A conceit of pasta

I hiked the Appalachian Trail last year.  Have I mentioned that?  Forgive me; it's just that I get so many speaking engagements these days that I can't remember who's heard what.

While hiking the AT, you fuel yourself by eating a lot of crap.  Junk I'd never eat in my normal life becomes staple cuisine while backpacking for months on end.  Daily Snickers, Pop-Tarts, peanut butter and Nutella straight from the jar, handfuls of M&Ms, entire pizzas, you get the idea.  One morning I got into a town in Virginia and found one of those Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins hybrid joints, and told them my plan for a new sundae: a banana split on a foundation of three donuts.  They didn't have a dish large enough for my creation, so I just ate the sundae with a side of three donuts.  For breakfast.  That's a normal thing.

During the hike, I learned that I still clung to one of the joys of childhood: mac and cheese.  I hadn't had it in ages, but I learned while hiking exactly how much water to use to cook the noodles so that I didn't have to drain anything, and the leftover moisture made the cheese sauce for me.  Some nights, I'd add chopped summer sausage or torn bits of beef jerky, if I had them, and sometimes I'd stir in some peanut butter, and was always disappointed that I couldn't taste it.  Don't look at me like that.  Peanut butter and cheese WORK together!! (see: Quinn)

Even after the trail, I found that I sometimes craved macaroni, and usually I just wanted that powdered-plastic cardboard box variety I'd eaten on the trail (prefereably in one of the exciting new flavors available that summer.  I'm still sad that I never got to try Three Cheese Jalapeno), but occasionally I'd grow the hell up and decide that if I were going to have mac and cheese, I should put more than seven and a half minutes of effort into it and bake the stuff, with some veggies and other tasty things.

One night on the trail, a few hikers were gathered... somewhere.  I honestly don't remember now whether it was a campsite, shelter, hostel, or even if it was really nighttime.  It might have been the middle of the afternoon.  Point is, we were talking about food, because backpackers always talk about food.  We obsess over it.  We fantasize about it.  We sometimes express our fondness for food by suggesting the performance of really inappropriate acts with it.  Well.  I say "we," but in my experience, it was only that one guy.  Still, the rest of us knew what he meant.  Moving on.  We started talking about macaroni.  I admitted that I craved it, and tried to have it about once a week during the thru-hike, but usually didn't manage that frequency. I also mentioned that I'd tried a couple baked macaroni recipes at home, but hadn't really found one that I liked.  One of the other hikers told me that he liked to layer it in a baking dish like lasagna, with intervening layers of mushrooms, onions, peppers, or bacon.  It sounded amazing.  For the rest of the trip, I couldn't think of macaroni without thinking of it layered with sausage and mushrooms.

When I finished the hike and started cooking in a real kitchen again, I remembered the layered macaroni.  Then I made lasagna, gave it some thought, and decided that I couldn't layer it deeply enough to satisfy my whims, because macaroni noodles take up a lot of space, and my 9x13 isn't deep enough to hold many such layers.

So I did this instead.

Macaryan and Cheese (see what I did there?)

16 oz macaroni (or some other pasta shape.  I don't care.)
good-sized bunch of fresh spinach.  A handful? I guess?
olive oil.  Just a tablespoon.  Two, tops.  We just need it to keep the spinach from sticking to the pan.
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 C red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 C chopped onion
1/2 C butter (that's a stick, unless you buy weird butter.  Or, I guess, weird sticks?)
8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
4 oz can sliced black olives
1/2 C flour
1 T ground mustard (the dry powder stuff)
1/2 T lemon pepper
1 t pepper
3/4 t salt
12 oz (about 3 C) shredded Monterey Jack
2 C milk

• Boil some water.  Cook the macaroni.  While you're at it, get that oven preheating to 350F.
• While your water comes to a boil and your macaroni cooks, get started on the rest of this stuff.  Start by heating the oil in a skillet with the garlic.  Add the spinach, stir to coat, and cover over low heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the green stuff is all wilty.  Move the spinach and garlic to a plate.  We're going to keep using the skillet and oil.  I'm a big damn fan of my Lodge combo cooker, so I used that, and when it came time to bake, I didn't even need another dish.  Which is good, because I'm super lazy, and it meant fewer dishes to wash later.
• Add the butter and the rest of the veggies to the skillet.  Cook them.
• Add the flour, mustard, and seasonings to the skillet.  Keep stirring.  The butter and flour will form a roux, which helps to thicken the sauce.  Toss in the cheese and milk, then remove from heat.
• By now your pasta should be done.  Drain it, and stir it in to the cheese mixture with the spinach.  If you're using a separate baking dish, make the transfer now.  If you're lazy like me, use that time to do a little dance.
• Stick the whole mess in the oven for 40 minutes.  The Chief Taster thinks crumb toppings should be applied whenever possible, so I added that for the last fifteen minutes of baking.  If you want a crumb topping, melt 2 T butter, and mix in 2/3 C crumbs (I bought a carton of panko for the occasion) and 1/3 C parmesan (because why wouldn't I want more cheese?), and apply as directed above.

This version just happened to be vegetarian, but I think it would be good with some ground sausage or cubed ham.