Spuntino Recipes: Mac & Cheese

Spuntino: Comfort Food, New York Style transports us across the Atlantic and showcases the very best of American cuisine, updating traditional dishes with bold new flavours. When writing his cookbook, restaurateur Russell Norman scoured New York’s sprawling boroughs in search of ways to innovate comfort food, combining authenticity and simplicity to render the metropolis’ culinary dynamism.

With his mac and cheese recipe, Norman adds an urban twist to this timeless classic. 

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Mac & Cheese

Whether you call it Mac & Cheese (US) or Macaroni Cheese (UK), this is one of the world’s supreme comfort dishes. President Thomas Jefferson famously served it at a White House banquet in 1802, and it has seen a remarkable return to gastronomic favour in the early years of the twenty-first century. At SPUNTINO we present our Mac & Cheese in individual cast-iron pans, served piping hot straight from the oven. We have held competitions for the longest strings of melted cheese from pan to mouth; the combination of Parmesan, Fontina and mozzarella makes for some seriously stretchy forkfuls.

INGREDIENTS

For six

250g macaroni pasta
Fine salt
250ml whole milk
450ml double cream
175g grated Parmesan
250g grated mozzarella – the hard, cheap kind
1½ tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 leeks
25g butter
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Flaky sea salt and black pepper
75g panko breadcrumbs – see page 62
85g grated Fontina

METHOD

Bring a large pan of water to a rolling boil, add the pasta and some fine salt, and stir. When the water boils again, turn down to a medium heat and follow the instructions on the packet, usually simmering for around 11 minutes. Drain when al dente.

Once cooled, transfer the drained pasta to a large mixing bowl and add the milk, the double cream, 125g of the Parmesan, half of the mozzarella and the Dijon mustard. Mix together thoroughly and leave to soak for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, trim the leeks by removing and discarding the green tops and the roots, and finely chop. Wash the chopped leeks thoroughly to get rid of any grit. Place a medium pan over a low heat, melt the butter and very gently sweat the leeks with the garlic, 4 large pinches of flaky sea salt and a good pinch of black pepper. After about 10 minutes the leeks will have a translucent, glossy appearance. Take off the heat and leave to cool. Once the leeks have cooled, drain off any lingering fluid and add them to the soaking pasta.

Recipe extracted from Spuntino: Comfort Food, New York Style by Russell Norman (Bloomsbury Publishing, Hardback £22.50)