35 mins
Super easy
serves 6
About the recipe
This twist on traditional macaroni cheese is, as it should be, all about the cheese!
Ingredients
500g quality macaroni
olive oil
½ a bunch of fresh marjoram or oregano (15g), leaves picked
75g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated, plus a little extra for grating
75g fontina or Taleggio cheese, roughly torn
75g mascarpone cheese
1 whole nutmeg, for grating
1 small ball of buffalo mozzarella cheese
Method
- Preheat your oven to 200ºC/400ºF/gas 6.
- Cook the macaroni in a pan of salted boiling water 2 minutes short of the timing on the packet instructions, then drain in a colander and reserve a little of the cooking water.
- Heat the oil in a large heavy-based frying pan, add the marjoram or oregano and fry for a minute until it starts to crisp up, then turn off the heat.
- Add your cooked pasta to the marjoram or oregano butter, along with a couple of spoonfuls of the reserved cooking water and the Parmesan, fontina or Taleggio and mascarpone.
- Return to a medium heat and toss and stir around until most of the cheese has melted and you have a lovely gooey sauce – you may need to add a little more of the reserved cooking water.
- Season to taste with sea salt and black pepper, then tip it all into an earthenware dish. Grate over a quarter of the nutmeg, tear over the mozzarella and sprinkle over the extra Parmesan.
- Bake the macaroni cheese in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes, finishing up with a quick whack under the grill, until golden brown and crispy on top.
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