I’m going to tell you right now: Don’t blame me if you gain a few pounds. This is one of my ultimate comfort foods. Whenever I make it, it always turns into an excruciating battle with my (underdeveloped) sense of self control.

I almost always wind up losing.

Go on and make a pan. I defy you not to stuff yourself. You’ll see.

The filling is rich, creamy, and satisfyingly salty. The topping is crisp with just the right amount of crunch for contrast. Seriously, this might just be the perfect feel-better food.

The basic technique for Ultimate Mac ‘n Cheese

This recipe follows the basic tenets of a lot of mac ‘n cheese recipes.

Make a basic bechamel sauce (milk thickened with a combination of flour + butter), toss in loads of cheese and a handful of spices, mix with al dente pasta, top with cheese-y panko breadcrumb topping, and bake until it’s blissfully bubbly.

Here’s how to do that in detail.

Wait, Mouse. Are you trying to kill me with all that cheese?

No. I promise, I’m not. I love you. You should know better.

That said, this recipe does call for about two-and-a-half pounds of cheese.

That’s a lot. I know. Trust me, it’s worth it. (In my defense, it makes a 9 x 13-inch pan, packed to the rim.)

And if I may offer this advice: Don’t skimp. Don’t use low-fat cheese. Don’t try to do tricky things with yogurt or skim milk. It’s mac ‘n cheese. It’s not diet food. It’s guilty pleasure food, so go on and just enjoy.

I used a mixture of taleggio and cheddar (for strong, cheese-y flavor), fontina (for mellow nuttiness), and mozzarella (to make all those gooey strings of cheese).

Taleggio

Fontina

Change up the cheeses however you like. Just aim for 2 1/2 lbs. and be sure to choose cheeses that melt well. Fine Cooking magazine has a really good guide on that here.

Which kind of pasta should I use for mac ‘n cheese?

I used medium shells, but by all means, use whichever noodle you like best.

Choose pasta that’s on the medium to small side (larger noodles tend to break and lose their shape). Pick a shape that has lots of nooks and crannies to trap all that glorious sauce. Elbows, rotini, and radiatore all work great.

Ultimate Mac n’ Cheese

Pasta (a.k.a. vehicle for cheese)
1 lb. medium shells
water
kosher salt

Crust
4 Tbls. butter
2 cups panko breadcrumbs (or cut the crusts off white bread and whiz it all up in the food processor)
1 1/2 cups shredded orange cheddar
1/2 cup Parmesan, grated

Ooey, Gooey Cheese-y Goodness
8 Tbls. butter + butter to grease the pan
8 Tbls. flour
5 cups whole milk
1 tsp. ground white pepper
1 tsp. ground garlic
8 oz. Taleggio, chopped into small pieces
8 oz. young Fontina, chopped into small pieces
2 cups shredded orange cheddar
1 cup shredded mozzarella

Makes 1 (9 x 13-inch) pan

Generously butter a 9 x 13-inch pan. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Cook the pasta

Cook the pasta in a large pot of boiling, salted water. Aim for al dente. (The pasta will continue to cook in the oven.)

Drain the pasta. Give it a rinse with cold water to keep it from glomming together. Set it aside to drain in the sink while you make the topping and the sauce.

Make the breadcrumb topping

Melt 4 Tbls. of butter (that’s half a stick) and put it in a large bowl. (I usually just zap it in the microwave for about 30 seconds on high.)

Toss in the panko.

Give a stir to mix with the butter. It will be clumpy. Just break up the lumps with a wooden spoon.

Add the Parmesan cheese and the shredded cheddar.

Mix to combine. Set aside while you deal with the sauce.

Make the cheese sauce

Melt the butter in a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Toss in the flour.

Whisk well to combine.

Beat out all the lumps, until you have a smooth paste. (If you want to get technical about it, you’re making a white roux here.) Cook for about 3 minutes, whisking often. You don’t want it to get brown. You just want to cook the rawness out of the flour.

Pour in the milk. Whisk well to combine and incorporate the roux with the milk.

Raise the heat to medium-high. Bring the sauce to a boil, whisking constantly. When it starts to boil, knock the heat down to medium, and simmer the sauce for about 3 more minutes, or until it’s considerably thicker. Whisk constantly. If you don’t, it will stick and burn on the bottom of the pot.

