Homemade Macaroni and Cheese

A flurry of homemade mac and cheese recipes are going up thanks to Salon's strident critique of Annie's Homegrown. While we can't say we share that author's passion for skewering gently Earth-friendly brands which have raised the bar for thoughtful corporate giving, we readily admit that "convenience" foods often don't pay their way in terms of the amount of convenience they provide for their relatively high price. And yes, homemade mac and cheese is not much harder to prepare than the stuff out of a box - but the real secret of the convenience food industry is that most basic recipes are actually that way. (Making a cake from scratch, for example, probably takes about five minutes longer to prepare than one from a cake mix, and tastes about a thousand times better.)

The real convenience of convenience foods is that it frees us from keeping a stock of basic spoilage-sensitive ingredients on hand. That's what makes convenience foods somewhat addictive - the fewer meals you need to prepare with a variety of ingredients, the faster they spoil when you do have them, thus reinforcing the value of the convenience food products...

My recipe for homemade mac and cheese is simple, easily modified, and inspired by an inspiringly simple recipe I learned while living abroad in Italy, where pasta is king. Here's what you do:

1. Cook some pasta - preferably something not too big (like spaghetti) or too small (like elbow macaroni). I prefer fusilli (spirals), medium-sized shells, or rigatoni in a pinch.
2. Drain the pasta. Turn off the burner.
3. Add a little butter, a little milk, and a couple ounces of cream cheese. Stir over the still-warm burner.
4. Add some grated cheddar (grate it yourself to avoid the icky starch they use to keep that pre-grated stuff from sticking together) and a bit of an alternate hard cheese if you have something on hand. Don't use much, but this can really enrich the flavor if you have some (Emmenthal, Jarlsburg, Havarti, whatever).
5. Add a bit of grated Parmesan and stir to melt all the cheese into a liquid. Add more milk and butter if you need to.
6. Serve hot, reheating if necessary, and enjoy!

Here are a couple other recipes we've noticed: Parent Hacks | Life of A Mom | Alton Brown

There's also a pretty crazy recipe from Alton Brown's Good Eats show for "Mac and Cheese Toast" - made from leftover macaroni and cheese. I'd like to try that sometime.