October Rhymes with Baked Macaroni and Cheese...

A rainy day in the 40s and I'm feeling like hunkering down — have all week, in fact, with the weather dipping into the 30s some nights. I baked not one but two apple cakes this week — the first for the writers in the nonfiction workshop I'm teaching, and the second for me and R., with apples that one of the writers generously brought to class. We sliced into it last night, happy to be cozy and inside and settling in for a movie on a Friday night (deep into a Haneke kick), which felt excusable given that we'd more sociably gone from gallery to gallery in the rain Thursday night.

Dinner was a vegetable curry (eggplant, zucchini, carrots, green tomatoes, onions, garlic, chili peppers, cilantro, coconut milk) with Israeli couscous, solely because I love its tapioca-like texture. Earlier in the week there was a baked macaroni and cheese with broccoli, and before that a carrot soup, made with a stock that included their greens. Half of me has relaxed into autumn — is looking forward to carving the little pumpkins on the sideboard — while the other half refuses to put away the flipflops or pull down the box with the gloves, and dreads the day all the greens in the market disappear for the season.

Today I bought mustard greens, purple kale, leeks, and beets. The beets I'll roast, but their tops, the greens, and the kale... I'm thinking of maybe a savory pie, either a light version with ricotta, or else the dense type my mother's mother used to make, with a crust moistened with white wine and a filling studded with anchovies. It was an afternoon's undertaking but it went far, served in thin slices to a crowd of holiday guests. Now to find the recipe...




















































Macaroni and Cheese with Broccoli (serves 6 with a big salad)

3 Tbsp of butter, plus a splash of olive oil, if you have it.
Whatever stale bread you have around
2 cups of milk
1/4 cup of flour
1/4 teaspoon each nutmeg (freshly grated if possible), black pepper, and cayenne
Approximately 2 cups of grated sharp cheddar or gruyere, or really whatever cheese you have on hand; more or less is fine, too.
1/2 cup of Pecorino Romano, or just Romano, or whatever sharp, hard cheese you have; if you don't, maybe just throw in a little extra black pepper and cayenne...
1/2 pound (1/2 box) of elbow macaroni
1 head of broccoli, washed, stem trimmed, and the whole thing cut into just smaller than bit-size pieces
onion/garlic powder
red pepper flakes
salt & pepper

1. Heat oven to 375. In a big skillet, add approximately 1/4 cup of water, the broccoli, a few shakes of red pepper flakes, and a sprinkle of salt. Let this essentially steam, tossing it lightly and removing it from the heat while the broccoli still has a crunch it it. Turn the broccoli out onto a plate (this, versus a bowl, will let it cool more quickly and so slow the cooking.)

2. Wipe the skillet so no water remains. Cut the bread into tiny cubes, warm the skillet and in it melt 1 tbsp. of butter and then add the splash of olive oil. Add the bread cubes, moving them around to toast them gently. Shake a little onion/garlic powder over them, if you have any, or otherwise just season them with salt, pepper, and whatever dried herb you have and like. No herb is fine, too. Turn them out onto a plate or paper towel.

3. Set a pot of water to boil for the pasta. Salt generously. (The Italians say pasta water should be like sea water; I don't go to that extent, but it's something to consider.)

4. In a small saucepan warm the milk. Then, in the skillet, melt the rest of the butter. Add the flour to the butter and whisk, letting them come together and color just slightly, which will take a minute or two. Still whisking, pour in the milk and keep whisking until things thicken. Turn off the heat, move the pan to the next burner, and add the cheeses, spices and salt and pepper, mixing it all together evenly.

5. Cook the pasta until it's a few minutes shy of al-dente (it'll keep cooking in the oven). Drain the pasta and then add it to the cheese sauce. When it's incorporated, add the broccoli and mix that in as well. Pour this into a casserole dish that's buttered (or sprayed with non-stick spray), top with the bread cubes, and bake for approximately 35 minutes or until the bread is browned and the cheese sauce is bubbling (a thing you may only see if, like me, you have a glass casserole dish). Let it cool for a few minutes before cutting and serving.

This dish was inspired by a butternut squash gratin we ate last week and wished had a little more cheese it it. If you roasted such a squash in advance and cubed it, you could add it, or really just about any other vegetable — chopped kale, spinach, green beans. What doesn't taste good with cheese sauce?

















*The photo preceding the recipe is Romanesco Broccoli, a cross between cauliflower and broccoli. You can cook it as you would either of them, and the aroma is (happily) much subtler.