Mac & Cheese, Please!: 50 Super Cheesy Recipes

by Laura Werlin

James Beard Award–winning author and cheese expert Laura Werlin brings her cheese-adoring audience the next-best thing to her fabulous grilled cheese recipes: 50 mac & cheese recipes to die for.

No one knows cheese better than Laura Werlin, and now she’s applying her expertise to everyone’s favorite macaroni dish. Inside, you’ll find 50 recipes organized by fun topics, such as Classic and Almost-Classic Mac & Cheese, Porky Mac & Cheese, Decadent Mac & Cheese, Lighten Up Mac & Cheese, Veggie Mac & Cheese, Party Time Mac & Cheese, and Breakfast for Dinner Mac & Cheese. The 50 recipes are presented in a fun format, like her previous title, Grilled Cheese Please! She even includes an appendix that includes info on all the food trucks and restaurants that specialize in mac & cheese. 

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Food

192 pages, Hardcover

First published December 4, 2012

About the author

Laura Werlin is a highly respected authority on cheese. As the author of four books on the subject, each of which have been honored with an award, including a James Beard, IACP, and the World Gourmand Award for Best Cheese Book for her classic, Great Grilled Cheese, Werlin is frequently invited to lead professionaland consumer-level seminars and classes at events, including the prestigious Food & Wine magazine Classic at Aspen, the Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta, and The Cheese School of San Francisco. She is also often asked to judge food and wine competitions across the country, including the American Cheese Society annual cheese competition and most recently the Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles."

Reviews

[karen]

this is another review-in-progress as i work through the book and eat it all up

i have made this!




cheddar, bacon, roasted tomato, and tabasco mac & cheese

suck it, kraft!

this is when it was photogenic:



and this is after i added an additional pound of cheese on top of the pound already contained in the cheese sauce* and also some toasted bread crumbs chunks:


delicious! but FYI - this recipe told me to go to alllll the trouble of chopping and then frying up some red onion in the bacon grease that came offa my previously-cooked bacon and then salting and peppering it to taste but there was never a step that said "add onions to your business," so i just threw mine out the window. such a wasteful recipe.

i think next time i will add artichoke hearts to this.

*i MAY have added more cheese than this recipe called for. twelve ounces = not cheesy enough. 32 ounces - now we're getting there.

tonight: goat cheese, mozzarella, basil, and tomato mac & cheese

in this light:





and in this light:





there is also parmesan and lemon zest and - again - i quadrupled the cheese. also very tasty, despite how my pictures make it look barfy.

one more recipe down!!

broccoli, cheddar, and crispy shallot mac & cheese

before i obscured it with crispy shallots





and after:





this time, i may have made too much. if "too much" is a thing.



just for scale, against my normal human-sized head:



this recipe has the same problem as the other one: you're asked go to all the trouble of making buttery mushrooms and onions, which you are told to "set aside," and then recipe forgets that they exist when you are told to combine everything else so i just threw these out the window as well.



this is a very wasteful cookbook.

also wasteful: r.i.p. biggest and most useful casserole dish.



slightly funny but ultimately tragic story about how my longtime companion casserole dish came to be shattered on the floor: i have a very tiny kitchen, which means that sometimes i have to come up with creative solutions to counterspace issues. in this case, i rested the casserole dish on my computer chair, the back of which was draped with this towel/potholder combo thing i have.



i began making the crispy shallots (which took over an hour. again - i may have made too many) and they were frying up nicely in the oil but also creating a fragrant smoke. and then i remembered that my new fire alarm is pretty sensitive and i didn't want it to go off over onions, but i am also too little to reach the alarm because although i have a tiny kitchen, i have very high ceilings. so i hastily grabbed the chair to turn off the alarm and also time it so my onions wouldn't burn, but oh no!! i forgot about the casserole dish on seat-counter, which was additionally hidden by towel/potholder combo thing and SMASH!! bonus fun: since i had forgotten i'd already turned off the fire alarm because of last week's bacon, it was a completely senseless death.

so now i gotta go to target this weekend and get a new casserole dish cuz imma need a good one for thanksgiving stuffing.

so, i went to target and bought a replacement casserole dish (and so many more things) and i made it safely home on the bus but as i was struggling with all my parcels at my front door, the bag with the casserole dish hit the stoop and it shattered into a million pieces. 1) the dish shattered, not the stoop. 2) it did not hit the stoop hard. i have a witness who can testify. 3) it did not chip or crack, it shattered into a million pieces.





4) make things better, usa!

but it's okay - i found an even better casserole dish i'm gonna buy this week. i just needed to share my casserole-dish woes. two in one week! i am a menace.

DID YOU THINK WE WERE DONE HERE??

