I had a huge (and I really do mean huge) cauliflower from Abel and Cole that I wasn’t sure what to do with – it’s not a vegetable I normally use for much – so I figured I’d give Cauliflower and Cheese a try. It’s not exactly the most innovative recipe in the world and, while it’s one I like, not something I’m massively excited by. But why not? It’s not something I’d actually ever made before, and it’d keep well as a side dish.
I used the Good Housekeeping cauliflower and cheese recipe as the basis for this, but only loosely followed it. You could probably use any recipe for it that works well. But I tried the following variations on it:
- I roasted the cauliflower instead of boiled it. Basically all I did was floret it as normal, put it in the dish and roast it covered at 200C for 20-30 minutes with a bit of butter and salt (ok, a lot of butter and a bit of salt). Then I just added the sauce and cheese as normal on top of that.
- Additionally I added some leeks to the mix, roasting them along with the cauliflower.
- I added halved cherry tomatoes at the same time as the sauce.
This worked incredibly well. It took a nice dish and made it excellent. I had this as the main meal, served with a whole grain bread, and I’ve been very happily eating leftovers of it since.
In fact in my country there is something similar.
The cauliflower is cooked (in water) until its done (about 20 minutes). The timing is a bit tricky as you have to decide how soft you like the consistency.
Now the real trick is the sauce where you cut some onions and heat them up with butter! Now add quite a lot soft cheese to it and mix it until you are satisfied ( again) with the consistency.
Finally take some brown bread and toast it (REALLY brown ;) )
Now arrange the cauliflower on the bread(use some salt) and pour the sauce over that. My mother used to cook it a lot when i was young. Recently i tried to replace the salt with soya sauce.