite often I add other vegetables to the onions too like courgettes and fry them so there's even more stuff to stir round with the flour.

I then cook the flour a bit and then add the milk to make the sauce - usually all at once and then I get the lumps out with an egg whisk as it takes to long to do it properly, adding a bit at a time.

At the end I add lots of cheese and also quite often chopped celery and fresh tomatoes, but not so they cook, just for a bit of colour and texture, otherwise its just pale yellow mush and it seems hard to justify it as real food.

Of course I put macaroni, which by now has been cooked in the water and then drained, in at the end too.

Sometimes I put it in a casserole after this and put it in the oven with breadcrumbs or sunflower seeds on it for a bit - not because it adds anything, and it can in fact just make it over-cooked, but because I like a gap between cooking and eating. I don't put cheese on top as it just melts away and seems a bit of a waste.