Instead you will have to read what another asshole does with bacon. I give myself a pass on this, as I made the bacon myself and now have a surplus of.
So what sounds good on a nice 95°F Sacramento day? Mac and cheese of course. The lack of a cheese eating roommate and the quart of milk set to expire in the icebox has left me little choice.
It's pretty much your basic recipe: boil pasta, make a flour rue, add milk and cheese, combine, pour into baking dish(es), top with bread crumbs and rendered lardons.
Contrary to bacon fool instinct, I opted not to make the rue with the rendered fat and stuck with butter. I did however fry the breadcrumbs in the fat. The decision came from noticing people were too scared to eat the Elvis bread (bacon, peanut butter banana bread) I once made in which I substituted bacon fat for the butter. It was good, but I agree with one person's opinion that it tasted like death.
If you follow the previously mentioned steps, you will have something that looks like this:
Additionally, I chose to dish them into three smaller pie pans and freeze two of them. I live alone, so there's no need for me to have a giant cassarole dish rotting in the fridge instead of the souring milk and molding cheese that I initially was trying to avoid.
So that's that. Apologies for the long delay for the two of you who actually read this. The following are the measurements for the ingredients.
1 lb. pasta (shells here) - boil
3 c. milk
2 sprigs thyme } - simmer
2 cloves garlic
3 tbs. flour
3 tbs. butter } - rue it
1 tbs. mustard
12 oz. cheese - add it to the rue
Season to taste with salt/pepper
3 slices bread crumbed - spread over mac and cheese
6 strips bacon sliced into smaller strips ~ 6 oz. lardon
1 yellow onion diced } - render and top over bread crumbs
2 cloves garlic minced
400°F ca. 30 minutes
