Macaroni cheese for one
A small dish with a properly golden top
Doubles cleanly into a slightly larger dish for two, with the same grilling time.
Small quantities are their own kind of skill, and macaroni cheese scaled down for one is easy to get wrong in either direction: too little sauce and it turns dry under the grill, too much and it never sets. This version keeps the classic ratio of butter to flour to milk and adds a pinch of mustard powder to the sauce, which wakes up the cheese without any heat you would notice. Cook the macaroni a minute past the packet time so it is properly soft before it goes anywhere near the oven. Twenty-five minutes from kettle to grill, and there is a small dish of something golden waiting for you.
Ingredients
Contains: Gluten, Milk, Mustard
- 90 gwhite macaroni, or another small white pasta shape
- 15 gunsalted butter
- 15 gplain flour
- 200 mlwhole milk
- 60 gCheddar, grated
- 1 pinchmustard powder — optional
- salt
Method
Cook the macaroni in well-salted boiling water for a minute longer than the packet says, until fully soft with no bite left, then drain.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a small pan and stir in the flour, cooking for a minute to a sandy paste.
Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the milk a little at a time until smooth, then return to a low heat and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring, until it coats the back of a spoon.
Stir in most of the Cheddar and the mustard powder if using, until melted and glossy, then taste for salt.
Heat the grill to high, then fold the drained macaroni through the sauce until every piece is coated.
Tip into a small ovenproof dish of about 400 ml, scatter over the last of the cheese, and grill for 3 to 4 minutes, until the top bubbles and turns golden in patches.
Watch-points
- Use white macaroni or a similar small white pasta shape, cooked fully soft, a minute past the packet time.
- The mustard powder is optional and used in a small pinch only, stirred in until it disappears completely into the sauce.
Stoma note: White pasta thickens stoma output, so this is a settling dish on an unsettled day.
Make it more nourishing
- Use 90 g of Cheddar instead of 60, stirred through the sauce.
- Stir a tablespoon of cream cheese into the sauce along with the Cheddar.
- Whisk a tablespoon of milk powder into the milk before it goes into the pan.
Swaps
- Instead of Cheddar, use half Cheddar, half Parmesan
- a sharper flavour without more volume
- Instead of mustard powder, use a small scrape of smooth Dijon mustard
- milder, and already smooth enough to use