There are certain meals that don’t belong on a Sunday night. They can’t be too trashy or too healthy, and they have to have a certain excitement; one last hurrah for the weekend that was. AT has taken up dinner duty on Sundays and it’s been chicken stir fries so far which is OK, he’s learning. But this week, when it looked very much like it was going to be chicken stir fry again, I had to express my feelings about Sunday night dinner.
When Mac n’ Cheese came up in the serious dinner discussions, I thought all my dreams had come true. We never eat mac n’ cheese at our house because my kids have always complained it was ‘too creamy’…
But when we floated the idea past all the stake holders, it was a joy to learn that everyone was on board. And then I remembered how some chefs and restaurants make lobster mac n’ cheese and how that would be amazing and how it would also be expensive. And that’s how the Mac n’ Cheese n’ Crab was born. And it was delicious.
Mac n’ Cheese n’ Crab Recipe (feeds 4-6)
Ingredients:
100g butter
flour (enough to make a roux paste)
milk 500ml – 1L
100g extra mature/vintage cheddar (grated)
100g parmesan/grano padano cheese (grated)
1 tsp mustard powder / 2 tsp Dijon/German mustard
1 chicken stock pod/cube
a splash of white wine
1 x red onion, diced and sauted (in a separate pan)
parsley, handful, chopped
1/2 pack of large white or panko bread crumbs (I used Waitrose own brand)
3 x tins of crab (lump meat or jumbo)
1 pkt spiral tube pasta (amori) – cooked
OVEN at 200C
Method:
In a large pot, make a white sauce using the butter, flour and milk. Then whisk in the grated cheese to smooth out any lumps and mix in all the other ingredients.
Mix the breadcrumbs with about 2 tbs of melted butter, and bit more grated Parmesan. Sprinkle over the pasta.
Mix the pasta in and then pour into a baking dish. Bake for 30 minutes at 200C.
