Mac is where its at

Mac and cheese is such a basic dish. Who doesn’t have that blue Kraft box on a shelf in their kitchen? – I don’t want to hear from the Crazy Food People contingent. I don’t want to hear how cheese is made from milk which is cruel to the animals, or how bleached flower is bad for you, or how Kraft is an evil corporation bent on controlling our minds. Lighten up!! – Anyway back to macaroni and cheese, it’s basic, it comfort, and there are a million versions of it out there.

Today I went to a birthday lunch for a co-worker to a local Italian eatery. I ordered, you guessed it, the mac and cheese. It was really, really good. I got to talking to the birthday girl (Happy Birthday Debbie!!) about how it was the third best I’d had at local restaurants. At the Montague it’s the start of the menu with about 5 or 6 different mac and cheese dishes, all good! The atmosphere is a kind of demented Cajun (is that redundant?) thing where the chef is know to hide insults and snarky comments in the dish. It really gets hopping late at night and is known as an after hours kind of place, just about the time you’d be looking of some good mac and cheese.

The best place for this common dish is a place where their version is anything but common. For on thing it’s a side dish you order separately and it comes in a very small portion that you will have a hard time finishing. Castagna’s dish is made with fontina cheese and is so rich you can hardly stand it. I had it years ago and still taste it!!

I myself make a pretty mean dish of the stuff using Velvetta, but it’s pretty far from what these folks are making. My version is meant to be baked in a very large dish and carried to a family get together where it will be scarfed down at record speeds along with all the other offerings. Mine is the backbone of middle-class America. It’s great with laughs, for listening to Aunt Violet and Mom bicker good naturedly, for watching the big game, or for watching a two year old try to keep it on a fork. My version is completely and totally G-rated, and still a step above Kraft, but perhaps a little below trendy.