Another contender in the inadvertent series of comfort foods. Tamalehawk supposes that category includes anything that is inherently unhealthy and delicious and has mass appeal. Things that require you to briefly abandon your conscience before you can be excited by the prospect of eating them. He waves a concessional wing at this definition because guilt makes everything taste better.
Tamalehawk builds his cheese sauce on a basic bechamel by melting 4 tablespoons of butter in a pot until it bubbles, then adding 4 tablespoons of flour and cooking it until it is blond in color. Add 2 cups of cold milk, a little bit of nutmeg, salt, and cayenne, and stir it with a whisk over a medium heat until it thickens. Add a ton of cheese, in this case cheddar and parmesan, but please get fancy and do the whole gruyere thing. Pour it over your cooked pasta, then into a buttered casserole dish. Take that time to toast your Panko breadcrumbs with a little more butter in a pan. Dump the crumbs on top and bake it until you're too hungry to wait any longer. Add a side salad or don't. It doesn't matter because you've just changed the world.
I learned a trick from some contacts of mine in "the South." Use a dash (.25-.50 tsp) of mustard powder to supplement a not-as-sharp-as-you'd-like cheese. Catastrophe averted!
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