macaroni and cheese

I have been thinking about baked macaroni and cheese now for weeks.  I have put it off or come up with excuses: I don't have a casserole dish, I can't find a good recipe, my grocery store doesn't sell cheese chunks in a bag.  I invited Ian* over for dinner last night and he picked macaroni and cheese over a "meat dish."  This worked out to my advantage as I had everything I needed already in the apartment.  It was like I was getting a free dinner!
* He plays a reoccurring role in these recipe recaps, as my motivation for cooking something other than cereal or pasta with old sauce on it for myself when I am alone is admittedly low.

Just kidding.  It was like I was getting dinner in exchange for an hour of manual labor and confusion.  Who knew macaroni and cheese took so much effort?  Can't I just throw a box of pasta into a pot of boiling water and toss in some cheese and some milk?  Doesn't a box of this stuff cost like 79cents?  I had already made a cake earlier in the day (recipe forthcoming) which means that a significant portion of my Saturday was taken up by preparing food.  How do people do this on a daily basis?  WHY do people do this on a daily basis?

I was already feeling vulnerable after the cake-making adventure, but I bucked up and put on my confident face.  This is macaroni and cheese.  How hard can this recipe be?  I gave it a once-over and immediately threw out some of the ingredients.  Onions in my macaroni and cheese?  Do I look like my grandmother?  No, thank you.  A bay leaf?  Honey, I don't even know what that is.  Clearly unimportant.  "Panko" bread crumbs?  That sounds like "Italian-Seasoned Stop & Shop brand Bread Crumbs" to me.

I'm not going to lie, I had to look up what tempering an egg was and I also sort of doubled the recipe but not really.  I wanted to use an entire box of macaroni instead of half a box so I roughly doubled everything else.  Except for milk.  The original recipe called for 3 cups, but I only really had 2 cups left.  Okay, that's a lie.  I had three but I wanted to save some for my cereal in the morning.  I really just made most of this recipe up.

Baked Macaroni & Cheese
Adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything who adapted it from Alton Brown

• 1lb of dry macaroni
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 tablespoon powdered mustard
•  2 cups milk
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 2 large eggs
• 1 package shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• freshly grated Parmesan cheese, to taste. I used about 1 cup
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt 
• bread crumbs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large pot of boiling, extremely salted water cook the pasta to al dente.  Do not overcook it.  Drain pasta.
3. While the pasta is cooking, in a separate pot, melt the butter. Whisk in the flour and mustard and keep it moving for about five minutes.  Make sure it's free of lumps. Stir in the milk and paprika. Simmer for ten minutes.  The original recipe says that "it will thicken, trust me."  Mine didn't.  In fact, it turned a weird brown color and smelled kind of like burning.  I feel that perhaps the bay leaf would have played some importance here.
4. Temper in the egg - I warmed it in a separate frying pan.  I put a handful of cheese into the warm egg and mixed it up until it became gooey.  I then threw this into the pot of drained pasta and mixed.
5. Stir in 3/4 of the cheese into the pasta and mix well.
6. Pour brownish butter/milk/mustard mixture into the pasta and mix.
7. Put pasta into a casserole dish.  I used a 9inch glass pyrex dish.
8. Top the pasta with remaining cheese and sprinkle on desired amount of bread crumbs.
9. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and rest for five to ten minutes before serving.  
10. Send half of it home with your boyfriend so it doesn't look like you are going to eat 5 pounds of pasta and cheese by yourself.