Thus Bakes Zarathustra

I was out driving somewhere with the foreign man when I told him I intended to make my much-ballyhooed CWA version of macaroni cheese for dinner that night. He paused significantly then said, eyes still on the road:

‘I just don’t think you understand mac and cheese.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You don’t understand. Mac and cheese has to be… creamy, and starchy, and there has to be a thick breadcrumb crust. And it has to be orange.’

‘You know we don’t have your kind of cheese here.’

‘I know but…

‘But what?’

‘I just don’t think you people get it.’

To clarify: I am a Anglo-Australian descended from the rum-swilling Irish convicts who came over on the first fleet. My parents bragged about this heritage during the 80s. The foreign man is from America, from Long Island, no less, and as such is exotically ethnic, and he and his countryfolk have sovereignty over macaroni cheese, or, if you prefer, mac and cheese.

It took me a long time to figure out what ‘mac and cheese’ was when I was a kid. Bits and pieces of American life filtered down to us through Sesame Street, the odd Nickelodeon show, such as Pete and Pete, or The Secret World of Alex Mack, and Degrassi, which is Canadian, but Canadians and Americans are the same when you’re ten and growing up in Canberra.

My mum made us macaroni cheese, a pale casserole of spiral pasta and bechamel enriched with rubbery shreds of that Kraft block cheese that is so aggressively pasturised you could leave it out in the sun over a bank holiday weekend and it would still be technically edible. There was a crumb crust, but mum used Tandaco stuffing mix and left over grated cheese instead. Mum hated it, said the very smell of it turned her stomach, but she made it for my sister and I nonetheless because she’s good like that.

I like to think that my mum’s version of macaroni cheese is a thoroughly Australian one, one that had been through the mid-century glory of Margaret Fulton in the 60s, Peter Russell Clark’s non-ironic facial hair and egg fixation in the 70s and 80s, and Gabriel Gate’s continental yuppiedom in the 90s. I like to think her macaroni cheese hints at a time when pasta was still a suspicious ethnic food, and dried herbs were the height of culinary sophistication.

The origins of my version of macaroni cheese are even murkier.  All I know is I’ve been making it since I was a teenager, a period I’ve skillfully blocked from memory. I get the feeling I saw the original recipe in an elderly copy of ‘Woman’s Weekly’ in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, my teenage years being a time of acne, tearful belligerance and chronic illness. Either way, I began making macaroni cheese with tomato soup and capsicum, and my mum loved it, my sister loved it, everyone in our small household loved it, and the CWA macaroni cheese was born.

Here it is in all its salmon-hued glory. This time I made it to send off some friends who are going overseas, so I even made an old-school chocolate self saucing pudding for dessert, which we ate while watching the boobs and blood-splattery violence of  Hitman. It was a good night.

CWA Macaroni Cheese
Serves four.

• A green capsicum, chopped
• Enough pasta for four people. I always eyeball the quantities, I’m afraid.
• A tin of tomato soup
• Around 750-800ml milk
• 40g butter
• Pinch nutmeg
• 3 heaped tbsp flour
• 250g cheese, grated. I always use the bagged pre-grated kind.
• 1/3 cup Tandaco stuffing mix, or other seasoned proprietary bread crumb product

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C. Boil a medium saucepan full of water and put the pasta on to cook. Meanwhile, melt the butter in your largest saucepan over a low heat. Stir in the capsicum and cook for a few minutes until bright green and softened. Increase the heat to medium and stir in the flour sternly until it forms a roux around the capsicum pieces, then cook for a few minutes until it loses that raw flour taste.

Dribble in some milk and stir until the roux soaks it up. Keep gradually adding the milk and stirring until all the milk is in. Stir it constantly over a medium heat for around 10 minutes until the sauce thickens and it comes to the most controlled of simmers. Take off the heat and stir in the nutmeg, followed by the tomato soup, then the cheese, reserving a handful for the topping. 

Once everything is combined tip the cooked pasta into your baking dish of choice, followed by the sauce. Prod gingerly with a spoon to make sure the sauce penetrates all the pasta crannies. Combine the reserved cheese and Tandaco in a small bowl, then sprinkle generously over the baking dish. Bake for 15-20 minutes until the top is browned and everything is bubbling.

Self-Saucing Pudding
Adapted from Taste. Serves four.

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 80g butter, melted
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

For the sauce

• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 1/4 cup boiling water

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.  Combine butter, egg and milk in a jug. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder into a medium bowl, then thoroughly stir in the sugar. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir to combine. Pour into a 8 cup capacity baking dish.

Sift the cocoa powder for the sauce into a small  bowl. Stir in the sugar, followed by the boiling water. Slowly Pour over the pudding mixture into the baking dish. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the pudding feels firm and baked. Eat with ice cream.