Pumpkin Macaroni & Cheese with Bacon

ToxicFrog here! Originally we were thinking I might do a guest post someday when making a dish I'm familiar with -- cheeseburger pie, say, or spaghetti alla carbonara -- but today the baby was being full of spiders, and symbol asked if I'd make the dish she'd already picked out for today and then guest blog about it.

This is another recipe from Spache the Spatula. It is clearly a distant relative of the much plainer cheese sauce I grew up with, but the addition of bacon and pumpkin transforms it dramatically.

Now that we've tasted it, symbol and I are in agreement that it lacks a certain punchiness; she suggests adding tomato and garlic next time, both of which I'm in agreement with. I wonder if it could do with a certain heat as well, via the addition of cayenne or even mustard, but I'm not sure how well those would coexist with the pumpkin. Symbol suggests that Madras curry powder would be extremely harmonious with the pumpkin (and that the mustard would, as I suspected, be a poor addition).

The recipe as I prepared it is below. I made some substitutions, which are described in footnotes, and some changes in cooking order to make it easier to manage.

Ingredients

• 6 slices bacon¹
• 450g small pasta²
• 1 C pumpkin puree
• 2 C coconut milk³
• ¼ tsp, heaped, of ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 100g extra old cheddar, grated⁴
• 50g emmentaler, grated⁴
• 1 tbsp butter
• 3 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp dried parsley⁵
• a pinch of majoram⁵

• For the topping:

• ⅓ C panko breadcrumbs
• ⅓ C freshly grated parmesan⁶
• 1 tbsp dried parsley⁵
• a pinch of majoram⁵

Instructions

1. Put the cheese in a bowl and toss with the lemon juice; set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine the coconut milk, pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Meanwhile, in a large saucepan, cook the bacon until crisp. Place on a paper-towel-lined plate to drain. Drain and reserve the bacon grease.
4. Return 2 tbsp of the bacon grease to the large saucepan, and add 1 tbsp of butter. Melt the butter over medium heat, then whisk in the flour and cook for a few minutes until it forms a thick, golden-brown roux.
5. Stir in the pumpkin and coconut milk mixture and simmer, stirring.
6. Meanwhile, begin cooking the pasta. You can start this process earlier if you like; I waited until this point so I could re-use the pot I used for the pumpkin.
7. Once the pumpkin mixture has blended with the roux, after a few minutes of simmering (and thickened even further in doing so), stir in the cheese and let it melt, then add the parsley and crumble four of the bacon slices into it. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
8. As soon as the pasta is cooked al dente, drain it and add it to the sauce. Mix thoroughly.
9. Pour the pasta into an oven safe baking dish.
10. In a bowl, combine the panko, 1 tbsp of the bacon fat⁷, the rest of the parsley, and the parmesan. Sprinkle evenly over the pasta in the baking dish.
11. Broil until the breadcrumbs are brown and crispy.
12. Crumble the remaining two bacon slices over it and serve.

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¹ The original calls for 4 here, but we really like bacon. ↩
² I used radiatori here. The original calls for fusilli, but I think most small pastas, including shells and macaroni, would work. ↩
³ The original calls for milk. Coconut milk has the advantage of being lactose free (I'm lactose intolerant, and we were out of lactose free milk). We generally have a few tins on hand for curries, but coconut milk and cream can be substituted for the cow equivalents in surprisingly many recipes. This turned out really well and we'll probably keep making it with coconut milk in the future even once we've restocked on cow's milk; it goes nicely with the pumpkin. ↩
⁴ The original recipe calls for 50g each of mild and sharp cheddar, and 50g gouda. The "extra old" cheddar here is 2 years, which is probably what is meant by "sharp", but we don't keep milder cheddars (or any sort of gouda) on hand. The emmentaler was a happy accident -- we don't normally keep that on hand either, but had just about the right amount left over from earlier cheese-eating. When next we do this we might use the smoked gouda but would probably still omit the mild cheddar in favour of more robust cheeses. ↩
⁵ The original calls for fresh sage, but we had no fresh herbs on hand. Dried parsley we have in abundance and while it doesn't add a lot to the dish, it's an innofensive and reliable addition. The pinch of majoram adds a bit more personality. ↩
⁶ This is entirely absent from the original recipe but is a delicious addition to the crust. Finely grate it from a wedge of parmesan; if you can't get your hands on a wedge and have to use pre-grated "parmesan", omit it entirely -- the results won't be pleasant. ↩
⁷ In the original recipe a tablespoon of melted butter is used here, but there's so much bacon grease left it seems a shame to waste it. ↩