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By Karla Walsh, CNN

(CNN) — Follow the instructions on the box, and your mac and cheese will be ready to devour in about 10 minutes.

Invest five minutes more — and subtract about a dozen ingredients — and you can have what award-winning cookbook author Samin Nosrat considers a copycat recipe that will delight both kids and the young at heart.

“Think of this pasta as the elegantly understated aunt to a box of mac and cheese,” Nosrat wrote in her new cookbook, “Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share With People You Love.” After coaching us to master the basics of cooking with “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” whether you chose her cookbook or her Netflix show, the Oakland, California-based food writer is back with 125 new recipes in her latest release, including her take on classic mac and cheese.

“Combining ricotta, Parmesan, and a little bit of pasta cooking water makes a rich, creamy sauce that is far greater than the sum of its parts,” she said.

Nosrat clued us in about the key ingredient that makes the sauce silky and sneakily budget-friendly: starchy pasta water.

“Normally, when you try to melt cheese directly into pasta without making a béchamel sauce first, your cheese will break,” Nosrat told me. “The fat will separate from the protein, and then you get a greasy mess instead of sauce.”

The pasta water thickens and emulsifies the cheese mixture, helping it evolve from watery or greasy to rich and glossy, all for the cost of 1 cup of water. Bonus: If you salt the water before adding the noodles (Nosrat asks for a palmful of salt per pot), it will help season your dish.

When you pair starchy pasta water with already-creamy ricotta and salty, umami-rich grated Parmesan, stir this all together with cooked noodles for “an incredible shortcut,” Nosrat said. “You don’t need a million steps in order to make it, and the sauce coats the pasta in this very satisfying, creamy way. It’s really just about as easy as making boxed mac and cheese!”

Nosrat’s recipe remix is also “endlessly adaptable,” she wrote, based on your preferences and the ingredients you have handy.

Truly any pasta cut can shine. Your best bet is a short shape though, she said: “Things like penne rigate, rigatoni or any short pasta with a hole in there for some of the cheese or the peas to fall in is amazing. Anything with peas is friendly to eat with orecchiette, because the peas will nestle into the little ears.”

As for the cheeses to feature in this recipe, Grana Padano, aged Asiago or Pecorino Romano are suitable alternatives to the punchy Parmesan. Small-curd cottage cheese (“one of my breakfast love affair foods,” Nosrat admitted) is a stellar substitute for ricotta if you prefer.

Fresh or frozen peas are a classic and subtly sweet vegetable boost. However, depending on the season and your produce stock, feel free to tag in bite-size broccoli or baby broccoli, sliced asparagus, peeled fava beans, sliced snap or snow peas, and/or corn kernels.

No matter which variation you try, Nosrat said she hopes that this recipe will be at least one good thing — the theme of her new cookbook — you can look forward to this week. And it’s not just this one dish.

“Looking for something to delight in and to take pleasure in, and to be able to turn around and share that with the people around you — if we all did that, then the positive impact would multiply,” she told me.

One easy way to spread delight and connect on a deeper level with those in your circle is gathering at the same table, Nosrat said. Comfort foods such as this easy, cheesy mac are ideal to set the scene since they are flavorful but not fussy, and undeniably nostalgic.

Creamy One-Pot Pasta With Ricotta and Peas

Serves 4 to 6

Tot

By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

(CNN) — Minneapolis has seen tense demonstrations against the Trump administration’s deployment of federal agents to the city for an immigration crackdown, raising questions about what these officers can do on the ground and how President Donald Trump can respond.

As protests escalated following the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, the Trump administration defended the agent and doubled down on its efforts in the Minneapolis area, sending in more resources.

Trump has also threatened to the extreme step of invoking the Insurrection Act to clamp down on the protests and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has suggested people may be asked to “validate their identity” in some cases.

Here are some of the most common questions, answered.

What is the Insurrection Act?

The law that Trump is threatening to invoke would allow him to deploy active-duty US troops to Minnesota as “necessary to enforce (US) laws or to suppress the rebellion.”

