Green Tomato Macaroni and Cheese

Name: Green Tomato Macaroni and Cheese
Yield: serves 8
Ingredients: 1 pound cavatappi (a curly macaroni) or your choice of pasta; 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter; 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour; 4 cups hot whole milk; 2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce; 1 tablespoon dry mustard; 1 teaspoon kosher salt; 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper; 2 cups shredded chipotle Cheddar cheese (preferably Cabot), about 8 ounces; 3 cups shredded extra-sharp Cheddar cheese (about 12 ounces); 3 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese (about 12 ounces); 10 green tomatoes (4 to 5 pounds), cored and thinly sliced; 2 cups sourdough breadcrumbs (see Tip below)

December 14, 2011

Cowboy nicknames for their cattle-drive cooks—biscuit shooter, dough puncher, and dough belly—suggest how important sourdough biscuits were to hungry, range-riding wranglers. No self-respecting chuck wagon cook traveled without a dough keg for his prized sourdough starter, the fermented yeast needed to make sourdough biscuits. I covered this macaroni and cheese with a generous blanket of buttered sourdough breadcrumbs in honor of chuck wagon cooks of the past. The rest has little to do with old-time chuck wagon cooking, but I don’t know a modern cowboy or anyone else who would turn down a bubbling pan of freshly baked mac and cheese.

Recipe notes

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