The winning recipe in our shop Mac and Cheese Competition.

Ingredients

Crunchy Topping

• 3/4 lb Sourdough bread, preferably a couple days old for dryness, crusts on or off

• Lidrivio Olive Oil

• 2/3 lb cured Chorizo, diced finely

• 1/3 lb finely grated Granaresu

• Black pepper

• 1/2 bunch parsley, finely chopped

• Freshly ground pepper
  

The Smacs

• 1 package (1.1 lbs) Benedetto Cavalieri Casarecci

• 8 oz Kaltbach le Cremeux, grated

• 6 oz Flory’s Truckle, grated

• 1 – 12 oz can evaporated milk

• A few dashes of Hillside Harvest Sun Kissed Tomato Hot Sauce

Note: For the crunchy topping, you can also start with Panko, which wasn’t allowed for our mac and cheese competition. Thus, I had to make my own, but this isn’t totally necessary.

Directions

1. Cut the sourdough into 1-inch cubes, and in two batches, add it to the food processor until the bread is the texture of breadcrumbs. Some pieces will be very small and some will be a bit larger, but I like the textural variation.

2. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large sauté pan (or two pans if you don’t have an abnormally large one) over medium-high heat. Dump in the breadcrumbs (or store bought Panko), and stir frequently to toast the breadcrumbs without burning them. You probably want to stir them every minute or so, so settle in with your favorite podcast - it’ll be worth it though, I promise! Stir until golden brown – although if some bits are more brown and some bits are less, it’s fine! Season with salt only if you really love salt because the cheese and chorizo should take care of it for those of you not salt OBSESSED. Put the breadcrumbs in a bowl.

3. Wipe out the pan, add the chorizo, turn heat to medium and stir it around until all the bits are crispy. Once they’re crispy, you’ll have lots of delicious fat that rendered out of the chorizo, and I recommend just tossing the toasted breadcrumbs right into that fat. If that scares you, you can drain some of it off.

4. Add the breadcrumbs to the pan with the chorizo. I know it seems like it’s not gonna fit, but if you started with a wicked big pan, it’ll fit. Keep the heat on medium-low and stir around the breadcrumbs with the chorizo until they are all mixed and the breadcrumbs are well coated.

5. Turn off the heat, dump in the finely grated Granaresu, and crack in a healthy amount of black pepper. Pour the mixture into a bowl, let it cool as long as you can stand (for me that was about 2 minutes) and add the chopped parsley. Taste for salt.

6. Onto the mac and cheese! It’s actually less work than the topping once you’ve grated everything. Add the casarecci pasta to a large sauté pan and juuust cover it with cold water. Yes, this sounds crazy, but I learned this from one of my favorite recipe writers Kenji Lopez-Alt so it’s legit. Turn on the heat to high and, stirring frequently (probably every minute again), let the water come to a boil. Once it comes to a boil, keep up that frequent stirring, and taste a piece of pasta at around 6 minutes. You’re looking for it to be just under al-dente. The pasta will be absorbing the water, so don’t be alarmed that the water level is going down.

7. Once the pasta is cooked and the water is almost all absorbed (there will still be water in the bottom of the pan) stir in the evaporated milk and bring it back up to a boil*. When it looks like the milk and pasta water are coating the pasta a bit, turn the heat down to low, add a few dashes of the hot sauce, and mix in the cheese. The cheese might look grainy, but don’t worry, it won’t taste grainy. Once the cheese is melted and you like the look of the texture of the sauce, turn off the heat, taste for spiciness and salt.

8. To serve, put a bowl of the crunchy topping on the table. Slop that beautiful mess of mac and cheese into bowls and tell your eaters to add as much of the crunchies as they like. If you have leftover topping, it is awesome on top of a fried egg, as croutons in salad, or sprinkled on a creamy asparagus soup.

*If you have to wait an hour before eating this like we did, I recommend keeping it saucier, meaning not allowing so much water to be absorbed by the pasta. I waited until about half the water was absorbed before I threw in the evaporated milk. My pasta was cooked enough by that point, but if yours isn’t, just add a bit more water when you add in the evaporated milk. It’s gonna look stupid saucy, but much of that sauciness will be absorbed by the time you get to it.