The law says the president can send troops to control situations they consider to be “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States.”

A state governor or legislature can also request troops — as was the case the last time the law was invoked in 1992 — but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has openly rebuked the surge of federal activity in Minneapolis.

There is precedent of a president invoking the act without the support of a governor.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy both invoked the Insurrection Act against the wishes of governors in order to facilitate school integration after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

On Friday, Trump said there’s no reason to use the Insurrection Act “right now,” but that he’d invoke the law if he felt it were necessary.

“I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I’d use it. It’s very powerful,” the president told reporters.

Read CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf’s analysis of the Insurrection Act here.

What authority has the Trump administration given to federal agents?

Immigration agents can use deadly force against someone who poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, according to a DHS policy. Historically, federal law enforcement agencies have spent weeks or even months conducting exhaustive investigations before deciding whether an agent’s use of force was appropriate.

But Trump administration officials have rushed to offer full-throated defenses of immigration agents after high-profile use of force, raising questions about whether mechanisms meant to hold law enforcement accountable for wrongdoing have been abandoned in Trump’s second term, writes CNN’s Josh Campbell.

The administration has argued agents are immune to prosecution by state or local officials. And any federal prosecutions seem unlikely, Campbell writes, due to Trump’s installation of political loyalists atop the Justice Department and FBI.

In August, during the federal takeover of the Washington, DC, police department, Trump effectively gave law enforcement a green light to use force that may far outpace the severity of the circumstances, according to Campbell.

While lamenting images he claimed to have seen showing protesters spitting on officers, Trump said in

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By Sophie Tanno, CNN

(CNN) — Protesters were gathering for rallies in both Denmark and Greenland on Saturday against US President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Arctic island.

In Denmark, thousands turned out in the cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg and Odense to stand in solidarity with the Greenlandic population.

Many waved banners with slogans including “Hands off Greenland” alongside the territory’s red and white flag, according to Reuters.

The protests across Denmark were organized by Greenlandic organizations in cooperation with the NGO ActionAid Denmark. A statement from ActionAid said the unrest was deliberately planned to coincide with a visit of US senators to Denmark.

“We are demonstrating against American statements and ambitions to annex Greenland,” Camilla Siezing, Chair of the Joint Association Inuit – one of the Greenlandic organizations involved in planning the protests – said.

“We demand respect for the Danish Realm and for Greenland’s right to self-determination. Hopefully, we can show that we are many who support Greenland.”

A protest is also scheduled for later Saturday in Greenland’s capital of Nuuk. Asked what her message to President Trump was, one female protester in Nuuk told CNN, “We are not for sale.”

Trump has in recent weeks ramped up his rhetoric around Greenland, insisting that it must come under the control of the United States. Earlier this week, Trump said that “anything less” than that would be “unacceptable,” arguing the US needs the territory for national security purposes, which could in turn strengthen NATO.

His repeated statements have strained diplomatic relations between the US and Denmark, which owns the territory but gives the local population the right to self-determination, while also prompting condemnation from NATO’s European member states.

Amid the escalating situation, a US delegation of bipartisan lawmakers were sent to Copenhagen to meet with leaders from Denmark and Greenland.

In a press conference on Saturday, Democratic Senator Chris Coons, who is leading the delegation, said the Trump administration’s “tempo of statements” around Greenland’s potential acquisition was not constructive.

Senator Coons also expressed his respect to the indigenous people of Greenland, telling journalists that it was a “remote and difficult place to live, and that the population of Greenland has managed to carve out of an exceptionally difficult environment, a culture and an approach to living that is worthy of deep respect.”

The US lawmaker sought to highlight the partnership between the US and Denmark, including in the military sphere, saying that the delegation would visit a cemetery later Saturday to lay a wreath for Danish soldiers who fell fighting alongside American troops in conflicts such as the war in Afghanistan.

Reporting from Greenland’s capital of Nook, CNN’s International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson said the visit by the US lawmakers was intended to signal how much Denmark’s military partnership with the US is appreciated. “The visit to that cemetery t