Budget Mac & Cheese, made infinitely better

This is another old post from the "pilot episode" days of 2013.   More to come soon, including a budget find so good, it'll need its own theme music.  But, for now:

Budget Macaroni and Cheese

So this was my second foray into trying to make reduced and / or basic brand supermarket food taste better.  On this August day in 2013, it was good old Mac and cheese.  

This comes in at just above 25%  of the normal price; good news!

I fired a sample into the oven to see how it would taste au naturel.

*munch*

There's no getting away from it - the pasta tastes like wet cardboard, soaked in wallpaper paste.  I'll give it this, the sauce does taste a little bit like cheese, and is pleasant, but... yeah... I've eaten wet Rizlas with more texture than this.  

So far what should be a comfort food is more of a punishment food.  Time for help.

I asked my good buddy Paige about this classic Canadian cuisine staple, took some of her advice, and I did the following:

1.  More cheese.  Remember the hard cheese I grated over the caesar salad in my last blog posting?  I added a lot more of that.  A LOT.  The more cheese you can put into bad mac and cheese, the better.  
    - DON'T use cottage cheese - that's for poutine, which, if you didn't know, is French-Canadian cheesy chips and gravy.  Not this time bub.  

And you shouldn't use cottage cheese for that either BTW.  
No.  
You need, at best, a nice strong Cheddar roux; at worst, budget red Leicester mixed into the whole article, to cheese this puppy up.  
I used lots of old Pecorino.  Lots.  Mixed in, and a lot on top.  

2.  Hot sauce.  You really need something to distract you from the terrible awful texture of that cruddy pasta.  I used piri-piri , as it was what I had to hand in the cupboard, but I can maybe show you a good recipe for your own hot sauce, if you like that kind of thing, at the end of this article...
3.  Worcestershire sauce - a few dashes for some nice tang and umami.
4.  Breadcrumbs on top to get everything crunchy and toasty.  Probably the key to solving the texture problem.
5.  More salt and pepper.

Et voila:

As I've said, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and there's nothing that can be done with overcooked pasta that's been sitting in a sauce, in a depot in Hertfordshire, for 6 weeks, that's going to make it eat better.  But after a good 5-10 minute under the grill to melt the extra cheese, and toast the breadcrumbs nicely, the whole meal was pretty dang decent.  

The extra flavours in the cheese and the sauce make you forget how bad the macaroni is, and how resourceful your culinary skills are.  And the crunch of the breadcrumbs on top gives it a bit of much needed bite.

  Yes, obviously I'm never going to top Paige's M&C, or anyone's properly home made one for that matter, but as supermarket bargain bucket rescue missions, go, this was a good result for the home team. 1-0 Belfast Giants.

PS - Here's a recipe from a certain Essex based chef for a killer macaroni cheese   

Quick chilli sauce

• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 2-3 chillies, depending on the variety, and how hot you like your sauce.  De-seed them and remove the white pith (carefully I should add...) so you get better control over the amount of heat.  You can save the seeds to attempt to grow your own chillies or dry them and use them as a seasoning later.
• Salt (2 good pinches) and pepper (black, 1 good pinch.  Use a little white pepper if you have it for extra heat)
•  Vinegar, 1 good slug and any lemon or lime juice you have for a bit of acidity.
• 1 onion, finely chopped.  Very finely.
• Garlic.  2 big cloves, finely chopped.
• Any extra herbs, dried or otherwise that you have.  Coriander is ideal, paprika works, but any mixed dried herbs will give the sauce some extra goodness.
• A bit of sugar is good too, I don’t really use it but I always put some in my coffee when I’m at my local cafe, and so, well... a couple of extra sachets taken home come in handy...
• METHOD - Fry the onions and chillis until soft, add the tomatoes and other ingredients, slow cook for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer to get it reduced down.
• Pulp the whole lot up and put into whatever container you can find.
• Taste...  
• Adjust recipe to taste.