Italian-style baked macaroni and cheese with penne
Vincenzo's Plate · ♥ 9.8K likes · 351.3K views · 20 min video
Read about cheese in the BrightCulinary Book
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Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 1½ packet penne
- 1 glass full cream milk
- 100 g butter
- 100 g Taleggio
- 120 g buffalo mozzarella
- 130–140 g provolone
- 6 tbsp pecorino cheese
Cut the provolone into cubes for the top.
- water
- 1 tbsp sea salt
Fill a large pot with water, add 1 tablespoon sea salt, bring to a boil and cook the penne about 12 minutes, stirring so it does not stick; keep it al dente.
In the cast iron pan used for baking, melt the butter on low heat; add the milk and the Taleggio broken by hand and let it melt slowly on very low heat while the milk evaporates.
Melting Taleggio into butter and milk
- pasta water
Save a mug of starchy pasta water. Mix part of the pecorino with a little pasta water into a thick cream so it does not go stringy.
Pecorino cream with starchy pasta water
Add the drained al dente penne to the cheese in the pan with a little pasta water and mix gently on low heat.
Combining the pasta and cheeses
Transfer to a bowl, spread the pecorino cream over, break in the buffalo mozzarella, add a little pasta water and mix until creamy; toss the pasta to make it creamier.
Return to the pan, scatter pecorino and the provolone cubes generously over the top.
Bake at 180C for about 25 minutes until brown and crunchy; check early, as it browned in under 25 minutes.