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macaroni pudding

Macaroni Pudding

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macaroni pudding

I had such fun last week doing the Rennie Challenge and reading about 1950s food that I ended up doing another recipe to go with it. I was sure I remembered seeing tins of Ambrosia macaroni pudding when I was a kid, along with sago and rice pudding.

However I haven’t seen it for years so was starting to think I must have imagined it when I saw a recipe for macaroni pudding in one of the post war cookbooks I looked at recently.

It might sound strange to us now, but it’s basically a sweet pasta dish. Instead of bechamel sauce as in a macaroni cheese, you cook macaroni with eggs and milk and sugar like an old fashioned milk pudding.

My instinctive love of milk puddings such as good old tapioca swayed me over the fear that if they don’t sell it anymore it might not be that nice and I decided to make one. After all, I’m pretty bloody sure they don’t sell tinned macaroni cheese anymore either.

I found several recipes for making the pudding and decided to bring them up to date for the modern era in both flavour and cooking time. Mrs Beeton suggested boiling the macaroni for 45 minutes and then baking it for another 30. I’m not sure if anyone told her macaroni wasn’t actually alive.

I’d been discussing butterscotch pudding on Twitter recently which put me in the mind to make my own butterscotch sauce for this and drizzle it over it at the end, but the recipe I followed went hideously wrong so I went with the dulce de leche I had in the fridge instead.

Don’t be tempted not to cook the macaroni at all before cooking assuming it’ll work like a pasta bake and save the tiny hassle of a saucepan of water. The world will repay your laziness with a burned dish of carbohydrate you have to chisel clean. Trust me here. I learned the hard way.

Dulce de Leche Macaroni Pudding (serves 4 to 6)

  • 250g dried macaroni
  • 1 x 410g tin evaporated milk
  • 100ml milk
  • 75 g dulce de leche
  • 15 g butter
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons golden caster sugar

Boil the macaroni in a pan of water for about 7 minutes. Drain and run some cold water over it to stop it sticking.

Put the evaporated and fresh milk in the pan you just used to cook the pasta and gently bring to the boil, adding the dulce de leche and butter so they both melt. Add the salt and the vanilla extract and take off the heat.

Add the cooked macaroni and mix well, allowing it to cool for 5 minutes and then beat in the two eggs and pour the whole mixture in an ovenproof dish. Bake in the oven at 150℃ for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes sprinkle the two tablespoons of sugar over the top and turn the oven up to 200℃ for 15 minutes to give the top a lovely golden caramelly finish.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes and then serve warm. I was convinced I’d find sweet pasta strange when I went to eat it and I didn’t at all. I loved the texture of the macaroni with the chewy sugary edges and the sweet custard.

It was perfect on a cold evening after dinner

 

Radio Days

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plate-&-stuff

Here at North/South Food we’ve been blogging since 2010, and more than anything else it’s been a fun way for us as brother and sister to share a common interest, background and communicate when we live hundreds of miles apart. It means we talk about more than just what we had for our tea when we chat on the phone.

But almost by accident, I certainly discovered another side to blogging. It taught me to be more creative about eating on a budget. This happened naturally. I have only ever had a small budget to cook and eat from due to my circumstances. So as we both developed and honed our skills in writing and social media and photography, I definitely expanded my budget horizons while we blogged.

I just never thought to mention it. While I love other frugal blogs and check them regularly, my own lack of money seemed irrelevant. Everyone has a budget after all: some people’s are just smaller. In fact although Mister North has a larger budget than me, he’s a careful shopper, knows his prices and the value of things and neither of us are are excessive financially when cooking. It didn’t seem that important to highlight this.

And to a certain extent it isn’t. Good food is good food. We cooked and blogged and people enjoyed it both in person and online. No one ever noticed the price of things. But when I realised I’d developed good skills for budget food and then heard people like me doing their best being criticised for it, I accidentally ‘outed’ myself by writing a piece of what challenges living on a budget can cause.

We couldn’t have foreseen the response. No one was sniffy or judgemental, and we realised there’s a massive appetite for frugal food that allows for some pleasures, and builds on skills and ideas. It’s been an honour to be asked to write for the Observer Food Monthly, to be interviewed for the Radio 4 Food Programme, and a privilege to meet and talk to others also eating well on a budget.

In many ways I can’t knock the tone of things like Delia’s Frugal Food (I bought my mum a copy for Mother’s Day when I was about 8, not knowing what frugal meant…) but I don’t love the tone of parsimony that accompanies them. Having a small budget is not a failing, and it shouldn’t be a punishment.

My budget is £15-20 per week, including store cupboard essentials. I’ve got a wee bit of wiggle room – because food is my hobby – and sometimes I buy stuff for fun so I might spend £25 one week and £15 the next. I’ve learned to adapt to seasonality and to plan without being so rigid I can’t trust my instincts. This flexibility is how I not only cope, but genuinely enjoy budgeting week in, week out, for the last 13 years.

I’ll happily eat boiled rice and veggies a couple of nights a week so I can bake something occasionally. But then I’m only catering to myself and that’s a luxury in itself. Mister North cooks for two and that enhances my skills by teaching me to cook big sometimes. This isn’t a blog necessarily aimed at feeding a family, but I think we’ve proved useful for helping singles and couples how to enjoy food in a world often aimed at families of four.

It isn’t solely about budget for us. You’ll see a few items in here that don’t scream counting the pennies; except when you look more closely, they might be from a market, farm shop, friend or other place that offers a different type of value to the ‘Big 4’ supermarkets. Mister North has a bit more money, but less time than me, and he lives in a more rural environment so has access to different sources than I do. However we both feel it’s important that the north/south aspect of our blog covers all the places you can shop because budgeting is not one size fits all. It’s finding what works for your circumstances.

My circumstances are that food is more than just fuel. It is often my friend and companion as well. My health is poor and especially at times of relapse or flare up, days blur and food punctuates that. Making something to eat can be my big achievement for the day or the week and my only pleasure. It can help or hinder me depending what I eat and I try to keep my recipes relevant to that, but not be the dominant factor in either my life or my cooking.

When you dip into the blog, you’ll find recipes that make you hungry, tips to try, skills to be built on and a connection to food that entertains you. There are no prices per portion, no talk of cost per se; more just a selection of love letters to food and all the aspects that make up eating, drinking, cooking and shopping… along with lovely helpful comments from our readers. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!