Ellen Brown - Mac & Cheese: More than 80 Classic and Creative Versions of the Ultimate Comfort Food

Copyright 2012 by Ellen Brown

Photographs 2012 Steve Legato

Published by Running Press,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930287

E-book ISBN 978-0-7624-4683-4

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Cover and interior design by Amanda Richmond

Edited by Kristen Green Wiewora

Food Styling by Ricardo Jattan

Prop Styling by Mariellen Melker and Amanda Richmond

Typography: Verlag, Archer, Strangelove and HT Gelateria

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The love and support of a wonderful family is even more comforting than a bowl of mac and cheese.

This book is dedicated to Nancy and Walter Dubler; Ariela Dubler, Jesse Furman, and Ilan, Mira, and Lev Dubler-Furman; Lisa Cerami, Josh Dubler, and Zahir Cerami; and David Krimm and Peter Bradley.

W hile testing recipes and writing a cookbook is a solitary venture, transforming it into a tangible object to hold in your hands is always a group effort. My thanks go:

To all the talented chefs around the country who devised some truly delicious renditions of mac and cheese, and were willing to share their recipes.

To the many members of my vintage grapevine of food professionals who tipped me off to some of these chefs whose dishes I didnt know, with a special thanks to John Mariani, my dear friend and the best restaurant resource in the country, and to Christine Chronis, with whom Ive swapped food lore and recipes for decades.

To Kristen Green Wiewora, who is a national treasure in her role as my editor at Running Press.

To Amanda Richmond, the talented designer at Running Press who made these photos so dramatic and enticing, and whose design makes this book a delight to hold.

To Steve Legato, as good-natured as he is talented as a food photographer.

To Ricardo Jattan, the food stylist who made all these dishes stunning, and to Curtiss Bazemore, who assisted him and never complained about another trip to the market for more cream and butter.

To Mariellen Melker for finding all the wonderful props used in these photos.

To Ed Claflin, my agent, for his constant support, encouragement, and humor.

To my many friends who critiqued my work as they wondered if they would ever eat a dish in my house again that wasnt mac and cheese, including Constance Brown, Kenn Speiser, Fox Wetle, Richard Besdine, Vicki Veh, Joe Chazan, Kim Montour, Nick Brown, Karen Davidson, and Bruce Tillinghast.

And to Patches and Rufous, my wonderful feline companions, who kept me company from their perches in the office and always hoped that a few crumbs of cheese would fall on the kitchen floor.

B ack in the summer of 2011 when Hurricane Irene was barreling up the East Coast from the Carolinas to Maine, the United States Coast Guard posted a document online titled 72 Hour Suggested Hurricane Supply List. At its core were sensible foods packed with nutrition that needed neither cooking nor refrigeration. But after the dried fruits, cans of fish, and granola bars there was a category called comfort/stress foods. Some examples in this section were cookies and sweetened cereals.

Although those two foods are hardly what pop into my head, what struck me was the recognitioneven by a buttoned-down government entitythat food is far more than the fuel to power our bodies with vitamins and minerals. It nourishes our emotions, too.

And one of the most comforting foods, for physiological and psychological reasons, is mac and cheese. It shows up on every poll of comfort foods, and was selected twice in a row by The Food Network as the Comfort Food of the Year. If you look at the categories of foods in magazines year-end Best of issues, youll often spot mac and cheese on the list.

Comfort foods protect us from a threatening world. Their appeal is based on nostalgia, and the time of our childhood when life was far simpler than it is today. My memories of mac and cheese are of a homemade dish. It never came from a box, although the Kraft blue box had been on supermarket shelves for a decade by the time I was born. But the mac and cheese wasnt made with the imported Cheddar and Gruyre that fill my refrigerator today, either. It was made with Velveeta. Back then Velveeta, albeit a color and texture that never existed in nature, was the gold standard for mac and cheese, and for grilled cheese sandwichesanother great comfort food.

Real cheeses like Swiss and Muenster were reserved for sandwiches on crusty rye bread from the bakery, not Pepperidge Farm white. Velveeta was also comforting because it was known, and because it made mac and cheese soft.

Our sense of taste actually comes to the party late in our reactions to eating and food. First we eat with our eyes, and then the sense of smell enters into the equation. Our muscles prefer foods that dont make them work very hard, which is why soft foods like mac and cheese, meatloaf, and mashed potatoes get high marks.

The brain kicks into the reaction shortly thereafter. Sugar and starch produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter that increases the sense of happiness. Replicating its effect is what makes antidepressants like Prozac work. Salty foods like potato chips make the brain release oxytocin, a hormone also triggered by sexual satisfaction.

While these are physiological responses to food, the brain also generates our concomitant emotional responses. Certain foods, especially those eaten in childhood, have specific memories associated with them. There was the chocolate pudding that you had on Sunday afternoons at your grandmothers house, the snow cones at the county fair in the summer, and cookies with lots of frosting at Christmas. These connections also explain why foods we logically know to be inferior in nutritional value, like Hostess Twinkies, remain on the market decades after real bakeries have popped up all over the country. And why everyone has a personal definition of what side dishes are appropriate for Thanksgiving dinner.

While our attitudes to categories of food are hardwired into our brains, our attitudes about specific ingredients do change with time and with experience eating a panoply of different foods. While I will always love mac and cheese, no longer can it be made with Velveeta. My palate is too far advanced now.