Yank the pot from the heat when it’s nice and thick. You want it to look about like this (thick, but not like grammar school paste):

Grab your taleggio, fontina, and shredded cheddar. Resist the urge to gobble it all down.

Toss it into the pot.

Whisk to combine and get it melting.

Whisk for a few minutes, on and off, to incorporate the cheese as it melts. Again, resist the urge to jump in the pot and swim around with your mouth open.

Toss in the white pepper and garlic powder. Whisk to combine.

Your sauce should be thick and velvety.

Assemble and bake the mac ‘n cheese

Transfer the cooked pasta to a large mixing bowl. (By large, I mean the largest one you have. It has to fit the sauce + the pasta, with enough room to stir it all around.)

Pour the sauce over the pasta.

(Mmm mmm mmm…)

Mix it all up.

Toss in that last cup of mozzarella and mix well. This will give your mac ‘n cheese those wonderful strings of cheese.

Pour the mixture into your buttered pan.

Sprinkle thickly with the prepared topping.

Pop the pan into your pre-heated 400-degree oven. If your pan is really, really full, slide a piece of aluminum foil onto the rack below the pan. It’ll catch any drips and save you a ton of cleanup if your pan bubbles over a little.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the crust is brown and bubbly. Yank it out of the oven and let it cool a bit on the counter.

It reheats really well, and will keep for about 3 days in the fridge.

Oh, and as good as this is, if you want to make it even better, serve garnished with big, cooked hunks of lobster meat.

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Chanterelle mushrooms aren’t in season long, and they usually cost a mint when you can find ‘em. In spite of that, I can’t resist buying a handful whenever I can get my paws on them.

They’ve got such a fantastic flavor—and when you infuse it into melted butter, half a dozen mushrooms goes a long way. This is an elegant and luxurious appetizer for about four, or main course for two.

Simply cook the butter for a minute or two until it’s light brown and has developed a wonderful nutty flavor and aroma. Then drop the mushrooms in, and cook them just until they’re tender, about 5 minutes.

If you don’t have chanterelles, lobster mushrooms are a good substitution.

What are Chanterelle mushrooms and how do you cook them?

Good question. Chanterelles are trumpet-shaped mushrooms that are a yellowish orange.

Like all mushrooms, they’ll likely be a little dirty when you buy them. To clean them, gently wipe them off with a damp cloth. (You can see specs of dirt clinging to the caps of some of mine.)

While you can usually find chanterelles dried year round, they’re generally only in season for a few weeks in the fall (they’re not widely cultivated). Choose mushrooms that are nice and plump. Avoid mushrooms that feel dry or look withered (stating the obvious, I know).

Chanterelle mushrooms have a delicate, nutty flavor. The most important thing to know about them is that they toughen if you overcook them.

Brown butter, a.k.a. beurre noisette

Brown butter is just what it sounds like: Butter that’s been cooked over low heat until it has a light hazelnut brown color and an irresistible, nutty aroma. It’s also known as beurre noisette (noisette = “hazelnut” in French).

Basically, when butter melts, it separates into liquid butterfat and milk solids. The solids brown. If you poured off the liquid, you’d essentially have ghee, or clarified butter.

Beurre noisette is a wonderful, simple sauce for pasta or cooked veggies. It’s also one of the trademark components in madeleine cookies.

How to pick your pasta

For most pasta dishes, shape matters—and largely depends on what kind of sauce you’re using. For this dish, choose a pasta with lots of nooks and crannies to help trap all that beautiful brown butter.

I used a bag of fiori-like noodles that I’ve had in my pantry for a while. It’s going to sound silly, but since it’s such a frilly little noodle, I was waiting to use it in a fancier dish. Campanelles would work well, too.

Pasta with Brown Butter & Chanterelles

1/2 lb. pasta
1/4 lb. fresh chanterelle mushrooms
3/4 stick of butter
kosher salt

Serves about 4 as an appetizer, or 2 as a main

Cook the pasta

Cook the pasta in a large pot of salted, boiling water until it’s done to your liking. Drain it well.

Do this first. Don’t start cooking the sauce until the pasta is done, because it comes together really quickly (and you don’t want to overcook those expensive mushrooms).

