Onion Marmalade Macaroni Cheese

Comfort food. The descent into autumn and winter is a time of year I sense my spirits declining and my energy levels drop. It is over two years since we had a holiday abroad in the sunshine, so I can detect that I am really dreading another dark, grey cold winter. It is at times like these when comfort food becomes essential to keep us jolly.

Macaroni cheese is a dish that I ate a lot of as a child, but I avoided as an adult, simple because my recollections of it are that it was very bland. But when I was sorting through a stack of old Waitrose magazines, I found this recipe which had the twist of onion marmalade as part of the topping. I tried it out as a family dinner and we all loved the tanginess and extra oomph the onion marmalade supplied.

INGREDIENTS

360g dried macaroni
60g unsalted butter
70g plain flour
1 tsp mustard powder
900ml whole milk
350g extra mature cheddar, grated
100g Tracklements Original Onion Marmalade

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 220˚C, gas mark 7.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Add the macaroni and simmer for six minutes, until al dente. Drain then tip the cooked macaroni back into the pan.

Meanwhile, make the cheese sauce. Put the butter into a medium sized saucepan over a medium heat.

Once melted, add the flour and mustard powder, and then season and cook for two minutes, stirring constantly.

Pour in the milk a little at a time, stirring until smooth before adding a little more. This does take time, but if you are patient you should finish up with a smooth, creamy sauce.

Stir in around 230g of the cheese into the sauce, until melted, then pour it into the pan of drained macaroni. Mix until all the pasta is coated.

Tip the pasta and cheese sauce into a large, deep oven dish and spread evenly.

Dot the onion marmalade over the top of the pasta and then scatter over the remaining cheese. Bake for forty minutes until bubbling and golden on top. (I know the marmalade looks slightly burnt in the photo, but very soon in it’s baking it started to bubble away like lava! It was not at all burnt when it came to the eating.)

Do allow to cool a little before serving because that onion marmalade would damage the roof of your mouth if you are not careful.

As you can see from my photo, I served this with a green salad and some wedges of garlic bread which I think you need to make a proper dinner out of a simple pasta dish.

This is a recipe I may try again this winter. It is an easy supper and now I have discovered that onion marmalade brings new life to this classic dish, I have a new found appreciation for one of the most popular of comfort food dishes – macaroni cheese.