Lobster Macaroni Cheese

I wasn’t planning to share this, as I just used Jamie Oliver’s recipe from his new Comfort Food collection, with none of my own tweaks or touches. But for three reasons I decided to say something about it…

1. It’s delicious! It damn well should be, being easily the most expensive mac and cheese dish I have ever made, or ever will, but still – it’s delicious! And I think more people should know about it and treat themselves.
2. My diners agreed about the deliciousness thing – one came back for seconds, four times! – and asked me to write about it.
3. I photographed the dish against a black and white gingham tablecloth which rendered extracting the foreground image several miles beyond the farthest limits of my photoshop skills. Enter Vern, my genius photographer friend from Singapore. He worked his magic, but claims it nearly sent him blind, so I wanted to share to thank him for his help and the sacrifice of his dear departed eyesight.

Jamie hasn’t made the recipe available online yet, he clearly wants you to buy the book. If that changes I’ll post an update. So for now no recipe, just a description. Essentially it’s about pimping your cheese sauce – make this with equal parts gruyere, cheddar and parmesan, sauteing an onion in butter at the start of your roux, and enrich with a couple of anchovies, some white burgundy, mustard, cayenne pepper, and of course the meat of the lobster. Mix the sauce with cooked pasta, top with breadcrumbs, garnish with the head and tail shells, and finish in the oven.

You won’t want this every day, and unless you’re an oligarch with a couple of football clubs and a a few hundred metres of yacht, the housekeeping probably wouldn’t stretch to that, but once in a while we all deserve a little indulgence. And it doesn’t get much more indulgent than this.

#ComfortFood