mac & cheeze

I've tried endlessly to make this. I've followed recipes with tofu in them, fake cheese, nutrional yeast, about 50 different spices, too much turmeric, too runny, too much like old socks. It turns out my go-to cheeze sauce is the perfect mac and cheeze sauce and it's been sitting there under my nose the whole time.

You only need 5 ingredients and you've probably got them in the cupboard already. When you've been having a bad day/week/year, start making this and put on your favourite melancholy music and just curl up and tuck in. I know it'll never be quite as comforting as the real thing but it's a pretty close match.

This only makes enough for one, so double/quadruple for more than yourself, but it's not so much of a treat then.

You'll need:

1 1/2 tbsp vegan margarine

1 cup unsweetened soy milk (I haven't tried with a non soy milk replacement but I bet it'd be ok)

1/3 cup plain flour

3/4 tsp garlic granules

1/2 tsp mustard powder

Salt and pepper (the salt really helps with the cheesiness)

pasta obv.

Put your macaroni on to boil, the sauce only takes a few minutes so they should both be done at the same time.

Put all of the sauce ingredients except the salt and pepper into a pan.

Put over a low-medium heat and stir and stir and stir. At first it'll look a little gross like this, as the margarine melts:

(I'd added the pepper there too), but then it'll suddenly start to thicken up.

Once it gets thick like this you can take it off the heat. Add a decent amount of salt, not just one or two grinds, more like five or six.

You only want the pasta to be almost cooked, to still have a bite to it, so drain the water from the pan and add the pasta to the sauce.

Stir to coat, then pour into your baking dish of choice. Hearts all the way for me.

Bake at 4/180C/350F for about 20 minutes, until it browns and bubbles on top.

Really helps beat those blues.