Simple Mac and Cheese

With the maid gone for her holidays, I'm left to think, especially on weekends, what to feed the kids.
On Sunday, I was in Singapore and I had wanted to get them nasi ayam or maybe pasta from spice.. and then I saw that the price was like SGD12 - this is for a single meal.
So I thought.. for that price, I can go get the ingredients and cook for 5-6 person at home, something simple.

So I looked up for a 'simple mac and cheese recipe'. And alhamdulillaah I found one..
Simple to me means, not too many ingredients, especially ones that I don't recognise.

This is again, my version of the recipe I got, because of several factors. Things like, I don't have enough of the ingredient.

They asked for 220gm shredded cheddar cheese. I remembered I have it (un-grated) in the fridge. I was happy to see the box indicate that it's 220gm, but when I took the cheese out, I saw that some of it was already cut.. I weighed the cheese, I only had 170gm left and the one end of that cheese was hardened. I grated what I could and threw away the hardened part.

Then they asked for '220gm all American cheese' - what is that? I saw that we have some sandwich cheese, 3 of them weighed about 60gm, so I used 11 of them. About 220gms

Mustard - dry mustard? I couldn't find 'dry mustard' at the supermarket. So I just got a small bottle of mustard. As for the pepper, I didn't realise the recipe asked for black pepper, I just grabbed normal pepper powder and put a heavy dash or two.

In conclusion, the final product turned out OK - just nice. Not too cheesy, Masyaa Allaah.
So I'm sticking with this recipe, insyaa Allaah.

Ingredients:

1/2 medium size onion
30 gm butter.
220 gm macaroni (like half the usual packet)
2 tablespoon flour
3/4 teaspoon mustard
A dash or 2 - of pepper
450 ml milk
150 gm shredded cheddar cheese (actually the recipe calls for 220gms.. but I only had 170gm, and 10-15 gms was hardened.. I just used what I can get and it was cheesy enough!
10-12 pieces of the sandwich cheese cut into stripes or just koyak2 kan - we're going to melt it anyway.

Method :

1. Bismillaah.
2. Preheat oven at 175 dec C.
3. Boil the macaroni with a bit of salt and a tsp of olive oil until soft - like usual.
* (this is optional, I put it in so that the macaroni don't stick to each other).
4. Cut onions into small cubes or chop.
5. Heat butter in pan until melt, then put in onions.
6. Saute onions until soft.
7. Put in the flour and mix well. (1-2 mins)
8. Pour in the milk and mix well again.
9. Put in the mustard and pepper.
10. Keep on stirring and mixing all until the whole mixture thickens and boils.
11. Put in all the cheese and mix well until all cheese have melted and is well mixed.
12. Drain macaroni and put into the pan for baking. Pour in the milk mixture and mix with macaroni well.
13. Put into oven and bake until it's hot and bubbly (about 10-15 mins)
14. Let it cool a bit (about 10 mins) before serving.