Cheesy Penne Recipe

Now, it’s time to get started on my super side dish, it’s an adult version of macaroni and
cheese, Cheesy Penne pasta for four tonight.

So the way I want to get started with this is over salt your water. You want your water to
be like seawater from the ocean. So put a big giant handful of salt in there and maybe just
to be sure, another handful. That’s great. So now I have to go ahead and dump my pasta
in. I have one pound of penne pasta. And I promise I can’t seem to say the word penne
very well but my recipe is better than my Italian. And this is afresh pasta. It is -- I choose
fresh pasta because it’s eggier in flavor and it’s just a really fast great cooking ingredient.

And if you can’t find fresh pasta that’s totally fine. Just use the dried box kind and just
make sure that you adjust the cooking time. Uh, that’s hot, that’s good, that’s what I
want. Adjust the cooking time according to the box instructions. I know have a half-
pound of aged white sharp cheddar here. I like the English kind and it’ll grate about two
cups. This is so amazing in flavor. It’s already crumbling and that’s fine. Whole point of
this is just I want it to melt in my pot.

And now I need to make the base for my sauce. Just give me two teaspoons Dijon
mustard, we’re going to give this a big clunk. That looks good. This is going to provide
the most amazing tangy flavor, its kind of undertone of vinegar and a big nice spice kick,
and then one-half cup of whole milk. Now, this is just to give a sauce-based one and give
something for the Dijon to melt into so it can emulsify our sauce later. Emulsify means is
just bring the sauce together. So I just want to give that a little whisk so it all gets
incorporated and now I need to drain my pasta. This pasta cooks -- when it’s fresh like 46
minutes. That’s all it takes. And it is perfect.

That’s perfect.

Right back on the stove, leave it on I want to go and get my liquid in. This is the base of
my sauce, that Dijon and whole milk and that’s going to help my cheese breakdown. I’ll
go ahead and get my cheese in, leave a little chunk for me. Aged white cheddar is so
good. And then the very last thing I have to do is add some heavy cream. I need three-
fourths cup. And the reason I’m adding heavy cream as well as this milk and Dijon is
because it’s going to be the ingredient that makes everything melt and stay together. So
sometimes when you melt cheese that breaks apart this is the secret to keep that from
happening, give it a little extra fat in there.

So even though we salted our water we want to make sure we have some salt in our sauce
as well. But be a little bit lighter on the salt at this point because you’re cheese has a nice
salty tang to it and then heavy on my cracked black pepper. Cheesy Penne is so good. I
just know this will become your go to mac and cheese.