Meaty Macaroni Bake

Veterans Day on Monday and the flags went up along the road into Hinesburg the way they always do, the small ones staked at the cemetery entrance and the larger ones at the Town Hall, and I drove past at the usual time on the way to the post office and looked at them the way I always look — once, briefly, without slowing — and then continued on. The envelope I send every March has nothing to do with November and the parade and the schoolchildren waving from the bandstand, but the flags raise a familiar weather inside me anyway, the kind that I have spent fifty years not naming and have no intention of beginning to name now. The post office had a small wreath on the door and Marilyn behind the counter said happy Veterans Day, Walt, and I said thank you, Marilyn, and that was the entirety of the public observance for me this year, which is more than enough.

The week itself was the proper introduction to mid-November in Vermont, the temperatures dropping into the high twenties at night and the daytime high struggling to clear forty, the woodstove now the central organizing fact of the kitchen the way the garden was the central organizing fact in July. I split kindling Thursday morning out by the shed, the maul biting into the rounds with the satisfying dry thud that maple gives you when it has cured properly, and I stacked the splits under the back porch overhang and was reminded again, as I am every November, that a man who has split his own wood for sixty years has had a more honest education than any I could have given my students, though I made them read Thoreau anyway and most of them now claim to have liked it.

I made the first proper braise of the season on Saturday — a venison stew from the shoulder cut Lyle Patterson dropped off last week, when he came back from his hunting camp in the Northeast Kingdom and remembered that I have always taken venison off his hands when he has more than his freezer can hold. The shoulder browned hard in the heavy pan, then the onions and carrots and a parsnip from the root cellar, then the bottle of inexpensive red wine and the broth and the bay and the thyme, and three hours in the oven at three hundred degrees, the kitchen filling with the deep iron-rich smell of game meat surrendering its toughness. I ate it Saturday at the table by the window and saved the rest for Sunday and Monday, because a stew like that improves twice on the way to its end, the third night being the best of all, and any cook who serves a stew on the night it was made is a cook who does not yet understand the form.

Frost has been at my feet through all of it, the regular position, the inherited position from the dog before him and the dog before that one. He turned eight this fall and has begun to show the small indications of a working dog passing into middle age — slightly slower up the porch steps, more interested in the woodstove than in the door, the gray spreading on his muzzle like the first frost on the grass. I notice these things and I do not comment on them, because there is nothing to be done about a dog aging except to keep feeding him and keep walking him and keep letting him sleep where he wants to sleep, which is at my feet, where he has always been.

The venison was Lyle’s, and the method was my own, but not every cook in November has a shoulder cut waiting in a bag on the back step — and when I have given this recipe to people who ask what I made that smelled so good through the kitchen window, I usually offer them something they can actually find at a store. The Meaty Macaroni Bake is that recipe: not a braise, not a three-hour affair, but the same impulse rendered in an hour and a half, the kind of thing that comes out of the oven smelling like it has been working while you were doing something else, which is all any November supper really needs to do.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 cups elbow macaroni, uncooked
1 1/2 lbs ground beef (or ground venison if you have it)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (15 oz) crushed tomatoes
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed tomato soup
1/2 cup beef broth
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish. Cook macaroni according to package directions until just shy of al dente — it will finish in the oven. Drain and set aside.
Brown the meat. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the ground beef and cook, breaking it apart, until no pink remains, about 7–8 minutes. Drain excess fat.
Build the base. Add onion to the skillet and cook with the meat until softened, about 4 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook 1 minute more. Add crushed tomatoes, tomato soup, beef broth, oregano, thyme, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine and simmer 5 minutes.
Combine. Add the drained macaroni to the skillet and stir until evenly coated. Fold in 3/4 cup of the cheddar. Transfer everything to the prepared baking dish and spread level.
Top and bake. Scatter the remaining 3/4 cup cheddar evenly over the top. Cover tightly with foil and bake 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 15–20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the edges are bubbling.
Rest before serving. Let the bake rest 5 minutes before serving. Like any proper meat dish, it holds better the next day — cover and refrigerate, then reheat with a splash of broth to loosen.

Nutrition (per serving)

Meaty Macaroni Bake — When the Freezer Is Full and the Stove Earns Its Keep