Good morning! How do you like your mac and cheese? Soft and gooey, with a nutty flavor and supple texture? Or do you like yours firmer, with a baked-on, crunchy breadcrumb topping? Genevieve Ko brings these two worlds together in her new recipe for creamy mac and cheese with buttered crumbs. And like Genevieve herself, it’s just brilliant. The recipe is part of our Cooking 101 series, in which we go deep into the how and why of classic recipes and common ingredients. For her mac and cheese, Genevieve first looked into the history of this distinctly American dish, and then came up with strategies for making it the best it can be.
The perfect mac and cheese? Ko would know.Her smart approach is to keep the cheese sauce thin and light so it doesn’t thicken too much around the noodles. And instead of baking the dish, casserole-style, she sprinkles it with buttered panko and then runs it under the broiler for just long enough for the top to turn golden and crisp. The result: silky sauced macaroni beneath crackling, salty crumbs. Perfection. View this recipe: Creamy mac and cheese with buttered crumbs Watch: How to make the silkiest mac and cheese
Recipes for your weekHere are five more fantastic recipes from Genevieve, including her wildly good dan dan noodles and a lovely roast chicken for one. For a limited time, you can enjoy free access to the recipes in this newsletter in our app. Download it on your iOS or Android device and create a free account to get started. Reading and eatingWriting about mac and cheese made me think of John Thorne’s wonderful book “Simple Cooking.” It’s a collection of essays and recipes gathered from his cooking newsletter, which he started in 1983 — back when newsletters were printed on paper and sent out in the mail. His macaroni and cheese was one of the first I’d ever made that wasn’t out of a box. After lamenting the vulgarization of the dish that characterized popular recipes of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, with their “canned cream of celery soup or a dollop of port wine cheese spread,” he writes that real macaroni and cheese is unkempt and rebellious in its copious use of sharp Cheddar cheese (one pound of cheese to half a pound of macaroni). The real recipe, he writes, “lives a life of exile in its own country … biding its time in the few homes willing to grant it sanctuary, awaiting the counterrevolution.” And Thorne’s essays helped bring that about. What are you reading? Let me know at hellomelissa@nytimes.com. I’m always looking for my next great read. See you tomorrow! Melissa Clark has been writing about food for The New York Times since 1997 and is the author of 46 cookbooks. Her latest is “The Big Book of Dinner,” coming in November. You can reach her at hellomelissa@nytimes.com. Editors: Mia Leimkuhler and Li Goldstein. Host photo by Melanie Dunea. For help with your New York Times Cooking subscription, please email cookingcare@nytimes.com. Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for our New York Times Cooking newsletter here.
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