welsh rarebit mac and cheese

What to make when celebrating the end of a two-day migraine? Macaroni and cheese, of course! Here's the recipe for a mac-and-cheese dish I put together on the fly this evening in celebration of actually feeling hungry again.

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. In a medium pot, set about a quart of water to boil (for cooking pasta). When the water boils, add about 2 cups of dry pasta and cook until just tender.

3. In a medium saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and saute one large onion, minced as finely as you can make it.

4. When the onions are going translucent, add 2 tablespoons of your favorite mustard (we used Stonewall Kitchen's cheddar ale mustard; a strong Dijon would also be nice) and about 1/4 tsp of smoked paprika.

5. In a 2-cup pyrex measure, warm 1/2 cup milk in the microwave and stir in 2 teaspoons of cornstarch. Add to onion mixture and stir until mixture begins to thicken.

6. Add remaining cup of milk and about a cup of shredded cheese (we used sharp cheddar). Add salt and pepper to taste.

7. Turn off heat until milk mixture once everything has incorporated, and set aside until pasta is done.

8. Mix pasta and cheese sauce in one of the saucepans and pour into a loaf pan or equivalent oven-safe dish.

9. Sprinkle top with about 1/4 of paprika and bake in oven for 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

two modified savory bread recipes

This weekend, Hanna and I made two of our standard bread recipes -- with slight variation. Mostly due to that thing where we didn't have what the recipe called for in the cupboards, so we had to improvise (that happens a lot!).

1. Goat Cheese Apricot Stilton Biscuits (Joy the Baker). We've long loved this particular drop biscuit recipe, which you make in a cast iron pan in the oven. We happened to be craving biscuits to go with tomato and vegetable soup on Saturday and thought to make these. Except we didn't have goat cheese. We


2. Cheddar, Beer and Mustard Pull-Apart Bread (Smitten Kitchen). So okay, we didn't so much improvise this one as let Smitten Kitchen improvise for us. With some pretty tasty results! In a slight variation, we used whole seed mustard and a cheddar made with caramelized onions. You won't be sorry.