Prep the chanterelle mushrooms

When your pasta is draining, grab your mushrooms. Wipe off the dirt that you see with a clean, damp cloth.

Nip off the tips of the stems with a sharp knife and discard. Then, depending on how large your chanterelles are, cut them in half, or even in quarters.

You want to leave the pieces fairly large, as they are the star of the dish.

How to make the brown butter

Put the butter in a medium-sized pan on the stove over low heat. Add the butter. Cook over low heat until the butter is completely melted, and is frothy and light brown.

You want it to look about like this. Don’t let it get too much darker, because it’s going to continue cooking when you add the mushrooms in.

Also, your kitchen should smell amazing right about now. I swear, if I could bottle the smell, I would.

Finish the sauce with the mushrooms

When your butter is brown, add the mushrooms to the pan. Sprinkle on a little kosher salt to taste. Toss to combine.

Raise the heat to medium, and cook for just about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are lightly browned.

After about 5 minutes, spear one with a fork. It should be tender and feel cooked, but not rubbery. Give it a nibble to be sure.

Toss the pasta in the sauce

Put the cooked, drained pasta in a large bowl. Pour the contents of your pan over the pasta.

Toss to coat well. Give the pasta a taste, and correct the seasoning as needed with a little kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, if you like.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

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Pad Thai, perhaps Thailand’s most infamous noodle dish, has dozens of incarnations—including several regional variations—each one a slightly different take on the mouthwatering combination of sweet, salty, and sour flavors. Some are super spicy, and some—like this recipe—are very mild. Regardless of your recipe, this is one of those dishes that’s all prep and very little actual cooking.

Pad Thai: The winner of our first Reader’s Choice Recipe Poll

Back in the beginning of June, we asked you all to vote for your which delicious-looking recipe from Cookstr.com you’d like to see demonstrated in The Hungry Mouse’s signature, step-by-step style.

This Pad Thai by Australian chefs Victoria Blashford-Snell and Brigitte Hafner won our poll, with 55 of the 273 votes cast. You can also find it in their book, The Illustrated Kitchen Bible.

Deborah Madison’s Spring Rolls came in second, and Nick Malgieri’s Challah came in third. Look for step-by-step walk-throughs of those recipes in the weeks to come.

A little history about pad thai

One of Thailand’s national dishes, Pad Thai typically consists of rice noodles stir fried with a combination of eggs, another protein (shrimp, tofu, or chicken), peanuts, fish sauce, chili pepper, bean sprouts, and lime—along with any number of other ingredients, including tamarind juice, coriander, cabbage, banana flower, and preserved turnip.

Many hold that the dish is actually Vietnamese in origin, and was adapted to the Thai palate. A popular street food, vendors would wrap the noodles up in a bundle of banana leaves to feed hungry folks on the go. It was officially promoted by the Thai government during World War II, as part of an effort to reduce wartime consumption of rice (one of the country’s biggest exports at the time).

It continued to be a staple in the lean times that followed the war, with rice noodle shops and factories popping up all over the country as a way to help the people get by.

Ingredients in pad thai

Most larger supermarkets should carry some version of these ingredients. To track down these specific brands, your best bet it to hit up a big Asian grocer (or order them online). In the Boston area, we head to Chinatown or hit Super 88.

Rice Noodles—For this recipe, you’ll need wide, flat rice noodles. Think fettuccine.

Fish Sauce—Also known as nuoc mam. Like soy sauce, the fewer ingredients in fish sauce, the better. Look for bottles made only with anchovies, salt, and sugar.

Fish sauce is pungent stuff. It should be a rich brown color and as thin as water. (Looks a lot like my vanilla extract, doesn’t it?)

We like Golden Boy brand fish sauce a lot. If you can’t find it in person, you can order a 24-oz. bottle of the stuff here for just under $4. (I can’t imagine ever going through such a big bottle. But, the good news is that it doesn’t need to go in the fridge, so you can just stick it in a cabinet. I could be wrong, but I’m guessing it keeps forever.)

Oyster Sauce—As with fish sauce, look for an oyster sauce whose first ingredient is, well…oysters. Oyster sauce is thick and syrupy.

We like Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Flavored Sauce (order it online here for about $8). Steer clear of their Panda brand, whose first ingredients are water, sugar, and salt.

