Fettuccine et le ménage à trois des fromages

Yesterday I was domestic. I put four jars of four-berry jam in the refrigerator, three casseroles in the freezer, two pie crusts aside for later, and a casserole in the oven for dinner. (You can sing that sentence, give or take a few syllables, to the Four Days of Christmas tune.) The recipe is an adaptation of a magazine recipe--possibly from Real Simple, although I need to do better with recipe citations. Anyway, it was magical: three cheeses--Gruyère, Parmesan, and aged Cheddar--all of them sharp and assertive, hidden in a fog of thickest whipping cream. One of my roommates agreed that these are the bites after which you can die content, the bites so rich that they induce comas of pure bliss. Allow me to share the recipe, so that you may be similarly afflicted. (The antidote, by the way, is black coffee. Not with the casserole, of course. You have to wait until you're almost comatose. Then, just before death snatches you, you must take a sip of saving coffee--the beverage my brother once compared to a mental scaffold, the perfect buttress for your almost-collapsed consciousness. No one wants "death by casserole" in her obituary, after all.)

First, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, prepare 8 ounces of fettuccine or other pasta. Whisk together 1/2 cup Gruyère, 2 cups whipping cream, 3 tablespoons (or more) Parmesan, and 3 tablespoons (or more) aged Cheddar. Add pasta. Stir until coated. Butter an 11x7-inch glass baking dish to which you then add the pasta mixture. Sprinkle 1 cup (at least) of Gruyère over the top. Bake until the cheese on the top melts and the inner cheeses set. This will take about 20 minutes.

I know you're probably scared. Fear is a part of life. But I can assure you that the path to nirvana lies in an 11x7-inch baking dish filled with cheeses and cream. Now that's a philosophy you can sink your teeth into! Bon appétit!