Overview
This is comfort food. I’ve never had the boxed stuff, so can’t make any comparisons there. For the cheese, I usually use whatever I have in the fridge or freezer – it’s often pizza cheese, which leads to hilarity as we try to eat the pasta with long tendrils of mozzarella stretching everywhere. Feeds 4 easily with leftovers – it’s as dense as anti-matter and does not photograph well.

There are many things that can get added to this, but here’s the basic starting point. Feel free to add spring onion, hot sauce, chilli powder, chopped frankfurters, a small tin of drained corn, extra cheese, parsley, some raw onion for crunch, toasted breadcrumbs… Just don’t add them all at once!

Time
30 minutes

Ingredients
½ packet of spiral macaroni
2 litres of milk
1 large onion, diced
6 bacon rashers, chopped
100-150g grated cheese (I prefer the pre-packaged 4-cheese melt, but usually end up using pizza topping)
1 can condensed chicken soup
1 TB mustard powder
super generous pinch of nutmeg

Method
1 – Boil the milk in a saucepan one size up from what you think you’ll need. Add the pasta and cook for about 10 minutes.

2 – Saute the bacon and onion in a generous clump of butter. Season with cracked pepper if you like (I like!!)

3 – Using a ladle, remove milk from the saucepan until the level is below the pasta.

4 – Add the bacon and onion mixture, cheese, tinned soup, mustard and nutmeg. Add any extra fixings if you like. Mix well and serve.