This is a lovely, comforting pasta dish with a base of cheese sauce made with ale. It’s a mash-up of welsh rarebit and spaghetti carbonara and is definitely a new regular weeknight dinner in our house.

Ingredients

• 350g spaghetti
• 50g unsalted butter
• 50g plain flour
• 250ml semi skimmed milk
• 250ml ale (or dark beer)
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tsp wholegrain mustard
• 50g British mature Cheddar, grated
• 6 rashers unsmoked back bacon

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour and beat with a wooden spoon until it forms a paste
2. Cook for a couple of mins. Slowly mix in the milk, a bit at a time. You can add it all at once if you like, but you’ll need to work harder to make the sauce smooth.
3. Stir in the ale, Worcestershire sauce and mustard and let it bubble gently for 5 minutes. Add half the cheese and stir until it’s melted.
4. Grill the bacon, then chop it up and mix into the sauce.
5. Meanwhile, cook the pasta for a minute less than it says on the pack, then drain and tip into the sauce, then mix it all together.