WHAT’S COOKING: Curly mac and cheese with bacon and blue cheese

Cavatappi are spirals of macaroni, sometimes called ‘curly mac’, and have a texture that I think adds something to good old mac and cheese. I love bacon in this family favourite – and this time I added blue cheese too.

Yes, I know there was blue cheese in yesterday’s recipe, dear attentive reader, but I’m in a blue cheese frame of mind this week for some reason.

Anyway, when The Foodie’s Wife suggests mac and cheese for supper, you don’t say, “Oh no, I was going to make liver and onions”. You make mac and cheese, that’s what you do. But maybe you switch it up a little. (Actually, you never tell the Foodie’s Wife you’re making liver and onions. More’s the pity – I grew up eating it once a week.)

There’s a lot of cooking involved in making macaroni cheese, especially if, like me, you add bits of this and that to elevate the dish. There’s the pasta that needs to be boiled, the béchamel to make, onions to fry, bacon to cook, and once you’ve combined it all in an oven dish and topped it with more cheese, you have to bake the blimmin’ thing.

Then, to help it set a little, you have to let it stand for a quarter of an hour. So don’t start it at 6pm unless you want everyone to ask when the heck they’re getting their supper.

So, grab a packet of cavatappi next time you shop, and plan this version of mac and cheese. It’s generous on the sauce, as a good mac and cheese needs to be. Hence a whole litre of milk for the béchamel, which is swiftly turned into a cheese sauce by the addition of grated Cheddar and then some blue cheese.

Separately, you cook down some chopped onion with garlic, fry the bacon bits, and ultimately stir all that into the completed cheese sauce.

Everything ends up in a large oven dish – so choose your oven dish first and grease it with butter, to save time when the oven is hot and it’s time to bake it.

Put a large, deep pot of plenty of cold water on a high heat and salt it lightly.

Add a dash of olive oil to a heavy pot and put it on a moderate heat. Add the chopped onion and cook, stirring, for 3 or 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Remove the contents to a side-dish.

Add a little more oil and the bacon, and fry until crisp. Add to the onions in the side-dish.

Bring 1 litre of full-cream milk just to a boil with a bay leaf (i.e. until the milk starts to bubble at the edges of the pan). Grate a little fine nutmeg into it, salt it lightly and add a little white pepper to taste, stir, and turn the heat off. Remove the bay leaf.

In another pot, melt the butter, then turn off the heat. Stir in the flour off the heat, vigorously.

Put the pot on a low heat and start pouring in the milk a little at a time, stirring all the while with a wooden spoon or spatula.