Shrimp—I don’t mind shelling and deveining shrimp myself. Click here for step-by-step photo instructions on how to clean the little beasties. Try cleaning shrimp under cold running water. It makes the whole operation a lot easier. (Or, if you’d rather skip it and save a little time, just buy them already cleaned.)

Tips on cooking Pad Thai

• Prep all the ingredients in advance. The whole dish takes about 5 minutes to cook, if that, so there’s no time to chop as you go.

• Cook it when you’re ready to eat. The leftovers are still tasty, but they pale in comparison to the hot-out-of-the-wok experience.
• Use the largest wok or frying pan you have. All the ingredients, including the noodles, go into the pot and get tossed around.

Pad Thai

12 oz. (350g) flat rice noodles
boiling water
4 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 Tbsp. cilantro, chopped
1 small hot red chile, seeded and finely chopped
9 oz. (250g) large shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 shallots, finely chopped
4 large eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. oyster sauce
1 Tbsp. Thai fish sauce
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice
9 oz. (250g) bean sprouts
4 scallions, white and green parts, sliced
1 cup unsalted roasted peanuts
1 lime cut into 4 wedges, for garnish

Serves about 4

Pad Thai: Prep all your ingredients

No, really. Do this all in advance.

Cook the rice noodles

Set a kettle of water on the stove over high heat to boil. Grab your rice noodles and toss them in a large mixing bowl.

When your water is boiling, pour enough into the bowl to submerge your noodles.

With a pair of tongs, scoot the noodles around to loosen them up and separate them.

Cover the bowl with some aluminum foil and let them soak for about 15 minutes, or until soft. (Give one a taste to see if they’re ready.)

Drain the noodles and set them aside.

Mix the pad thai sauce

In a small bowl, add the lime juice, oyster sauce, and fish sauce.

Mix together to combine well. Set aside for a few minutes.

Stir fry the pad thai ingredients

Don’t start cooking until you can give it your full attention for 5 or 10 minutes. Once you start, the whole thing comes together really, really fast.

Heat a wok or large frying pan on the stove over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil, and the chopped cilantro and chili pepper.

Toss in the shrimp. Stir to coat with oil, cilantro, and chili. Stir them around constantly—making sure to flip them over on both sides—for about a minute, until they’re just opaque.

You want them to look about like this. They should be opaque on both sides, and will only be about 1/2 cooked through at this point.

Yank them out of the pan and set them aside for a minute on a plate.

Keep the heat on high (or drop it a little if your pan is starting to smoke).

Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil to the hot pan. Toss in the chopped shallots. Stir fry for 1 minute.

Pour in the eggs.

Toss in the sugar.

Begin to stir the eggs immediately so they break up into bits as they cook. Cook for about 1 minute, until the eggs are totally scrambled.

Pour in the mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, and oyster sauce.

Stir around to distribute the sauce. Add the noodles to the pot.

Toss in the bean sprouts and shrimp.

Stir fry for another 2 minutes. This will help the all the flavors marry together and finish cooking those shrimp.

Sprinkle in the sliced scallions and half of the peanuts. Stir fry for another minute.

Pour the whole pan out into a large serving bowl. Garnish with lime wedges and the rest of the peanuts.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Thanks again to our friends over at Cookstr.com. Look for our other Reader’s Choice winners soon! (And maybe I can even convince The Angry Chef to share his top-secret recipe for Pad Thai with us…)

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This dish combines the deep, earthy flavors of fried bacon and caramelized cremini mushrooms with the crispness of red pepper and green onion. It’s easy to make and gets even better overnight as the flavors mingle.

The salad is dotted with large pieces of crunchy bacon.

The mushrooms develop a wonderful flavor from a long sizzle in molten bacon fat.

I love couscous because it’s a snap to cook�and, just like pasta or rice, it has a zillion uses.

You boil a little water, toss in the couscous, give it a stir, and let it sit—covered and off the heat—for about five minutes. Fluff it up, and it’s good to go. Easier than pie? You better believe it.

All about couscous

Couscous (a.k.a. granular semolina) is a big part of North African and Middle Eastern cuisines.

Traditionally, couscous is steamed in a couscoussiere—a double-decker pot designed just for this purpose.

