Nothing like comfort food for Christmas Eve.
Save the fancy stuff for Christmas Dinner, although a ham will go along with mac and cheese nicely. It's easy, you can make it ahead and throw it in the oven before or after trudging through the snow to the Candlelight Service.
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| Christmas Eve Mac & Cheese |
Actually, I make two batches--one stuffed with goodies and one plain macaroni and cheese for the purists.
Here's what makes mine good:
I dress up your standard macaroni and cheese with red and green special ingredients.
Ingredients:
Butter
Sliced mushrooms
Fresh or frozen peas (green)
1 lb polska kielbasa (red), sliced
Monterrey Jack cheese (grated)
Longhorn cheese (grated)
Variations:
red and green fresh peppers OR green jalapeno and red tomatoes
Method:
Pick a pasta. This year the festive batch has little curlicues. The smaller plain dish has shell macaroni. (You can get low carb macaroni if you are on Atkins.) Put the cooked macaroni in a 9 x 12" baking pan with half a stick of butter, which gives it the delicious crunchiness on the bottom when it bakes. Mix in your special ingredients along with shredded Monterrey Jack cheese (white), which gives the middle a nice cheesy texture. Pile a thick layer of shredded Longhorn or cheddar cheese on top, at least an inch thick.
Bake at 350 degrees until the top layer of cheese is crusty instead of melted, but don't wait until it burns. Also if you bake too long the peas will lose their festive color. For the undressed version, take it out before it gets crunch--purists tend to like it soft.
Hint: If you're worried folks will get hungry afterwards, feed them eggnog, cashews and cookies before bed and they will sleep until dawn.
Merry Christmas!