Recipe by Jodie Smith

Truffle Mac and Cheese

Name: Truffle Mac and Cheese
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 6

Serves6 people

Prep15 min

Cook35 min

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Borgo de Medici Truffle Condiments

$34.95

Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.

A baked macaroni cheese seasoned with black truffle salt in the sauce, finished with truffle oil off the heat, and topped with crushed truffle chips instead of breadcrumbs. Serves 6. Prep 15 minutes, cook 35.

Ingredients

Serves 6 as a main, 8 as a side. Prep 15 minutes, cook 35. The pasta, butter, flour, milk and cheese are a supermarket shop. The truffle salt, the oil and the chips are the three things that make it worth doing.

For the pasta
300g	dried macaroni, or Good Hair Day Fusilli Napoletani for a shape that traps more sauce
	salt, for the water
For the sauce
50g	butter
50g	plain flour
700ml	full-cream milk, warmed
1 tsp	Borgo de Medici black truffle salt, plus more to taste
1 tsp	TRCC Spitfire Hot English Mustard
200g	mature cheddar, coarsely grated
60g	parmesan, finely grated
	black pepper
For the top
1 x 150g	canister Hunter's Gourmet Black Truffle & Parmesan chips, crushed coarse
20g	parmesan, finely grated
To finish, off the heat
2 tsp	Borgo de Medici truffle flavoured olive oil

How much truffle, and where each part goes

One teaspoon of the truffle salt in the sauce and two teaspoons of the oil over the top is right for six serves. Because the salt is almost entirely salt, it replaces your seasoning rather than adding to it, so taste the sauce before you reach for anything else. Both jars keep well: the salt indefinitely in a dry cupboard, the oil for about six months in a dark one, away from the stove. The rest of the Borgo de Medici range sits with the other truffle products.

Truffle goes in at the end, not the beginning

The Borgo de Medici truffle condiments box holds two things that behave completely differently in a hot dish. One is a 130g Italian salt flavoured with black truffle, which is 99.7 per cent salt, so it can go into the sauce and season it the way any salt would. The other is a 100ml condiment made with extra virgin olive oil and truffle flavour, and that one must not be cooked. Truffle aroma is volatile: hold it at 180C for half an hour and most of what you paid for leaves through the oven vent. The oil goes over the dish after it comes out, in the two minutes before it reaches the table, and the difference between doing that and stirring it into the sauce is the difference between a truffle mac and a very good ordinary one.

The crumb is a canister of crisps

Panko needs butter, salt and something to make it interesting. Hunter's Gourmet black truffle and parmesan chips arrive already fried, already salted and already truffled, so crushing a canister with a rolling pin gives you a seasoned, fatty crumb that browns in ten minutes and holds its crunch under a cheese sauce far better than breadcrumbs do. It is the same trick behind our truffle chip crumbed chicken, and the case for keeping a canister in the cupboard is made in truffle chips on the grazing table.

Method

Heat the oven to 200C, or 180C fan-forced. Butter a 2 litre baking dish.
Boil the pasta in well salted water for 2 minutes less than the packet says. It finishes cooking in the oven, and pasta boiled to the packet time turns to mush under a sauce.
Drain it, keep a cup of the water, and rinse the pasta briefly under cold water to stop it cooking. Set it aside.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook the paste for 2 minutes, stirring constantly, until it smells biscuity rather than of raw flour.
Add the warm milk a third at a time, whisking each addition smooth before the next goes in. Lumps come from adding cold milk too fast, and nothing else.
Simmer gently for 5 minutes, whisking often, until the sauce coats the back of a spoon.
Take the pan off the heat. Stir in the truffle salt, the mustard, the cheddar and the 60g of parmesan until the cheese has melted. Off the heat matters: boiled cheese sauce goes stringy and oily.
Taste. Add black pepper, and more truffle salt only if it needs it. Fold the pasta through, loosening with a splash of the reserved pasta water if the sauce has tightened.
Tip it into the dish. Crush the chips in the bag or under a rolling pin to a coarse rubble, not a powder, and scatter them over with the last 20g of parmesan.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is deep gold and the sauce is bubbling up at the edges.
Rest it for 5 minutes, then drizzle the truffle oil over the top in a thin zigzag and take it straight to the table.

Make ahead, and the rest of the box

Assemble the whole dish up to a day ahead, without the crumb, and keep it covered in the fridge. Add the chips just before it goes in and give it an extra 10 minutes from cold. Unbaked, it freezes for a month: thaw overnight in the fridge, crumb it, and bake as normal. Baked leftovers keep three days and reheat best covered with foil at 180C for 15 minutes with a splash of milk stirred through first, because the pasta keeps drinking the sauce overnight.

The oil is the half of the box that runs out first, and it is worth spending on things that need no cooking. Over hot Good Hair Day tricolore spaghetti with nothing but parmesan and pepper. Over scrambled eggs at the last second. Over a warm potato at lunch. Belazu truffle and artichoke pesto covers the same flavour from the other direction and is the base of our truffle and artichoke stuffed mushrooms.

Common questions

How much truffle do you put in mac and cheese?

For six serves, a teaspoon of truffle salt through the sauce and two teaspoons of truffle oil over the finished dish. Truffle is a background note that works by suggestion, and the most common mistake is doubling it, which makes the dish taste of the flavouring rather than of cheese. Add the oil in a thin drizzle, taste a forkful, and add a little more only if you genuinely cannot find it.

Can mac and cheese be assembled ahead and baked later?

Yes, up to 24 hours ahead. Cook the pasta 2 minutes short, mix it with the sauce, and refrigerate it in the baking dish covered. The sauce thickens overnight, so stir 100ml of milk through before baking and add the crumb topping at the last minute so it stays crisp. From cold it needs 30 to 35 minutes at 200C instead of 20 to 25.

What pasta shape holds cheese sauce best?

Short shapes with a hollow or a spiral. Macaroni is the classic because the tube fills with sauce, and rigatoni, conchiglie and fusilli all do the same job or better, since the ridges give the sauce something to hold on to. Long strands are the wrong choice for a baked dish: sauce slides off them and pools at the bottom of the dish. Whatever the shape, boil it two minutes short of the packet time.

The truffle condiments, the chips and the pasta sit across our truffle products and pasta and risottos ranges, and they all turn up again in festive entertaining essentials. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.