Couscoussiere

Couscous is placed in the top part of the pot, which is perforated with lots of tiny holes. Meat and veggies are simmered in the bottom of the pot. The flavorful steam rises up from the bottom pot to cook and perfume the couscous. The couscous is served topped with the cooked meat and veggies.

(No, I don’t have a couscoussiere. If I had a ton of extra room…I…might. I can admit that.)

If you’d like to try cooking couscous like this at home, you can improvise pretty well with a fine-mesh strainer covered with a lid and set over a pot.

What is a cremini mushroom?

Cremini mushrooms are often sold in the U.S. as “baby bellas” or “baby portabellos.” Read a little more about them here at The Kitchn.

I fully admit that each time I served some of this, I was totally digging for extra pieces of bacon.

Couscous Salad with Bacon and Cremini Mushrooms

6 cups cooked couscous (that’s about 12 oz. of dry couscous)
1 lb. bacon
12 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced
1 large, sweet red pepper, diced
2 Tbls. parsley, minced
kosher salt
freshly cracked black pepper
1-2 scallions, cut into rings

Serves 4-6

Cook the couscous according the package directions

To ensure that you get the proportions right, read and follow the cooking directions on the specific package of couscous that you bought.

For me, this meant combining water with a little olive oil.

Bring the water up to a boil.

Pour in the couscous.

Give it a stir and cover the pot. Take the pot off the heat. Let it sit, covered, for about 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, uncover the pot. Your couscous should have absorbed all the liquid, and should look about like this:

Grab a fork and rake it across the surface to fluff the couscous up.

When your couscous is nice and fluffy, set it aside to cool.

Cut up the veggies

Grab your mushrooms. Wipe them down with a damp cloth to get any dirt off them.

Snap off the stems. Discard them if you like, or chop them up and saute them along with the caps.

Slice the mushroom caps into thin-ish pieces. Set them aside.

Remove the seeds and ribs from your red pepper. Cut into strips, then cut into small dice. Set aside (separately from the mushrooms).

Fry the bacon

Grab your bacon.

Slice it into pieces, like this:

Cut the pieces a little larger than you want them to actually be in the salad. Remember, bacon shrinks when it cooks.

Put the bacon in a large, non-stick pan on the stove over medium-high heat.

Give it a stir to spread it out. After a minute or two, it should start to fry and let off all sorts of glorious bacon fat.

Fry it like this, stirring occasionally, until it gets nice and crispy.

You want it to look about like this:

When it’s done, transfer the bacon to a bowl with a slotted spoon.

You’ll have a fair amount of bacon fat left in your pan. Pour all but a few tablespoons out. (Save it in a jar in the fridge and use it to fry potatoes!)

Fry the mushrooms in bacon fat

Toss your sliced mushrooms into the pan with the bacon fat. Set the pan over medium-high heat. Give them a stir to coat with fat.

Sprinkle on a little kosher salt.

And some freshly cracked black pepper.

Cook like this for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. After a few minutes, they should look like this:

And then start to get nice and brown. When they look about like this, scrape them out of the pan into the bowl with your cooked bacon.

Assemble the couscous salad

By now, your couscous should be cool enough to handle. Put it in a large bowl.

Toss in the cooked bacon and mushrooms.

Give a stir to mix them into the couscous.

Add the diced red pepper and the minced parsley.

And the scallions.

Stir to mix well.

Give the couscous a taste. Toss in a little kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper, if you like.

Refrigerate overnight to let the flavors mingle. (Trust me on this one. It’s really good now, but it’ll be even better the next day.)

Serve and enjoy!

Serve as a side dish, or a lighter main dish.

Enjoy!

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We’ve been pining for summer weather here in Boston. It’s been cold, dreary, and drizzly for days. This pasta salad is like a little dose of summer—it’s cool, creamy, and an absolutely fabulous thing to bring to a picnic or barbecue. Assuming, that is, that the sun ever comes out.

Here’s how to put this pasta salad together—as well as a step-by-step guide for how to clean and de-vein fresh shrimp. My recipe calls for about a pound of fresh shrimp, but scale the amount up or down to fit your budget and what looks good at the fish market.

I like to make it with fresh fettuccine, but use any kind of pasta you like.

For the fresh goat feta, I used cheese that I picked up on a recent adventure to Sweet Pea Farm in Connecticut. (More on that to come soon.)

