When I was growing up, few of our family dinners were memorable, at least for the food. My mother was an okay cook, and for the most part she cooked fresh food each day. There wasn’t the plethora of processed, convenience foods available to today’s homemaker. In the fifties and early sixties, TV dinners and frozen vegetables made up the bulk of convenience food on our table. My brother and I were served TV dinners when my parents were going out to eat, and for some reason, mother loved frozen spinach. Other vegetables were eaten fresh.

Macaroni and cheese was possibly the exception to my mother’s food-preparation habits. Now available in 21 different varieties, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in my childhood only came as a single variety in a blue box. My mother always made the dish with butter and milk. This made the processed cheese powder that came in the accompanying envelope almost taste like cheese. Mom would prepare the concoction in a saucepan as directed, and then transfer it in a Pyrex bowl. She’d then layer slices of Kraft American cheese on the top and bake the combination until the cheese on top was melted and the contents were bubbly. The edges would turn nice and crusty. For some reason, I would only be allowed a single helping along with the rest of my dinner. I could have eaten the whole bowl by myself.

In 1968 when I moved out of my college dorm and into my own apartment, boxed macaroni and cheese became my friend. It was easy to prepare, and if I had the whole box to myself, I could almost become full. In those days I often bought the generic brand in the plain white box from the nearby A&P for 25¢. (I had a friend that would buy the stuff by the case and lived solely off of it for months. He also smoked dope and cigarettes and drank a bit of beer for nourishment.)

I’ve not had much of the boxed stuff since those college days. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had something similar. It turns out that the concept of pasta in a cheese sauce is much older than Kraft foods. Many of my French friends have tell me that it is one of their favorite comfort foods. According to Clifford  A. Wright, recipes for pasta baked with cheese date back to the 14th century. My personal favorite is from a French cookbook published in the first decade of the 20th century.

Give me some pasta, cheese, and the makings for a béchamel sauce, and I can whip you up a presentable macaroni and cheese. But, I’ve always wanted to figure a way of making one that was only macaroni and cheese. And one day, my dream came true.

I follow a blog called Playing with Fire and Water. In July, 2011, Linda posted a short article simply titled Puffed Pasta. There was my answer: puff the pasta and fill it with cheese—macaroni and cheese that could be eaten as a single bite and handled with fingers. So off to the store I went. I purchased the largest tube-shaped pasta I could find that would still be considered finger-size. Whole Foods-brand rigatoni seemed like it would be perfect.

I threw a handful of the rigatoni into some cold water and set it aside to hydrate for a few hours. I then cooked it in salted, boiling water until it was quite tender. According to Dave Arnold, it is important to have the pasta as swollen and soft as possible. He recommends a 45-minute long cooking without the hydration. Both methods seem to work equally well.

Once cooked, the pasta shapes were drained briefly. They are very fragile at this point, and must be handled very carefully. When laying on their sides, the shape collapse flat, so as was pointed out by Linda, it is important to place something inside of each tube. I chose to use sets of three round, wooden chopsticks held together with rubber bands. Each chopstick-set held four of the cooked rigatoni shapes. These were placed in a dehydrator at 55 °C (131 °F) until they were dry but still slightly pliable. This took about 4 hours. The dried pasta shapes were then set aside for a few days until they were needed.

The cheese for this amuse-bouche needs to be soft enough to pipe. I chose fromage blanc, but any spreadable cheese will work. I also chose to use the cheese straight, but flavorings could certainly be added. To make it easier to fill the pasta shapes, I used a disposable pastry bag fitted with a #230 Bismarck tip. After the cheese was placed in the bag and excess air removed, the wide end was heat sealed. I placed the bag in a small saucepan of warm water with the tip sticking out. This was done to soften the cheese so it would flow easier.

Another small saucepan with canola oil was placed on a burner and heated to between 175 °C (350 °F) and 190 °C (375 °F). Before each pasta shape was placed in the oil, a bamboo chopstick was inserted into it so once the shape puffed up, there would still be a passage for the cheese to flow through from one end to the other. Without the chopstick, the shapes tended to fill (puff) in completely. Each shape was held in the oil until it puffed, which was not immediate, and started to brown slightly. After removal from the oil, each shape was drained on absorbent paper.

I tried to fill each shape as soon as I removed them from the oil. The tip was small enough that I could insert it all the way through the puffed pasta shape and fill from the back forward. I used my index finger to smooth each end, but a small offset spatula would work as well.

Like regular macaroni and cheese, these individualized portions are best served warm.