Smoky Mac-n-Cheese

After crisscrossing the world looking for cephalopod recipes, it's nice to come back to a good old mac-n-cheese. There's nothing like it for providing comfort if you need it, and tasting great if you don't. It also helps use up all of the scraps in your cheese drawer.

Every mac and cheese recipe has to fit in your roasting pan nicely. That makes writing a recipe a little bit of an exercise in guess work. We usually test the amount of pasta we'llneed by filling up the pan we're going to use. The amount of cooked pasta should be about ¾ to the top of the pot. Then we remove that to a bowl, make a little extra sauce, and combine the right amount to cover it.

Smoky Mac-n-Cheese

1 pound pasta, cooked to a hard al dente
2-3 cups grated scrap cheese, cheddar, monterrey jack, etc.
3 oz Velveeta (yes, that stuff, it adds a nice texture)
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp flour
1 ½ cups milk (or so)
2 tbsp butter
½ cup frozen peas
Salt
½ cup bread crumbs or crumbled Ritz crackers

1. Heat oven to 400
2. Fry the onions briskly over medium high heat until yellow
3. Lower heat, add butter, and flour and stir to combine.
4. Add spices and cook briefly
5. Add milk, stirring vigorously. Bring temp up.
6. Add butter, and melt
7. Add Velveeta and dissolve
8. Slowly add cheese a little at a time, making sure it dissolves. Sauce should be thickened but still a little watery (the pasta will thicken it further)
9. Add peas to thaw
10. Taste and season
11. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, mix, then pour into baking dish.
12. Cover with bread crumbs, dab with butter, put in oven
13. Bake about 20 minutes. If the top starts to brown too much, cover with foil
14. Allow to rest five minutes before serving.