If you can’t find goat feta, swap in any fresh goat cheese you can find—you may just need to add less of it, depending on how salty the cheese you choose is. (Fresh goat feta is very mild.)

On to the recipe!

Pasta Salad with Shrimp, Goat Feta, and Basil

1 lb fresh fettuccine (or other pasta you like)
3/4 – 1 lb. large fresh shrimp
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 tsp. fresh rosemary, minced
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 cup fresh goat cheese feta
1 cup basil, loosely packed
freshly cracked black pepper
1 Tbls. chives, minced
kosher salt

Serves 4-6

Cook and drain the pasta

Bring a large pot of water to boil on the stove. Add your pasta.

Toss in a little salt.

Cook until it’s done to your liking. (I shoot for a little on the al dente side.)

When your pasta is cooked, drain it. Then rinse it well with cold water until it’s cold to the touch. (That’s important, and will help keep your pasta from getting gummy and clumping together.)

Transfer the pasta to a large mixing bowl when it’s drained.

Set it aside while you deal with the shrimp.

How to clean and de-vein fresh shrimp

Now, technically, you can eat the whole shrimp—shell and vein and feet and all. (We just saw Duff Goldman from Charm City Cakes raving about fried shrimp heads on TV, in fact.) Most folks however, like to remove the vein for aesthetic reasons.

So! Grab your shrimp. Keep them cold while you clean them by setting them in a bowl of ice. (To make this operation even easier, shell and de-vein your shrimp in the sink, under cold running water.)

Pull the shell away from the body of the shrimp, including all the little feet, if they’re still attached. Pull the tail off gently, so you don’t rip off much of the meat.

Your shrimp should look about like this:

Flip him around and take a look at his back. You should see a black line running down the center. This may be fat or thin (so thin that it’s barely visible), depending on the shrimp.

Make a shallow slice along the black line with a small, sharp knife.

Your shrimp should look about like this:

Spread the shrimp apart. You should see that icky, black line.

Scrape or pull it out with your knife, so it’s totally gone, like this:

Repeat with your other shrimp. Keep them on ice as you finish them to ensure they stay cold.

How to cook the shrimp

Shrimp are easy to overcook. But they don’t have to be. For this dish, I use gentle heat and don’t walk away from the stove while they’re in the pan.

Put the olive oil, garlic, and rosemary in a large non-stick pan. Give it a stir. Set it on the stove over medium heat for a minute or two to help release the flavors into the oil.

Add the shrimp.

Cook them for maybe 2 minutes on this side.

After a minute or two, your shrimp should be a rosy pink underneath. They should also be opaque on that side. When you see that, flip ‘em over.

Cook them on this side for another one or two minutes.

They should be slightly curled at this point—but not tightly curled.

When a shrimp is cooked, it’s opaque. (See on this one, the top half of the shrimp is opaque, but the bottom is still kind of translucent because it’s not done yet.)

When the shrimp are pink and opaque on the bottom, take the pan off the heat.

Let them sit in the pan, off the heat, for another minute to finish cooking through to the center.

Transfer them to a dish or plate and set them aside. Reserve the oil from the pan. That’s going into the pasta salad.

(Mmmmm, shrimp. Better give one a nibble, just to…you know…be totally sure they’re done.)

Assemble the pasta salad

Fluff up your pasta a little to be sure it’s not at all stuck together. (If it is, rinse it again in cold water, then drain it well.)

Pour the oil and juices from the pan into the bowl with the pasta.

(Mmmmm, garlic.)

Toss in the basil. Then add the goat feta.

Chop the shrimp up.

I like medium-sized pieces, like this:

Toss the chopped shrimp into the bowl.

Toss in the chives. Grind on some black pepper. Squeeze on the lemon (pick out any seeds).

Now, you can mix this up with tongs or a few wooden spoons. I tend to use my hands, especially with a long noodle like fettuccine. It’s gentler on the pasta.

You want the ingredients to be evenly distributed. Give it a taste, and toss in a little salt if you think it needs it (and depending on the type of cheese you used).

I don’t like to keep cooked seafood for more than one day, so I usually make this no earlier than the night before I want to serve it.

If it needs it when it comes out of the fridge, you can toss in a little extra olive oil to loosen it up.

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