Love those leftovers!

Last week I made macaroni and cheese for the friends I'm staying with at the moment, and served it with oven-roasted tomatoes, peppers and garlic. I made enough of the cheese sauce (approximate recipe below) for a 2-serving meal later in the week also.

A couple of days later, I made a lentil stew with Mediterranean herbs, and served it with flatbreads (I keep these in the freezer and just take out one or two as needed, toasting them in the oven), hummus, celery and slow-roasted onions. My friend brought round some delicious marinated lamb from Trader Joe's.

The resulting concoction:
At the end of the week, this is what I did (and it was DELICIOUS): in an oven-proof dish, I put the cooked lamb (cut into little pieces) and poured the remaining lentil stew (around 1-2 cups) over the top. I cooked up some (again, a cup or two) macaroni until al dente, mixed it with the 1 cup of cheese sauce left over, spread this over the lentil+lamb mixture, then sprinkled some cheese over the top and baked it for ~20mins at ~350F.

Oven-baked MACARONI AND CHEESE
(fairly approximate - I have made this so many times I never use a recipe any more)

Cheese sauce: melt 2tbsp butter in a saucepan over a low heat. Add 2-4tbsp all-purpose flour and mix well. It will be quite solid but still goopy enough to bubble and fry at the edges of each lump. After 2-3 minutes, turn down the heat and add 1/4cup milk (NOT skim - the texture of the sauce is weird and horrible and gritty if you do this), stirring constantly, using a wooden spoon or spatula to smear out the lumps and mix everything into a consistently smooth sauce. Add another 1/4 cup milk and do the same thing. Repeat until you've added a total 2 cups milk, then turn the heat up to medium, stirring constantly (well, at least every 30 seconds) with a whisk or spatula to prevent lumps forming (or worse, burning to the bottom of the pan) until it thickens to the consistency of melted ice cream. This is called the roux method of making a sauce: cooking the flour in butter then adding some liquid and heating it until it thickens. At this stage it is called a white sauce (in England), similar to a Bechamel sauce. I add a 1/4tsp Dijon mustard and 1 cup grated full-flavored cheese (e.g. sharp cheddar, or one of the hard Parmesan-type cheeses (Romano, Grana Padano, Parmiggiano Reggiano etc)), a pinch of salt, and stir well. Remove the pan from the heat. Don't worry about stray lumps of cheese, they'll melt in of their own accord. You can freeze or refrigerate any of the sauce at this point, if you want to make it in advance.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 380-400F, boil a pan of water and cook the macaroni according to instructions on the packet, to the point where it's al dente (i.e. not so hard it leaves funny chewy bits in your teeth, but still quite firm). The best way to do this is to keep trying pieces of the pasta after about 5 minutes in the pan.

Drain the pasta well, and tip into a large oven-proof dish. Mix in a generous amount of the sauce, and sprinkle grated cheese over the top. Some people like 1-2tsp breadcrumbs too. Bake for approximately 20mins (if everything is warm, ~30mins if the sauce/cooked pasta is cold to start off with), then put under the broiler for 2-3mins, checking constantly to make sure it isn't burning or catching fire.

Serve with leafy salad and roasted red vegetables (a wonderfully intense complement to the rich creaminess of the mac+cheese).