This weekend I was in a bit of a nesting mode after more than a week on the road. What could be more cozy, comforting, and nest-worthy than Mac and Cheese? Not much.
So, even though the #VegCookbookClub has moved on from Chloe's Kitchen, I knew there were still some recipes I wanted to try in it, and the Best-Ever Baked Macaroni and Cheese was on that list.
It's a simple recipe, really, requiring only ingredients I typically have on hand. In fact, if I hadn't had elbow macaroni on hand, I bet it would have cooked up nicely with rotini or penne for that matter. I don't know about you, but I always have vegan margarine, some milk alternative, nutritional yeast, lemons (for the juice) and agave on hand. Tomato paste might be the ingredient I'm mostly likely to have to acquire spcifically to make this, and I did use plain old Panko bread crumbs on top, instead of "seasoned" bread crumbs", but as you can see...these are not fancy ingredients for the vegan kitchen.
One of my favorite things about this cookbook was just that: Chloe uses pretty standard ingredients, but the recipes aren't SO simple that you're wondering why you needed a cookbook to tell you how to make something obvious like, oh, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a totally-made-up example.
One other great thing about this recipe is that the sauce portion of it is perfect for other uses. I could see whipping up that "cheese" sauce to serve with veggies or pasta or rice or to make nachos.
Here's the final product. It was very satisfying for both me and my omnivorous S.O. I may just have to make Mac Daddy from Veganomicon and do a taste-off on these two great Mac and Cheese recipes.
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