I have a secret shame.

I love macaroni and cheese from the blue box.

Okay, nowadays I prefer the blue box that says “Deluxe” to the original Cheese and Macaroni, but nonetheless, I truly enjoy elbows or shells coated in a processed cheese sauce.

Velveeta Shells and Cheese, Kraft Deluxe, Annie’s -- it doesn’t matter which. As long as it comes with a packet of cheesy goo, it’s okay with me!

Although, come to think of it, the boxes with powder have their merits, too. When the grocery budget has dwindled, those 50-cent meals look mighty appetizing. Plus with the powder kind you have more control over how much fat goes into the sauce (always skim milk and skimpy butter).

Of course, I do have a reasonable argument for my dependence on packaged mac and cheese. It’s simple.

All recipes for the homemade stuff I’ve ever tried suck. Big time.

Alton Brown’s casserole is mostly flavorless and often comes out grainy (although it is tasty when deep fried). Paula Deen’s baked mac is greasy, clumpy, and again, mostly flavorless. These are the two most prominent disasters in my memory, but no recipe I’ve tried has produced results that could compete with the boxed stuff for punch. Rather, they taste as insipid as the Stouffer’s frozen cheesy mac my mom stocked before I could cook for myself.

Obviously, we’re coming in a roundabout way now to the recipe that is the exception to the rule.

I found a recipe that called for incorporating cottage cheese and sour cream into macaroni and cheese on Art Smith’s Back to the Table blog at Yahoo Food.

Now, as I am in Slovakia for the next several months, I had to improvise a bit with this recipe. Cheddar cheese is pricey in these parts; for the same price you can can two to four times as much Edam, Gouda or Emmentaler. Also, everything is measured in metric over here, so I can buy cottage cheese in either 180-gram or 150-gram tubs; no cups or ounces.

I decided too that I wanted to add a bit of one of my favorite flavors to the sauce, so I picked up one tub of cottage cheese with chives along with a plain tub. The herbal flecks made the finished dish look a bit prettier, as it turned out.

This mac and cheese came at me with knock-my-socks-off flavor. Yum, yum, yum! I think the extra acidity from the sour cream and cottage cheese helped kick the cheesy flavor up, and the touch of chives added some interest to a normally bland dish.

Some tips now.

Here, I am kind of stuck with whatever’s on the shelves as far as dairy goes. Reduced-fat blocks of cheese don’t seem to exist. Products aren’t required to have nutritional information, so often they don’t. Also, whereas in America you might be offered sour cream in nonfat, low-fat, and full-fat varieties, here you are likely only to find one type (and hopefully you pick up the soured “smotana” as opposed to the fresh-from-the-cow kind, which come in pretty much the same packages).

Thus, I suggest making this a healthier dish if you live somewhere with a variety of dairy products by subbing in lower-cal versions. I myself usually like to go the middle-of-the-road low-fat route. The nutrition stats in the recipe, though, are for the highest fat products you might use.

In addition, go ahead and take a page from the Volumetrics diet -- stir in some warmed veggie mix from the freezer to stretch the dish, increasing the nutrients but reducing the calories per serving. You’ll feel full on less cheese that way. For lunch the next day, I stirred in the leftover peas, corn, and carrots from dinner, and it was lovely.

Finally, don’t give up if it looks like the cheese is not melting right away. It takes several minutes of stirring to get those cottage cheese curds to meld with the sauce, but trust me, they will eventually.

Cottage Cheese Mac

Source: Colleen Fischer

Yield: 6 servings

•2 cups elbow macaroni, (about 7 ounces)

•1 large egg, beaten

•1 cup cottage cheese

•1 cup cottage cheese with chives

•¾ cup sour cream

•1 teaspoon table salt, plus more for the macaroni water

•½ teaspoon garlic powder

•½ teaspoon ground black pepper

•1 ½ cups Emmentaler cheese, shredded (about 7 ounces)

Boil a large pot of water. Add salt to taste and the macaroni. Cook until just before al dente, as the pasta will cook more in the cheese sauce.

Meanwhile, mix the egg, cottage cheeses, sour cream, salt, garlic powder, and pepper thoroughly in a medium bowl. Stir in the shredded cheese.

Drain the macaroni and return it to the hot pot, off the heat. Add the cheese mixture to the pot and fold it in with a rubber spatula. Return the pot to the burner over low heat, stirring gently and constantly for about 5 minutes, or until the shredded cheese and almost all of the cottage cheese melts. This will also gently cook the egg in the sauce. Don't rush it -- too much heat will not yield a nice, creamy sauce!

Take the pot off the heat and allow it to sit for about 5 minutes to thicken. Serve warm.

Download Cottage Cheese Mac into MacGourmet.

Tagged: Recipe