BONUS September 2023 - Crab and Tomato Mac and Cheese + Blonde Pork and Fennel Ragù

Happy end of September/beginning of autumn, or as I know it, ragù season! The best time of year. Cooking at the end of September is great, because you get to incorporate the end of summer veg into some very comforting meals, setting you up for winter beautifully.

Crab and Tomato Mac and Cheese

The approach of autumn brings lots of foods I care deeply about (soup! ragù! Hello old friends!), but it does mean saying goodbye to some of the finest vegetables out there, including Ms. Tomato. These feel like the final weeks where I can cook them up before the only ones in shops are those sad pallid things you’d rather not eat. So, I bring you my crab and tomato mac and cheese. It is an ideal summer/autumn transition meal, when the darker evenings start drawing in, and you want a bit of comfort, but you can still get away with eating some summer veg. 

I first made a version of this out of a random freezer raid, involving a bag of crab rarebit sauce and a roasted tomato sauce. The result was so magical that I thought I owed it to myself, and to you, to note it down so we can all continually eat this for the rest of time. I have always been PASSIONATE about macaroni cheese, and though they can vary in texture, I personally like mine to be pretty loosey goosey. The macaroni quantity doesn’t sound like a lot, but this ratio of pasta:sauce is ideal for a very saucy, spoonable mac and cheese.

I use baby plum tomatoes, but out of tomato season, you could do the same thing with a tin of baby plum or cherry tomatoes with the juice rinsed off them.