Macaroni Cheese

This recipe is the BOMB. If you need some winter comfort food, look no further than this creamy, cheesy, carby bad boy. For my birthday I was given two cookbooks, one of which was The Great New Zealand Cookbook. Having a flick through, I came across this recipe for macaroni cheese. This is something I've never actually made before and hadn't eaten in ages, so I thought I'd give it a try. This recipe is by Laurent Loudeac of Hippopotamus,one of the fanciest restaurants in Wellington. It made 5-6 portions for us, although the recipe says 4 but it's definitely quite rich - there's a lot of cheese in there - so smaller portions were fine for us on this particular evening.

250g macaroni

100g butter

100g plain flour

500ml milk

100g blue cheese, crumbled

100g ham, chopped - this is optional and you could easily leave it out and make it vegetarian. I used chorizo sausage, as I had some handy.

50-100g spinach

1/4 cauliflower - this wasn't in the recipe, but I had some leftover from the veggie curry

75g cheese (cheddar or Gruyere), grated - the recipe actually says 200g but I found 75g was just fine.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Cook the macaroni in a large pot of salted boiling water until al dente - usually about 6 minutes. While the pasta is cooking, melt the butter in a small pot and add the flour, stirring until you get a paste (roux). Add the milk slowly, whisking as you go to break up any lumps. Cook until you have a nice thick white sauce (bechamel). This took me a little while and a lot of stirring to get the sauce to thicken, but without it sticking to the bottom of the pot. Season to taste and then add the blue cheese, ham - or in this case, chorizo - and spinach. I also added the cauliflower at this point. I love to add extra veggies to dishes where I can, and spinach is a good one, so I always use extra. It adds a nice bit of colour to this dish too. Drain the pasta and pour the sauce over it, in the large pot. Stir well to combine and poor into either a large oven proof dish, or small individual dishes. Sprinkle the grated cheese over the top and bake for 25-30 minutes or until it's golden and crispy on top - I put the grill on for the last few minutes of cooking, just to get a really nice crust. Serve with a salad on the side - which I didn't this time, but I'd recommend it just to cut through the richness of all that cheese. Yum!