Mac and cheese with shredded ham ... in the Thermomix

I was going to make a spiral pasta with pesto and chicken for dinner tonight but The Boy asked for home made mac and cheese. Actually, he asked that I make the mac and cheese from scratch for him one night this week and I gave him the choice of having it tonight or having the spiral pasta with pesto. He decided he wanted it tonight.

I love mac and cheese. To me, it's like the ultimate comfort food. The Boy will probably once again call it pedestrian.

I had thought that I would put peas into it, but The Boy doesn't like peas so I'm skipping the peas but I got some shredded ham to put in it.

The one thing that makes me cringe about cheese sauces is cooking them in a pot. Tedious and time consuming, the thought of standing over it, stirring, stirring, stirring. It's like making bechamel sauce. Not one of my favorite things to do. I have a friend who can do it with her eyes closed, but it's intimidating to me since there are some things in the kitchen that I do find intimidating. Making a roux is intimidating for me.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I'm very grateful to have a Thermomix. It makes making a roux or bechamel sauce very easy.

Here's my RECIPE for making the sauce for my mac and cheese:

Ingredients:

• 60g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 750g milk
• 120g cheddar cheese
• 80g Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

• Put Parmesan in thermomix and grate on speed 8 for 10 seconds. Set aside.
• Place cheddar cheese in bowl and grate for 10 seconds on speed 8. Set aside
• Make sauce by placing butter, flour and milk into thermomix bowl and cooking at 90 degrees for 12 minutes on speed 4.

I decided to be a little different with my mac and cheese sauce, so I got a tub of pre-made white creamy Carbonara sauce from the grocery store.

Instead of 750g of milk, I used 425g of the creamy Carbonara sauce, and the remainder in milk. Of course, I used soy milk, since I'm lactose intolerant.

While the sauce was cooking, I also boiled up the pasta so that it would be ready. I used 250g of elbow pasta and put that into boiling water for 8 minutes to make it al dente.

Once the sauce and pasta were ready, I mixed them both together and threw in the shredded ham (about 2 handfuls, possibly 250g) and mixed that through.

Then I added salt and pepper to taste.

This is an incredibly easy dish to make once you get the sauce right.

Of course, if you didn't want to do it all from scratch Kraft also makes a decent boxed mac and cheese where I think you either just add water or milk to cook. I've tried it once before but that was a long time ago. I really don't remember it very well.

Happy comfort food eating.

UPDATE: Apologies! It appears that I have already posted this recipe for the mac and cheese sauce before in this post. I had just forgotten about it and when I checked my tags to see if I had done it before or not, I looked under the wrong tags so I didn't see it.

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