WE ARE NOT!

i came back to this project now that all the thanksgiving leftovers are gone (except for the second stuffing i had to make after sean ran out of stuffing to eat and panicked) and now i have made this:

waffle mac & cheese

syrup and butter and cheese and waffles. i mean, really - where has this been all my life?





and now, with a healthy dusting of cocaine. i was out of confectioner's sugar.

[Steph's Romance Book Talk · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 Stars / 0 Steam Fans

Interesting recipes but not enough pictures to encourage me to make any of them.

Video review available in Week 3: Jan 15 – Jan 21, 2023, weekly book reviews on Steph's Romance Book Talk (https://www.youtube.com/@stephsromanc...)

[Lynda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought as gift for friend. Of course, I read it first.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mac (Macaroni) & Cheese is a staple American favourite. Yet this simple dish can have so many variations dependent on taste. Here is a fun little book with 50 different recipes or variations on a theme.

Starting with a basic personal portrait and a selection of mac & cheese fun facts the reader is given then a brief overview about making the perfect mac & cheese dish. Quality and type of ingredients can play their part. The author is almost fanatical about underlining the importance of getting this dish right. It sounds a simple dish and it is a simple dish but easy to spoil by not paying attention or taking a short cut or two. There is a lot of preparatory information but it is easy-to-follow and can make a difference. It is worth a read, for sure. This book is written for a predominantly American marketplace so the foreign reader may need to undertake their own research to find comparable cheeses.

Then it is straight to the recipes, split into eight chapters of Classic (and Almost Classic); Mostly Cheese; Eat Your Veggies; Eat Your Protein; Breakfast for Dinner; Totally Decadent; Lighten Up, Cool Down and Party Time. Some odd titles but you will soon get the hang of this book. Some of the recipes stretch the original definition of mac & cheese but this is not a bad thing when you look at some of them. Cheddar, Bacon, Roasted Tomato and Tabasco Mac & Cheese or Truffle, Cream and Mushroom Mac & Cheese could equally appear on a good "home cooking" restaurant menu. Nothing utilitarian here.

Each recipe is presented well with a brief introduction, clear ingredients list and a comprehensive set of instructions. Various tips or options for "add-ins" are also presented for many recipes. Colour photographs help make many of these dishes jump out of the page and have the reader salivating too. Nothing to complain about, other than the effect it can have on the reader if you are not ready to start cooking straight away (i.e. you can start to have a rumbling tummy!).

The book is rounded off with a list of many mac & cheese restaurants in the United States, metric conversion tables and a comprehensive index. There's not a lot more to say. Unless you dislike mac & cheese and its components therein, you should find a lot of great recipes in this reasonably-priced book. And if you've never tried this American delight then boy is there a treat ahead for you.


// This review appeared in YUM.fi and is reproduced here in full with permission of YUM.fi. YUM.fi celebrates the worldwide diversity of food and drink, as presented through the humble book. Whether you call it a cookery book, cook book, recipe book or something else (in the language of your choice) YUM will provide you with news and reviews of the latest books on the marketplace. //

[Jinnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Used this as a kind of storyboard to imagine different food combos with mac and cheese, like smoked ham and apple with a cheddar base; or egg and prosciutto mac and cheese; or crab, artichoke and swiss mac and cheese; or huevos rancheros mac and cheese. Some very good tastes if one chooses a complementary cheese. Many of these dishes could get pricy, and some suggested ingredients (cheeses, meats) may be hard-to-impossible to find in some parts of the US.

[Lael · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my family, I make the best mac n cheese so I had to read this one! Lots of good recipes to try and lots of recipes that just seem a bit silly. Lots of steps, over the top ingredients...I love that shit,hahah. I'll probably never make those ones but they sure are fun to read about.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mac & Cheese Please! is book bursting with 50 comforting and fresh macaroni and cheese dishes.

This cookbook does a great job at introducing the novice cook to the basics of cooking pasta and cheese. It includes a run down of all the different kinds of pasta and cheese available and gives hints on the best ways to use each kind.

The book is clear and concise with well prepared directions. The pictures will have your mouth-watering for some cheesy goodness. It includes recipes that use both the oven or stove top methods.

These recipes are main meal fair. They include meat and veggies and are very original and inventive. Usually, my family only considers mac & cheese as being a side or more “picnic” food but this book proves mac & cheese can also be an upscale and gourmet worthy dish.

One caveat, for me, was that the recipes included ingredients that aren’t easily found in a small town grocery store. I can’t just pop over to the local grocery and get truffles or prosciutto. But, there were plenty of recipes that included ingredients I already had on hand.

This is a great cookbook if you really feel like mixing it up and want something totally out of the ordinary.

This title was provided for review by Netgalley.